On 17 August Indonesia marks 81 years of independence. A week earlier, PT PLN (Persero) became the first state-owned enterprise to make the Best Workplaces in Indonesia list.
No BUMN had managed it before. The company that keeps the lights on for 96 million people across more than 17,000 islands now sits ninth in the Large category for 2026, and it got there on the confidential votes of its own 47,000 employees.
Selamat Hari Kemerdekaan, PLN.
The first government-owned organization to appear on the Best Workplaces in Indonesia list, ranked ninth in the Large category for 2026.
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Sector
State-owned electricity
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Employees
Close to 47,000
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Customers
96 million
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2026 ranking
No. 9, Large category
On a transmission line in East Java in 2024, a junior technician looked at the weather and stopped the job. His supervisor halted the crew on the spot. The technician was later named a Safety Champion, and the story went around the group as a teaching case.
That is roughly the shape of how PT PLN (Persero) became the first government-owned organisation on the Best Workplaces in Indonesia list, landing at number nine in the Large category for 2026.
Indonesia’s state electricity company employs close to 47,000 people across more than 17,000 islands. PLN’s Trust Index score of 92%, measured by Great Place To Work’s confidential employee survey, sits against a 59% benchmark for a typical Indonesian company.
Utilities are an unlikely place to find this. The work is hard, the hierarchy is usually fixed, and keeping power flowing to 96 million customers rarely rewards the person who says to wait.
See the full list of 25 Best Workplaces™
The organization began its transformation in 2020 after a run of large-scale blackouts, fragmented systems and slow decisions, and concluded that incremental fixes would not carry it. Roughly 2,000 change initiatives followed, guided by a Javanese phrase the leadership still uses as its compass: urip iku urup, to live is to illuminate.
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92%
Trust Index score
PLN employees who say they trust their workplace, against 59% at a typical Indonesian company.
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0.136%
Voluntary turnover
Group-wide resignation rate reported by PLN, or about 64 people a year across the workforce.
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94%
Felt welcomed on joining
Share of surveyed PLN employees who said they felt welcomed when they started.
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11,600
Employees hold a Culture Ranger role
A formal culture responsibility written into the job, mandatory at the two leadership layers below the board.
What does PLN do differently from a typical Indonesian employer?
PLN gave every employee standing authority to stop unsafe work, then built recognition around the people who use it. The written rule is blunt: work safely or stop the work, there is always time to do it safe.
Executives from the top two management layers run safety patrols in the field, crews observe each other’s behaviour on site, and every incident and near miss is written up and shared across the group.
Fatality cases across PLN fell from 15 in 2023 to 6 in 2024 on the company’s own safety reporting, a 60% reduction in twelve months.
Who makes the culture stick?
Some 11,600 PLN employees carry a formal culture role called Culture Ranger, mandatory at the two leadership layers below the board. Rangers model the behaviors, run local activation and escalate what they hear. Culture becomes more than a poster in reception when 11,600 people have it written into the job description.
The board turns up in person
When disaster hits a region, PLN’s directors go there, and the itinerary includes the homes of employees whose own houses were damaged. Aid moves through the company’s charitable arm, and leaders keep a running thread with staff on PLNKita, the internal portal.
A second app, KOMANDO, carries code of conduct briefings and tracks whether they land. Across an archipelago this wide, showing up is the harder half of the job.
Ideas with somewhere to go
About 1,000 employees a year enter PLN’s Leadership Development Program, where cohorts spend three to six months on a live business problem and the senior tiers present their work to the Board of Directors.
One cross-functional team went looking at Indonesia’s emerging carbon market. Within eighteen months PLN had a Carbon Trading Unit, 12.77 million tons of registered CO2 equivalent reductions and its first carbon credit sales.
How does PLN develop and keep its people?
PLN pays for postgraduate study at scale and the retention numbers follow. Some 5,314 employees, close to one in ten, are studying for a master’s degree or doctorate on the company’s account through partnerships with 142 institutions.
PLN’s Gender Academy delivered seven batches of gender-based violence training to 2,225 participants by 2024.
Retention is the sharpest evidence it worked. PLN reports an Intent to Stay score of 98, above Indonesia, Asia and Fortune 500 benchmarks, and voluntary turnover across the group of 0.136%. Against nearly 47,000 employees, that is roughly 64 resignations a year, a figure we calculated from PLN’s own numbers. Among employees surveyed, 94% said they felt welcomed when they joined.
PLN is candid about the gap that remains. Its own succession data puts bench strength in the high twenties, thinnest at middle management, which the company has mapped and put on a three to five year clock.
Frequently asked questions
Is PLN a good place to work?
By its employees’ own account, yes. PT PLN (Persero) scored 92% on the Great Place To Work Trust Index against a 59% typical-company benchmark, and placed ninth in the Large category of the Best Workplaces in Indonesia 2026 list. Voluntary turnover sits at 0.136%, and 94% of employees said they felt welcomed when they joined.
Which companies made the Best Workplaces in Indonesia 2026 list?
The Best Workplaces in Indonesia 2026 list recognizes organisations across Small, Medium and Large categories, ranked on confidential employee survey data. Marriott International, Hilton and DHL took the top three places in the Large category, with Allianz Indonesia, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, PT PLN (Persero) and Accenture also ranked. Cisco Indonesia led the Medium category and PT Acer Indonesia led Small.
How do you get Great Place To Work Certified in Indonesia?
Certification in Indonesia runs entirely on employee feedback. Your people complete the confidential Trust Index survey, answering 60 statements about trust, fairness, respect, pride and wellbeing, plus two open questions. Your organization must meet participation and distribution thresholds so the result fairly represents the whole workforce, and Certified organisations then become eligible for the Best Workplaces in Indonesia list.
What counts as a good Trust Index score?
The typical Indonesian company benchmark sits near 59%, so anything meaningfully above that signals a healthy culture. Certification thresholds are set by Great Place To Work and vary by market, so treat the benchmark as context rather than a pass mark. Across Indonesia’s Best Workplaces, 89.1% of employees say they generally trust their workplace compared with 71.4% at typical companies.
