Morrows is a leading multidisciplinary advisory firm providing integrated financial, wealth, and business solutions to individuals, families, and organisations across Australia.
Company size
Small, 30 to 99 employees, based in Southbank, Melbourne
Segment
Financial services and insurance. A multidisciplinary advisory firm offering integrated financial, wealth and business services
Recognition
Great Place To Work® Certified™ 2026, ranked 19th in the Small category of the Best Workplaces™ in Australia 2026 List, and named on Best Workplaces in Finance & Insurance 2026
The average employee at Morrows has been there about nine years. A number have recently passed twenty-five and thirty. In professional services, where firms plan around churn, that is the figure worth explaining.
The Southbank advisory firm of between 30 and 99 people, in business for more than 65 years, providing integrated financial, wealth and business services. On its first Trust Index™ Survey, 97% of its employees said it is a great place to work, against 60% at a typical Australian company.
Tenure is not a soft number for a firm like this. Morrows advises individuals, families and family businesses across multiple generations, and clients making decisions about their businesses, wealth and families want the person advising them today to still be there in five years. Continuity is a big part of the product.
19th
Best Workplaces in Australia 2026
Morrows ranked 19th in the Small category
Among listed organisations with 30 to 99 employees. Morrows was also named on Best Workplaces in Finance & Insurance 2026.
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97%
Say Morrows is a great place to work
Against 60% at a typical Australian company.
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50
eNPS in FY26
Up from 21 in 2023, the year before quarterly surveying began.
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9 years
Average employee tenure
With a number of employees recently reaching 25 and 30 years at the firm.
The Challenge: Wanting an Outside Read
Morrows did not come to Certification short of data. It came looking for someone else’s.
The firm wanted prospective employees to have credible independent evidence of what working there is like, rather than relying on what Morrows says about itself, in a market where professional services firms compete hard for the same skilled people. It wanted its clients to see that the advisers they trust are staying. And it wanted a benchmark that reached beyond its own walls, because internal surveys can tell you whether you are improving but not how you compare.
Certification answers the second question, the first one Morrows had already built its own machinery for.
From once a year to four times a year
Three years ago Morrows moved from an annual employee survey to quarterly pulse surveys. Participation runs between 70% and 90%. The problem it solved was timing. Valuable feedback arriving once a year is feedback you cannot act on when it matters, and by the time the next survey comes round the issue has either resolved itself or calcified.
The change shows in one number. Morrows reports its eNPS rising from 21 in 2023, the year before the switch, to 50 in FY26.
The Method: Results That Do Not Stop at People and Culture
Morrows deliberately avoids treating survey results as a People and Culture action list, which is the default in most firms and the reason most engagement programs stall. Results are reviewed first with the Executive team, then separately with each management team.
Managers receive the data for their own team and work with People and Culture on practical actions from there. One team might need to focus on recognition. Another might need career development, or communication, or a change to how it works. The point is that the response is designed by the people closest to the problem rather than handed down.
The mechanics of the debrief matter as much as the principle.
Pulse debriefs are kept deliberately small, generally no more than four managers in the room, so the conversation stays on what that specific team can do about its own results.
Three months later the next pulse tests whether anything moved. That is the part that turns a survey into a cycle: listening, acting, then measuring whether the action worked, four times a year instead of once.
What Morrows Built
STAR recognition
STAR is an anytime discretionary reward a manager can give without waiting for a formal review or an annual event, and it comes with a gift voucher attached. Roughly 90 STAR recognitions have been awarded since the program began. The problem it fixes is a common one: recognition that clusters around a single night in the calendar, months after the work it is recognising. Morrows also introduced an annual innovation award for people who have materially improved how the firm operates.
Sonder, and the EAP it replaced
In 2026 Morrows introduced Sonder, a digital-first wellbeing platform covering mental, physical and emotional health. It replaced a traditional Employee Assistance Program where utilisation was low and getting to the right support could involve delays. The firm also extended the benefit to employees’ families, on the reasoning that people do not leave their personal lives at the door and supporting a family supports the employee. Alongside it sit a Breakfast Club providing breakfast and fresh fruit in the office, a Social Club, and regular volunteering.
Morrows Academy, and the manager habit
Morrows works from the position that strong technical expertise does not automatically produce strong people leadership, which in a professional services firm is a more uncomfortable thing to say than it sounds. Morrows Academy provides structured development in the practical parts: giving effective feedback, running meaningful one-on-ones, managing performance, and leading well in a hybrid environment.
Around that sits a rhythm. People leaders come together roughly every six months on emerging leadership topics. People and Culture meets every people manager individually each quarter, which catches emerging concerns before they become people issues. And the firm tracks one-on-one activity in its HR reporting, with about half of all employees having a recorded monthly one-on-one.
Leaders in the same room as everyone else
Morrows treats its size as an advantage rather than a constraint. Teams are kept deliberately small, generally fewer than ten people. Leadership sits in the open-plan environment rather than in separate executive offices, and executives stay embedded in operational teams. During the most recent team planning cycle an Executive attended every team’s workshop, to explain firm priorities and work through how that team’s contribution connects to them. Peers are also involved in recruitment, so candidates meet the people they would actually work beside rather than only the hiring manager.
The Results: Tenure as a Business Asset
Great Place To Work Australia records that 97% of employees at Morrows say it is a great place to work, against 60% at a typical Australian company. Fair treatment regardless of sexual orientation and the experience of being welcomed as a new starter both recorded unanimous agreement, with physical safety and fair treatment regardless of race at 99%.
Morrows reviews an HR Scorecard monthly at Executive level, which means people metrics get the same standing attention as financial and operational performance. It covers workforce stability, talent and capability, wellbeing and risk, and culture, and it is the reason the firm can put numbers to most of what is described above.
Gender balance in management and leadership is the area Morrows names as its current focus. Professional services has long over-represented men in senior roles, and the firm makes a client-facing argument for changing that: it advises families and family businesses across generations, and a team with a broader range of experience understands a broader range of client circumstances.
Business Impact
The FY26 scorecard, and what it protects
- Voluntary retention at 87% and new hire retention at 90%
- A promotion rate of 11%, keeping progression inside the firm
- Average monthly absenteeism of 2.24% and annual leave liability of 13.42 days per person
- An HR Scorecard reviewed monthly by the Executive alongside financial and operational performance
- Certification carried onto the careers page, job advertisements and social media, and shared with clients
People Impact
What changed in the day-to-day
- Quarterly pulse surveys with 70% to 90% participation, replacing a single annual survey
- Around 90 STAR recognitions awarded at managers’ discretion rather than at an annual event
- Sonder wellbeing support extended to employees and their families, replacing a low-use EAP
- Every people manager meets People and Culture quarterly, with pulse debriefs capped at four managers
- End-of-year reviews completed at 90%, with about half of employees on a recorded monthly one-on-one
What Comes Next: Embedding Before Moving On
The challenge Morrows names for the next two years is not a shortage of ideas. It is the opposite. The risk is launching the next initiative before the last one has actually landed.
Like most professional services firms it is navigating fast technological change, particularly around AI and digital adoption, alongside shifting expectations from both employees and clients. The stated shift is from measuring whether something has been launched to measuring whether it has been understood, adopted and sustained. In practice that means more regular feedback on major digital initiatives, more manager involvement, and clearer measures of adoption, so that people understand why a change is happening and get a say in how it arrives.
Where Culture Work Starts
Nine years of average tenure is not a benefit anyone can buy. At Morrows it is the output of a listening cycle that runs four times a year and lands on the desk of the manager actually responsible for the team in question, followed three months later by a check on whether anything changed. The firm’s clients experience that as the same adviser picking up the phone a decade later, which is worth more to a family business than any employer brand campaign. If your feedback still arrives once a year and stops at People and Culture, that is the gap worth closing first.
