Just 57% of one NZ firm’s middle managers rated it well on trust. A year later, all of them did
Every staff survey on Earth has a number that management sweats a little over reading out loud at the leadership offsite. At realestate.co.nz, that number belonged to the middle managers. In its 2025 employee survey, run by Great Place To Work, between 90% and 93% of staff gave the company positive ratings on work-life balance, trust and psychological safety.
The middle management layer, however, came back looking like a different company, at 57% on encouragement to balance work and personal life, 57% on psychological and emotional health, and 57% on being trusted to work without close monitoring.
Twelve months later, every one of those managers answered positively on the same questions, head of people and culture Kim Hamilton told Great Place To Work. The fix was both deceptively simple but required a lot of dedicated work. The company gave managers a real role in its four biggest strategic projects, with monthly progress discussions, and gave them more one-on-one coaching.
That kind of culture management was the main question Great Place To Work put to the organisations on this year’s Best Workplaces in New Zealand list, an annual ranking based primarily on anonymous feedback from each organisation’s own employees.
How do you guide people through change, from culture to AI to restructures?
Answers from New Zealand’s top workplaces fell into four habits: explain change early, bring people in, keep listening and manage how much happens at once.
Rebecca Moulynox, general manager of Great Place To Work Australia and New Zealand (pictured), said the list was proof that culture can survive a squeeze. “So many New Zealand workplaces prove that even in a tight economic climate, culture doesn’t have to be the first thing cut,” she said.
Those companies’ own people feel the difference. According to Great Place To Work’s State of Workplace Culture in New Zealand 2026 report, 92.5% of employees at the Best Workplaces said they were proud to tell others where they work. At an average New Zealand workplace, the figure was 60%.
Say what you know, and admit what you don’t
At Roche Products (New Zealand), people and culture director Jocelyn Reinhard told Great Place To Work that the company led change with empathy and something it calls “super clarity”. Leaders tell staff what they know and own up to what they don’t, which Reinhard said reduced “the anxiety of the unknown”. The approach builds on the high levels of trust in leadership, and comfort speaking up, that employees reported in the company’s 2026 survey. For human resources (HR) leaders, the takeaway fits on a sticky note: tell people which decisions are still open.
Marriott International has taken the same thinking to the graveyard shift. It told Great Place To Work it runs Early Bird Breakfast sessions for people working overnight, alongside quarterly all-staff meetings and daily team briefings, so night staff stay part of the conversation about change. Leaders also sit down with new starters for what Marriott calls 30-Day First Impressions conversations, asking how the place looks to fresh eyes.
Nexia New Zealand, an accounting and advisory network, told Great Place To Work it goes a step further and hands people a seat at the table. Staff from across its member firms, at every level and from different specialties, sit on national committees that shape change before it lands. “We find this creates greater understanding and ownership of change, while helping us identify practical solutions from the people closest to the work,” Nexia said.
Listen on repeat, and watch the load
Back at realestate.co.nz, change runs on a loop. “We listen, act, measure, and adapt again,” Hamilton said. The annual survey, shorter check-in surveys through the year, one-on-ones and quarterly reviews all feed straight into action. As the business grew and its people spread out, it added a weekly all-staff video call, monthly business updates and quarterly days in the office together to stop informal connections fading away. It was that same loop that caught the middle manager gap. The practical point for HR teams is to look at survey results by seniority, because a healthy company-wide average can hide a group that is struggling.
Melanie Barnett, general manager of people and culture at Flight Centre’s New Zealand business, told Great Place To Work the company had stopped judging each new initiative on its own and started tracking their combined weight. “Rather than assessing initiatives in isolation, we take a portfolio approach, looking at the cumulative impact of change on our people,” Barnett said. Senior leaders and the staff training team use that view to plan what happens when.
That culture of care pays off when it comes to retention: Flight Centre’s New Zealand’s people stay an average of nine years, and more than 40% have been there longer than 10.
In a Great Place To Work study on staff retention, 38% of employees who were strongly not proud of where they worked said they were very unlikely to stay. The New Zealand report also shows where even the winners have homework, with fair pay among their lowest-rated areas.
You can read the full State of Workplace Culture in New Zealand 2026 report, which sets out what separates the Best Workplaces from average New Zealand employers.
This article was produced in partnership with Great Place To Work New Zealand
