The company earned 9th place on the Best Workplaces in Asia list thanks to improving levels of employee trust in leadership.
Accenture’s big bet on its leaders boils down to a simple idea: The fastest way to reinvent the business for the AI era is to build trust in the leaders who will guide employees through the change.
The results of this bet? Accenture earned a place at No. 9 on the Best Workplaces in Asia™ list for 2026, analyzed by Great Place To Work®.
Accenture has been transforming its business model, integrating its services to meet the needs of clients in the AI era. That’s no easy task for a company with Accenture’s global footprint, including its large and diverse Asian workforce.
Yet, measures of trust on the Great Place To Work survey are on the rise, with 76% of employees globally rating the company as a great workplace. “That is a clear signal that the change is being made with our people, not to them,” says Lakshmi C, senior managing director and CHRO for Accenture India.
The rising levels of trust can be traced to Accenture’s efforts to retrain leaders, particularly around four leadership behaviors that are critical for building trust: listening to understand employee concerns, thanking people in ways that feel specific and meaningful, speaking with authenticity and transparency about changes in the business, and inspiring people to learn and grow.
Accenture’s ask to leaders: Reinvent how you lead rather than just improve past management practices.
Preparing people for change
While the pace of change in Accenture’s business is fueled by technology, that’s not the only foundation of its success.
“Technology is not going to build trust or create culture,” Lakshmi says. “People will.” Without trust, people are more resistant to change, according to Great Place To Work research. High-trust companies have faster rates of innovation, resulting in 5.5 times the revenue growth of their peers.
Readiness for change is about having a true listening culture, which Lakshmi defines as “a culture where your people trust that you will act on what you hear.”
The company is investing in leadership training across Asia to bolster listening and build trust.
In Japan, the leadership team conducts regular in-person roundtable sessions. “These are really conversations where the leaders talk with and listen to people directly, creating a space to share questions or ask for ideas,” Lakshmi says.
In India, leaders were introduced to Accenture’s new business model in workshops, and then leaders were reengaged through regular leadership connects and Q&A sessions.
This modeled how leaders were expected to help their own direct reports embrace transformation, where questions and curiosity are encouraged, part of what Accenture calls the “reinventor leader profile.”
“Leaders need to fundamentally rethink how they operate,” Lakshmi says. “That includes how they listen, how they recognize people every day, and how they enable growth for their people.”
Creating laboratories for leadership
Accenture has been leading executives through High Trust Leadership Development sessions in partnership with Great Place To Work. About 1,000 leaders participated in focused peer-to-peer training sessions, with lessons cascading to another 3,000 career counselors across the company.
Sessions were structured as roundtables rather than lectures. Participants shared stories and workshopped challenges together in a fully immersive learning environment. At the end of the session, they made commitments in front of each other about how they would lead.
For leaders, the space and safety to reflect on their own leadership — both what is working and what needs work — has been invaluable.
“Most good leaders know what the right behaviors are,” Lakshmi says. “They often don’t have a safe space to examine honestly whether they are demonstrating them.”
As part of the experience, leaders learn “high trust leadership behavior hacks” — simple interventions that can help change the relationship between leaders and their teams. The hacks are simple things, Laksmi says, like pausing before responding or paraphrasing what you hear an employee share to check understanding.
It’s the consistency of those small behaviors that build trust over time. “Trust can’t be built top-down, just by policy,” Lakshmi says. “It has to be felt by each person on the team in a moment that is specific to them.”
Responding to feedback
To build trust, Accenture ties feedback from employees to changes it is making across the organization. That starts with collecting enormous amounts of data.
In the last year alone, Accenture received over one million pieces of feedback from people globally across their listening channels. It’s a point of pride for the company to survey everyone, rather than just produce representative samples. “We survey everyone because we truly believe that every voice matters in how we show up for our people,” Lakshmi says.
One piece of feedback Accenture received was that employees wanted more opportunities for recognition. In response, the company launched a global AI-assisted platform where 94% of employees have received recognition from a colleague in the past year. In China, Accenture built an AI assistant within Microsoft Teams to encourage people to recognize colleagues and help generate personalized messages.
AI doesn’t automate the human experience of giving and receiving recognition but helps remind leaders of their commitments and makes it easier to build in healthy leadership habits. In India, 99% of employees have been recognized at least once in the past year. “That’s phenomenal, just given our scale,” Lakshmi says.
Why people choose Accenture
When handled with care, a massive change in the organization can be a reason that employees choose to stay with the company. For Lakshmi, constant reinvention has always been part of Accenture’s appeal.
“It has never felt like the same company twice,” she says. If the business model isn’t changing, it’s the technology landscape, or a new role opens up within the company.
When employees trust their leaders, they can see career opportunities hidden within the toughest challenges. “At Accenture, one never stops learning,” Lakshmi says.
Get recognized for your culture
Gain accolades for your workplace environment and attract top talent who share your values.
