This article is also available in Bahasa Indonesia
On 29 June 2022, Great Place to Work™ announced the first batch of companies Great Place to Work-Certified™ and ranked on our Indonesia Best Workplaces™ List through a virtual reveal. The evaluation for this was based on Great Place to Work employee surveyed administered in 2021 and through Q1/2022.
What is a “great workplace” and how is it measured?
At Great Place to Work, we define a “great workplace” as one in which people trust their leaders, take pride in their work, and experience camaraderie with their colleagues. This is evaluated through our Trust Index™ survey which measures the three key relationships that drive an employee’s experience in their workplace—relationships with management, colleagues, and their job:
3 Key Relationships
- Management
- Employees
- Job
5 Dimensions
- Credibility
- Respect
- Fairness
- Pride
- Camaraderie
Trust is built—and reinforced—when employees have consistently positive experiences in these relationships. Best Workplaces consistently build a high-trust workplace culture regardless of employee size, demographics and industry. And they realize the benefits from a multiplier effect as they maximize their human potential through effective leaders, meaningful values, and a deep foundation of trust with all employees. When those are in place, these workplaces benefit from improved innovation and financial growth driven by engaged and productive teams who work together towards a common goal.
What does a 2022 Indonesia Best Workplace look like?
Our 10 list makers demonstrated that despite the constant changes and challenges over the past year, Best Workplaces were able to build a culture of trust, engage their people, and lead their organizations through the upheavals brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
So, what distinguishes the 2022 Indonesia Best Workplaces (“IDN Best”)1? Based on insights gleaned from the Great Place to Work® Trust Index™ survey data and Culture Audit™ submissions, we found that compared with other companies (“IDN Rest”)2, there were three key drivers of positive employee experiences at Indonesia’s Best Workplaces.
3 Key Drivers of Great Employee Experience at the Best Workplaces
1. Employees receive the resources and support needed to grow professionally and thrive in the workplace
IDN Best companies provide employees with the necessary tools and resources to perform their jobs well; they also ensure that the workspace and workplace facilities allow employees to do their best work in a safe and conducive environment. These are workplaces that adopt a long-term view toward employees’ career growth, and proactively offer learning and development opportunities to support their professional advancement.
Our facilities contribute to a good working environment
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I am offered training and/or development to further myself professionally
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- At DHL Express, employees have access to my Talent World, a global online system that supports group-wide Learning, Performance & Talent processes, and offers more than 5,000 different training sessions and learning offerings that cater for every ability level. Managers conduct regular career dialogues to discuss employees’ career aspirations, their strengths, areas of development and learning objectives, to develop their individual development plans aimed at helping employees progress to the next stage of their career, step up in their current roles or further develop a competency.
- In line with its Employee Value Proposition, Telkom Indonesia ensures that every employee receives the same opportunity to develop their career through learning and development programs. Its talent management system enables employees to design their own career journeys to achieve their career aspirations. Line managers discuss each individual’s career/professional development in line with their performance, aspirations and skills, and employees are offered suitable training courses to support their career/professional growth.
2. Management regularly connects with employees
Firstly, management at IDN Best companies recognize that their employees are individuals with personal needs, aspirations, and interests – they are genuinely interested in getting to know them and build relationships beyond operational needs and interactions. They also intentionally create a culture of recognition by acknowledging employees’ efforts and demonstrating appreciation for a job well done.
Management shows a sincere interest in me as a person, not just an employee
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Management shows appreciation for good work and extra effort
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- Recognition and showing appreciation are integral to the way SC Johnson operates, and it proactively promotes a culture of appreciation, recognition and camaraderie. It encourages recognition through a variety of formal and informal programs to ensure that employees’ contributions and achievements are celebrated. These range from formal awards such as Now Thanks Awards and People & Team of The Year, to annual Profit Sharing Day celebrations, recognition during townhalls and team meetings, and to informal platforms such as WhatsApp group chats.
- DHL Global Forwarding (DGF) holds an annual Appreciation Week to celebrate DGF Values and show how much every employee’s contribution is valued. Examples include managers serving buffet lunches – or sending online food delivery if the majority of their teams are working remotely, and penning personal thank you notes. DGF Indonesia organizes events that bring employees together, such as movie days, office karaoke, and potluck meals. Management also takes this opportunity to get know employees better on a personal level.
Secondly, management adopts an open, two-way approach toward communication that goes beyond simply presenting required information – they share information on important issues and changes that affect their business and employees, with a view to helping them understand the rationale for decisions made, and addressing ‘hot topics’ and concerns. Importantly, these companies proactively encourage employee feedback, suggestions and ideas; they prioritize listening, following up and closing the feedback loop, so that employees know that their voices are heard and that their opinions are taken into account.
Management keeps me informed about important issues and changes
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Management genuinely seeks and responds to suggestions and ideas
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- Ericsson prioritizes open and timely communication. Its employees appreciate the transparency and personalization of content that reinforces a culture of trust. As part of its commitment to foster a speak-up culture, its Head of Market Area for Oceania, Southeast Asia and India (MOAI) hosts monthly one-hour sessions with MOAI employees, where they can share their thoughts and ask questions of him and the leadership team.
- At Medtronic, every single employee has a voice and every single one of them is encouraged to use it. Employees have the opportunity to shape an open and transparent culture through monthly Coffee Connection sessions for employees to talk about advancing Diversity and Inclusion, handling conflicts of interest, tackling year-end performance reviews, and other topics. These sessions are led by members of the Indonesia Leadership Team, who share their personal viewpoints and hear directly from employees whom they may not otherwise have a chance to interact with daily.
- Capella aims to build and sustain an open and inclusive work culture by proactively involving colleagues in decisions that affect their jobs or work environment. For instance, while General Manager and Senior Leadership dialogues are commonly held during the day, it ensures that quarterly dialogue sessions are held for odd-shift colleagues (i.e. colleagues on a permanent midnight shift), to ensure that they receive information first-hand from management about important issues or changes within the hotel, ask questions and share their views.
3. Management builds trust through their actions – they walk-the-talk and keep their promises
Management at IDN Best companies demonstrated integrity through their daily actions and behaviors. The approach they took in making decisions and communicating with employees, living out the espoused core values. Through these day-to-day interactions with leaders at every level, a high-trust workplace culture is built and reinforced, resulting in a positive impact on employee morale, engagement and ultimately, business outcomes.
Management's actions matched its words
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Management delivers on its promises
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- Diageo Indonesia recognizes that leaders play a critical role in inspiring and influencing employee experience, culture and performance. It equips its people managers through an Impact People Manager Program designed to support new and existing people managers to build core people management capabilities as they support and grow performance across Diageo, and live out its purpose of celebrating life, every day, everywhere!
- Cisco believes that empathy is a superpower because it will change the way in which individuals engage with each other. To encourage empathy, it designed a Conscious Leadership Experience for leaders to better understand the perspectives of employees across the full spectrum of diversity, and The Proximity Initiative to enable senior leaders to hold 1:1 conversations with someone different than themselves to understand their experiences and challenges. The insights gleaned have led to bold changes in its HR practices, and encouraged leadership behavior toward creating a fully inclusive workforce.
- Within a week of the Covid-19 pandemic, Livit International had to close its coworking space, cancel several events and make refunds to its clients. Regardless, its managing partner made a commitment that no one in the team would lose their job because of the pandemic. Livit embarked on new projects, found innovative new ways to generate revenue and has kept its commitment to employees to this day. It even found jobs for employees in other coworking spaces (competitors) who had to close during the pandemic, and got involved in fundraising for other spaces that struggled to keep going.
Unsurprisingly, our data showed that compared with employees at IDN Rest, those at IDN Best companies are:
18x
More likely to want to work there for a long time
10x
More likely to endorse their company as a great place to work
Insights from the 2022 Indonesian Best Workplaces™
We were interested to find out what was special and unique about an organization’s practices and programs, and how these positively impacted the lives of employees.
We found that Best Workplaces…
… demonstrated Semangat – a strong spirit of energy, enthusiasm, and determination to overcome challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. Leaders, managers and employees in these companies showed personal and collective resilience by staying connected, supporting one another, and working together as a team.
… were intentional about building employee capability through structured and comprehensive talent development strategies and programs in an inclusive manner to ensure equal opportunities for diverse groups of employees at all levels of their career.
… lived up to their core values and genuinely cared for their employees and the communities in which they operated. These companies went the extra mile to provide job security and support their employees’ financial wellness in a variety of ways, and in turn, enabled their employees to support their communities through volunteer programs and collaborative initiatives.
Our inaugural Indonesia Best Workplaces in 2022 have demonstrated that workplaces with a high-trust culture drives employee engagement and results in better business outcomes. In these companies, management successfully built trust by demonstrating consistency between their words and actions, demonstrating a strong people-first philosophy through policies, practices and day-to-day interactions at every level. This enabled them to maintain high morale in spite of their fears, build strong camaraderie although they worked remotely, and stand united as a team. And this has seen them emerge stronger together in the new normal.
Congratulations to all companies who are placed on the inaugural Indonesia Best Workplaces List! We salute you for all that you have done for your people, building quality relationships and ensuring that your employees have a consistently positive workplace experience.
Want to see how your employees are experiencing your workplace culture and how your company compares with the 2022 Indonesia Best Workplaces? Contact us for a demo on our proprietary Emprising™ survey platform to find out.
1 “IDN Best” refers to companies on the 2022 Indonesia Best Workplaces list.
2 “IDN Rest” refers to other companies, including Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies, that participated in this year’s survey. Not all Certified companies appear on the 2022 Best Workplaces list.
Evelyn Kwek
Evelyn is the Managing Director for Great Place to Work®️ in ASEAN and ANZ. Heading the expansion of Great Place to Work®️ offices in ASEAN, Evelyn is convinced that just as the region is growing exponentially on the economic front, the work of building great workplaces FOR ALL™ must go in tandem with economic growth.
A proud mother of 3, Evelyn takes parenting very seriously – she is strict yet giving, result-focused yet generous. Together with husband Roland, they relish exploring new cultures and beautiful places of the world, usually on leisurely self-drive holidays, before the days of Covid.
Pamela Sng
Pamela is our Senior Consultant and Research Lead for Great Place to Work® ASEAN and ANZ. She has over two decades of consulting and policy experience helping organizations in their journey to become fair and progressive employers. She believes that every organization has the potential to be a great workplace, and works with data to distil insights and develop resources to help them. When she’s not burrowing down the rabbit hole of numbers and words, she’s probably immersed in a new K-drama or catching up with friends over a virtual drinks session.
Raymond Teo
Raymond is a talent-builder, having trained and coached hundreds of leaders and staff in systematic problem-solving skills. He is also a Certified Gallup Strengths Coach and a LEGO® Serious Play facilitator, using these tools in strategy development, team building, problem solving, visioning and leadership development. Today, as a Senior Consultant for Great Place to Work®, Raymond brings in his extensive coaching, business performance management, and team development experiences to help clients build stronger workplace cultures and employee engagement that is pivotal towards business success.
