The New Business as Usual: Lessons From Malaysia's Inaugural Best Workplaces™ List 2026
This year Great Place To Work® opened up the globally recognized Trust Index™ survey to Malaysia, and captured the experience of nearly 95,500 across small, medium and large organisations. The result is the inaugural New Business as Usual report, and a benchmark the country has never had until now.
The gap it exposes is hard to ignore. Employees at Malaysia’s Best Workplaces™ score 85.2% on the Trust Index, against 67% at a typical Southeast Asian company. More than half say they have a “great deal” of confidence in their leaders. At the average workplace, that figure drops to one in three.
Drawing on real practices from certified great workplaces, the report shows how the country’s top employers are treating culture as infrastructure rather than decoration, and getting measurable returns for it. It features how Hilti Malaysia, &samhoud, Experian, Novartis Malaysia, Micron Technology and Allianz Group turn listening, well-being, AI confidence and agility into daily habits.
A benchmark, finally. The first Trust Index™ read on the Malaysian workforce, covering Respect, Credibility, Fairness, Pride and Camaraderie, with the 20 organisations that set the standard.
Making Well-Being Business as Usual. Why mental health costs the economy an estimated RM14.5 billion, where the strain lands hardest (26 to 34s, early-career staff, women mid-career), and how well-being makes employees 3.4 times more likely to stay. See how &samhoud’s four-day week cut high stress from 68.4% to 18.8%.
Innovation in an AI-Driven Economy. Only 33% of Malaysian workers use AI at work today, though that is up 11% on 2024. The report unpacks how Experian and Novartis Malaysia build the psychological safety and practical training that turn cautious optimism into everyday experimentation.
Building Enterprise Agility by Design. How Micron Technology and Allianz Group engineer agility into how work runs, including one Allianz transformation that cut hierarchy from seven layers to three and time-to-market by 80%.
The Five Practices to Steal. From closing the say-do gap to measuring what matters, the shared design principles that separate the Best Workplaces from the rest.
This is the playbook for building a high-trust, human-centred culture that competes and grows through whatever comes next. Does your workplace have what it takes to be great?