Interface Earns Great Place to Work Certification Across 14 Countries

Employee experience is becoming harder for global companies to manage consistently, particularly when workforces span offices, manufacturing facilities and supply chains across multiple countries. Interface, Inc. says it has achieved Great Place To Work Certification in every eligible country where it operates, covering roughly 95% of its global workforce across 14 countries.

The flooring manufacturer says the recognition is based on its 2026 Global Culture Survey and employee feedback, with results showing higher participation and improved workplace sentiment compared with its previous survey in 2024.

For global employers, maintaining a consistent workplace culture is considerably more complicated when employees are spread across different countries, functions and working environments.

The challenge becomes even more pronounced when a large portion of the workforce is not sitting behind a desk.

Interface, Inc., a global flooring manufacturer with a significant frontline manufacturing and supply-chain workforce, has received Great Place To Work Certification in all 14 countries where it is eligible for the program. The certifications cover approximately 95% of its global workforce, including employees in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, China and Australia.

The company says the milestone reflects findings from its 2026 Global Culture Survey, conducted with Great Place To Work.

Unlike employer-branding claims based primarily on corporate messaging, the certification process incorporates employee feedback and evaluates factors including credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie.

That makes the underlying employee participation and sentiment data particularly relevant to HR leaders.

Employee participation reaches a record

Interface reports that 85% of employees participated in its 2026 survey, the highest participation rate in company history.

Among respondents, 81% agreed that Interface is a great place to work, a five-point improvement over the company’s 2024 survey.

The company’s Great Place To Work model score reached 71%, three points higher than its previous result.

Those numbers suggest an improvement in employee sentiment, although they should be interpreted within the context of Interface’s own survey population and the methodology used by Great Place To Work.

For HR teams, participation itself is an important signal.

An employee survey can only provide useful organizational insight when workers are willing to respond. High participation can give HR leaders a broader view of workplace sentiment and potentially make it easier to identify differences between business units, locations or employee groups.

Frontline workers make the result more significant

Interface says more than half of its employees work in frontline manufacturing and supply-chain roles.

That changes the employee-experience challenge.

Desk-based employees often have access to digital HR platforms, collaboration tools, learning systems and flexible communication channels throughout the working day. Frontline employees may have less consistent access to those same technologies.

Consequently, employee engagement programs designed primarily around digital workplace experiences can miss a significant portion of the workforce.

For manufacturers and other organizations with large frontline populations, culture initiatives need to translate into physical workplaces, shift structures, management practices and opportunities for professional development.

Interface’s results therefore offer a relevant example of how global employee experience strategies increasingly have to account for both desk-based and frontline workers.

From annual surveys to continuous listening

Interface says it has expanded its use of employee pulse surveys alongside its broader annual culture survey.

The shift toward more frequent employee listening is becoming increasingly common across enterprise HR.

Traditional annual engagement surveys can provide a useful organizational snapshot, but they can also leave long gaps between identifying a workplace issue and understanding whether an intervention has worked.

Pulse surveys, meanwhile, allow organizations to gather feedback more frequently around specific topics.

Modern employee listening platforms from providers such as Qualtrics, Culture Amp and Workday can help organizations collect, segment and analyze employee feedback at scale.

But the technology is only one part of the equation.

The real test is whether managers and HR teams act on the feedback.

If employees repeatedly report the same problem without seeing meaningful changes, additional surveys can ultimately undermine trust rather than strengthen it.

Leadership development becomes part of the culture strategy

Interface also points to expanded leadership development, culture coaching and additional learning opportunities among its recent investments.

That combination reflects a broader shift in how companies approach employee experience.

Workplace culture is often discussed as a set of values or employee sentiments, but day-to-day management behavior can have a much more direct effect on how those values are experienced.

Leadership development can help managers translate corporate principles into everyday decisions — from communication and recognition to performance management and career development.

For a global organization, that becomes particularly important because managers operate at the point where corporate policies meet local working conditions.

Employee experience is becoming a data problem — but not only a data problem

HR technology increasingly gives organizations the ability to measure employee sentiment, identify engagement patterns and segment feedback by geography or workforce group.

Artificial intelligence is also being incorporated into employee listening and workforce analytics, potentially helping HR teams summarize large volumes of qualitative feedback and identify recurring themes.

But Interface’s certification highlights a limitation of treating employee experience purely as an analytics problem.

Better data can tell leadership where employees are struggling. It does not automatically solve the underlying issue.

Programs such as leadership development, culture coaching and learning opportunities still require investment and organizational follow-through.

The relationship between technology and culture is therefore becoming more complementary. Technology provides visibility; management action determines whether that visibility produces change.

A global certification with local implications

Great Place To Work evaluates participating organizations on a country-by-country basis, with requirements around employee participation, workplace trust scores and minimum employee counts.

For Interface, achieving certification across all 14 eligible countries provides a broader picture than a single-country workplace award.

It suggests that the company’s employee-experience efforts are reaching multiple labor markets rather than being concentrated in one corporate headquarters or region.

At the same time, country-level certification does not mean that every employee has an identical experience.

Global organizations still face differences in management practices, labor markets, regulations and cultural expectations.

The more useful takeaway for HR leaders may therefore be the process: collect employee feedback, identify patterns, invest in development and engagement, and measure whether sentiment changes over time.

Culture becomes part of workforce strategy

Interface’s latest certification arrives at a time when employers are reconsidering what employees expect from the workplace.

Pay and benefits remain fundamental, but organizations are increasingly competing on development opportunities, leadership quality, flexibility, purpose and a sense of connection.

For manufacturers, those expectations extend into frontline environments where employee experience has historically been harder to digitize and measure.

Interface’s results show one approach: use employee feedback as a starting point, combine it with leadership and learning programs, and monitor workplace sentiment over time.

The certification itself is a recognition rather than proof of business performance. But the underlying movement toward more systematic employee listening is significant.

As HR becomes increasingly data-driven, the organizations that benefit most may not be those that collect the most employee data. They may be the ones that consistently turn what employees say into visible changes in how work gets done.

Market Landscape

Interface’s announcement sits within the broader employee experience and employee listening technology market.

Platforms such as Qualtrics, Culture Amp and Workday increasingly provide organizations with tools for engagement surveys, pulse checks, feedback analysis and workforce insights. AI is also making it easier to process large volumes of employee comments and identify recurring themes.

However, employee listening is only useful when connected to action.

For global employers with substantial frontline workforces, the challenge is even broader: digital surveys and HR platforms must be supplemented by manager engagement, accessible learning, leadership development and communication approaches that work outside traditional office environments.

Top Insights

• Interface achieved Great Place To Work Certification across all 14 eligible countries, covering approximately 95% of its global workforce.
• Employee survey participation reached 85%, while 81% of respondents said Interface is a great place to work, up five points from 2024.
• The results are notable for a company where frontline manufacturing and supply-chain employees represent more than half of the workforce.
• Interface is combining employee listening with leadership development, pulse surveys, culture coaching and expanded learning opportunities.
• The announcement illustrates why employee experience increasingly depends on both HR technology and visible management action.

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