“The genuine care and sincerity in listening to staff concerns is clearly acknowledged, and more importantly, is addressed in a constructive and amicable manner, not just heard and forgotten.”
Omni Group employee · from the 2026 Trust Index™ Survey
Company size
Medium, 100 to 999 employees, headquartered in Melbourne with a national footprint
Segment
Packaging solutions. Australian-owned and family-operated, spanning warehouse, office and production
Recognition
Great Place To Work® Certified™ March 2026, and ranked 20th in the Medium category of the Best Workplaces™ in Australia 2026 List
In February 2025, 62% of Omni Group’s frontline managers and supervisors said it was a great place to work. It was the lowest score of any group in the business, by a wide margin. Twelve months later, the same group scored 100%.
To be fair, Omni’s first Trust Index Survey came back at 86 out of 100, comfortably above the Certification threshold, with 89% saying it was a great place to work. Individual contributors scored 91%. The executive team scored 100%. The 62% only appeared when the results were broken out by managerial level.
Omni Group is an Australian-owned, family-operated packaging business running warehouse, office and production operations from Melbourne. On its second survey in March 2026, 95% of its employees said it is a great place to work, against 60% at a typical Australian company, and the company was ranked 20th in the Medium category of the Best Workplaces in Australia 2026 List.
Frontline managers and supervisors who say Omni is a great place to work
February 2025
March 2026
The lowest-scoring group in the business became the highest. Across every survey statement, the same group’s average moved from 64 to 96 in twelve months. Both bars are scaled against 100%.
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92
Trust Index score, March 2026
Up six points from 86 in February 2025, on 92 responses against 73 the year before.
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95%
Say Omni is a great place to work
Measured against 60% at a typical Australian company.
The Challenge: A Healthy Number With a Hole In It
Jonathan Salisbury stepped into the Managing Director role in January 2025 knowing the business carried cultural problems nobody had properly measured. Within his first month he applied for Certification, before he had any idea what would come back. His reasoning was that honest feedback from the team was worth having either way.
Omni was not starting from nothing. It already ran regular pulse surveys through Officevibe, so there was an ongoing read on sentiment. What that could not give the business was a structured independent benchmark, comparable year on year, capable of surfacing the experience of specific groups rather than the loudest voices in the room.
The 2025 result made the case for the difference. An overall 86 looked like a business in good shape. Split by managerial level, it showed a company where the people in charge of delivery were having a materially worse time than the people either side of them.
The squeeze in the middle
Frontline managers and supervisors occupy the hardest seat in any business. They carry delivery expectations from above and support obligations from below, and they absorb the friction between the two. Omni’s read of its own data was blunt: that group was not being properly backed, and the survey was the first thing to say so out loud.
The Response: Leaders Went First
The response was about trust, rebuilt deliberately across every level of management with the middle layer as the priority. The first move was making sure those managers felt heard and understood, rather than handed a list of things to change.
Senior managers were then given clear ownership of building that trust inside their own teams. The part that made it work is what it required of the people above them. The board and senior executive team had to go first, being transparent and at times genuinely vulnerable rather than presenting a polished front.
Trust is the foundation a functioning team is built on, and it has to be modelled at the top before it can reasonably be expected anywhere else. Asking middle managers to be open with their teams while the executive stayed guarded would have produced nothing.
What Omni Changed
Growth by Sharing
Omni runs a profit and commission sharing program the team calls Growth by Sharing, which routes a portion of company growth back to staff rather than holding it as a leadership benefit. The company shares its profit numbers with all staff week to week, and pays a commission to all staff based on the uplift in company profit. Publishing the numbers weekly is the part that does the heavy lifting, because a share of something people cannot see is a promise rather than a payment.
Recognition that reaches the back office
Omni’s Employee of the Month and Annual Best Employee programs are open to every department. That was a direct fix for something the 2025 survey named.
“The selection process often seems to favor customer facing departments… while the hard work of people behind the scenes goes unnoticed.”
Omni Group employee · from the 2025 survey
The survey measure on whether special recognition is available to everyone rose from 82 to 91 between the two years, which is a large enough move to suggest the change was felt rather than announced.
Five days, no questions
Every Omni employee gets five wellbeing days a year on top of standard annual leave. Nobody is asked why, what for, or when. Staff name this specifically and repeatedly as one of the most valued things the company offers, and the reason they give is the absence of a gate rather than the days themselves. Company-wide lunches and decent coffee and tea facilities sit alongside it.
“These initiatives work because they are practical, genuine and consistently supported across the business. They help our people feel valued for both their contribution and who they are outside of work.”
Emily Kirvan · Head of Marketing, Omni Group
The Results: The Squeeze Came Out of the Middle
Frontline managers and supervisors went from the most disengaged group in the company to the most positive, tied for the highest of any group in the business. Their average across every survey statement moved from 64 to 96.
Communication was the largest category gain in the survey, up eight points to 96. Within it, the measures on management being approachable and on keeping people informed about important issues both rose from 90 to 97. Omni’s internal equivalent of an employee net promoter score, the measure on whether staff would endorse the company to friends and family, rose thirteen points from 82 to 95.
Two other groups moved sharply. The 35 to 44 age band rose from 75 to 91, and the Victorian workforce, the largest and most tenured part of the business, from 82 to 90. Gender results were closely matched across both years, with no notable gap either time.
Business Impact
What the culture work changed commercially
- Growth by Sharing returns a share of company growth to all staff, with profit figures published internally every week
- Staff confidence in the service customers receive rose nine points to 97
- Certification carried onto Seek job advertisements and the careers page
- Survey participation grew from 73 to 92 responses, roughly tracking headcount growth over the same year
- Melbourne warehouse, office and production consolidating into one Epping site by the end of September 2026
People Impact
What changed in the day-to-day
- Frontline managers and supervisors moved from the lowest-scoring group in the business to the highest
- Communication was the single largest category gain in the survey
- Recognition programs opened to every department, with the recognition measure up nine points to 91
- Five wellbeing days a year on top of annual leave, granted without explanation
- The 35 to 44 age band rose sixteen points and the Victorian workforce eight, with no gender gap either year
What Comes Next: One Roof, and a Backlog of AI Requests
Omni is midway through consolidating its Melbourne operations into a new Epping headquarters, expected to be fully operational by the end of September 2026, bringing warehouse, office and production under one roof for the first time in years. Omni treats that as a culture project rather than a logistics one, because it changes who sees whom every day.
The second challenge arrived unprompted. AI came up repeatedly in the open comments of the 2026 survey, with staff asking for tools such as an AI meeting assistant and a faster rollout generally. One comment noted that “we first spoke about this 12 months ago.” A company-wide evaluation of AI tooling is now running, which makes this a current and slightly overdue piece of work rather than a hypothetical one.
“We involve our people in change rather than simply communicating decisions after they have been made. By creating space for open discussion, shared learning and experimentation, we make change feel more collaborative and less like something being imposed on people.”
Emily Kirvan · Head of Marketing, Omni Group
Where Culture Work Starts
Omni’s 2025 score was never wrong, it was just averaged. An 86 out of 100 with a 62% pocket inside it describes a company doing well for most people and failing a specific group, and only one of those two facts survives into a headline number. Splitting the results by managerial level is what turned a good result into a piece of work, and the group that had been carrying the most is now the group most likely to recommend the place. If you only ever look at your overall score, the people struggling hardest are the easiest ones to miss.
