“Jacaranda Finance could literally be a case study on how light touch management creates a culture of trust, respect, loyalty and hard work, which produces significantly better all-round results,” an employee wrote in its latest 2025 Trust IndexTM survey.
Having gained Great Place To Work® CertificationTM for the second year running, with 98% of its employees saying it’s a great place to work, Jacaranda Finance’s employee turnover is below 5%, lower than the industry average¹. We spoke to Julia Paino (Head of People Success) and Daniel Wessels (CEO) about how they elevate the employee experience.
Employer branding, data, and cost, says Julia.
“We know we have a really good culture here, but we needed to validate that. Great Place To Work is the global authority for workplace culture and great for validation to the external market,” she explains. As a small company with just over 70 employees, Great Place To Work offered more affordable pricing than other providers.
For survey results to be displayed while maintaining confidentiality, Julia would need at least 5 responses, whereas other survey providers may require a minimum of 10 responses. “We need to break it down into small datasets. I like the data cut, how we can break it down at the levels that we need,” she explains, adding that the heatmaps are particularly useful, because they allow for various cross-demographic comparisons.
Both quantity and quality of candidates applying to work at Jacaranda Finance have improved.
“Talent attraction has increased drastically since we’ve been certified. We get really great talent coming through and it’s a combination of having the Great Place To Work survey plus the work we’ve done on our Employee Value Proposition. A lot of candidates mention it: ‘I saw you’re a great place to work’. Just this calendar year, the numbers that we’re attracting in terms of candidates is huge,” Julia says.
Daniel agrees and adds, “It’s a good tool to attract and retain talent, for the team to know they’re in a good workplace. It provides data validating their decision to work here, that the grass isn’t necessarily greener out there, particularly for the young staff who’ve only ever worked here.”
92% of its employees agree that people hired fit in well, a 4% increase from last year and close to double of typical Australian companies, according to a 2024 Great Place To Work global market study.
The survey highlighted an opportunity to provide more support to team leaders, something Julia and Daniel would have taken a longer time to discover without the survey.
“The survey obviously allowed them to give us some raw feedback in a safe environment. Before we did the survey, we didn’t have enough data to know if we had a challenge or if we had an opportunity to be better. The team leader is a difficult role – they’re not the head of the department or a team member – they are generally very strong technically but may not have had to lead a team previously. The survey helped highlight that their engagement score was a bit lower compared to the other levels of seniority. It enabled us to create a targeted plan to empower them to be better leaders and to focus on engaging them,” Julia explains.
One change Jacaranda Finance implemented was to adjust the content of its six-month leadership programme to address what the team leaders needed, specifically towards people skills such as having difficult conversations. The result? 100% of its team leaders said they receive training and development opportunities in 2025, an increase of 6% from last year.
"We care about our people. They're not just a number. Everything we do is a people-first approach. Our people feel very comfortable coming to talk to us if they have an issue."
–Julia Paino, Head of People Success
27% of comments from employees mention leaders as the reason why Jacaranda Finance is a great place to work.
Leadership behaviours² shape employee experience, which creates culture, which in turn drives performance. What matters is employees’ perceptions of these behaviours, according to the latest research at the University of Queensland³ – and that is exactly reflected by the results of the Trust IndexTM survey.
“Having Dan as our CEO really leads the way with his energy and friendly/relaxed relationships he has with everyone here. It’s not very common for so many entry to middle level employees to have such a great relationship with the CEO and I feel he really puts his foot forward to engage with everyone at Jacaranda and get to know them,” an employee commented.
95% of employees say that it’s a psychologically healthy workplace. With psychosocial hazards now having equal legal priority as physical hazards in Australia, Jacaranda Finance has taken 3 proactive steps to manage them well.
First, an anonymous online feedback channel is made available to every employee. Any submission goes directly to Daniel and Julia, who made a promise to employees that “if they did submit something, it would be heard” and their feedback would be acted on.
Second, to have a finger on the pulse of employee voices, Julia conducts monthly happiness surveys, Heads of Department and Team Leaders conduct monthly one-on-ones and quarterly reviews, in addition to the annual Trust Index survey. Having ears to the ground enables leaders to take early action on any issue that compromises morale or productivity.
Third, hiring the right people helps. Its hiring tactic is “80% fit” – for new hires to fit into the ecosystem of culture so that workplace safety is maintained. When everyone is on the same page about culture, it mitigates psychosocial hazards. “People know what’s expected, and they know where policy stands. Set expectations, driven by policies that have enough flex to also be human-centric,” Daniel says. All these are in addition to training all employees on psychological safety, work health and safety, mental health, and sexual harassment.
Julia: “Transparency and communication. You cannot go wrong if you communicate with your people and tell them what’s going on and be transparent. You don’t want anyone sitting out there not understanding their purpose, how they contribute to the wider organisation, where the company is heading or anything like that. It’s so simple but so easy to get wrong.”
Daniel: “I’d even say over-communicate – it’s so key. You’ve got to have a preference towards action. You can’t just say stuff. Anything you say has to be backed up by action and data. If you truly care about your team and the people, you can’t just say it. You’ve got to demonstrate it, then use a tool like Great Place To Work’s survey to validate what you say you’re doing.”
Discover what employees value about working at your company and how you can boost retention rates and increase productivity and performance with Great Place To Work CertificationTM.
