“Apollo’s Great Place To Work Certification creates a particularly strong differentiation within Vietnam’s recruitment market. Our results validated Apollo’s ability to build trust, alignment, and belonging across highly diverse teams and locations.”
Duc Anh Nguyen · Corporate Communications Manager, Apollo English Vietnam
Company size
Large (over 1,000 employees) across 78+ centers in Vietnam
Segment
Multi-site English language teaching, with a frontline-heavy workforce of Vietnamese and expatriate staff from more than 50 nationalities
Recognition
Great Place To Work Certified™ 2026, Vietnam, on its first survey
Teaching English to hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese learners is a big job. Keeping 1,000 employees across 78 centers, representing more than 50 nationalities, in a fast-growing market, mid-AI integration, feeling like they work for the same company is a bigger one.
Apollo English Vietnam’s solution was data, operational redesign, and leaders who were physically present.
Key OUTCOMES
20%
Retention over 5 years
Nearly 1 in 5 employees have stayed for more than five years in a notoriously high-turnover industry.
70%
Internal promotions
Seven in ten management roles are filled from within. Apollo’s “Build, not Buy” philosophy in practice, not just print.
85%
Caring culture score
Across 1,000+ employees and 78+ centers, 85% rated Apollo a caring workplace, a score that typically erodes as headcount climbs.
93-96%
Inclusion
93% felt genuinely welcomed from day one. Fair treatment scores on gender and sexual orientation sit at 94% and 96%.
The trigger: rapid growth, rising complexity
Three years before Great Place To Work® Certification, Apollo entered a defining phase in its transformation. Duc Anh Nguyen, Corporate Communications Manager at Apollo English Vietnam said,
“As Apollo rapidly expanded across Vietnam, opening more than 25 new learning centers within three years, while simultaneously entering a new era of AI integration and operational optimization, our leadership began asking questions. Were employees across all centers experiencing Apollo in the same way? Were our systems and leadership structures scaling as effectively as our business? Were we listening enough to the people closest to our customers?”
The purpose of bringing English to life through real-world learning was strong, but scale introduced new tensions.
Pain point 1: inconsistent employee experience across centers
As new centers opened and local teams grew, different locations developed their own operational rhythms, communication styles, and leadership practices. Employee experience, access to leadership, and clarity on expectations could feel very different depending on the centre or zone. Without a consistent culture backbone, growth could quietly erode trust, collaboration, and service quality across the learner journey.
Pain point 2: relationship-led culture without system support
Apollo’s culture had historically been carried by strong, mission-driven leaders and tight-knit teams. But many strengths were still relationship-driven rather than system-driven, and as the organization scaled, people began feeling the strain of fragmented workflows and unclear ownership across the learner journey.
There were increasing layers between frontline employees and senior leadership and management needed a more reliable, independent way to hear from frontline workers and to test whether existing structures could really support the next stage of growth.
“The catalyst was not a single crisis, but a realization that intuition alone was no longer enough. We needed an independent, data-driven understanding of our culture to validate what was working, uncover blind spots, and guide the next stage of our evolution.”
The Solution: from intuition to a systemized, listening culture
Using their Trust Index™ Survey as a foundation, Apollo shifted from intuition to a more systemized approach to culture built around three interconnected streams of work:
1. Diagnostics: a Trust Index™ reality check
The first Trust Index™ survey ran across 725 employees, capturing experiences by age, tenure, gender, managerial level, and work status.
Key insight: while belief in Apollo’s mission and pride in their work were high, experiences of communication, collaboration, and operational clarity varied significantly by location and team structure. The question was no longer “Do we have a good culture?” but “Can we make that culture consistent and scalable?”
This shared dataset gave leaders a common language around trust, fairness, and belonging, and surfaced clear priorities for change.
2. Operating model redesign: a new way of working, built with frontline workers
In parallel with certification, Apollo launched the Apollo Operating System (AOS), a redesigned operating model built to reduce complexity and create clarity for both employees and learners.
Cross-functional teams from Operations, Learning Experiences, HR, IT, and frontline employees came together to:
- Map end-to-end learner and customer journeys
- Identify friction points, handover gaps, and duplicated work
- Pilot new workflows directly in centers before scaling them nationwide
Key changes: Apollo integrated workflows between Educational Consultants and Customer Service Officers so there were fewer handovers and much clearer accountability across the learner journey. At the same time, the organization moved from a Cluster model to a Zone structure led by Regional Centre Managers, bringing leadership and operational support physically closer to local teams and communities.
3. Leadership: immersion and listening habits
Apollo knew that structure alone wouldn’t shift culture; leadership behaviors had to change with it. Heads of Departments, Senior Managers, and functional leaders are now expected to spend at least 20% of their weekly time at centers, working alongside frontline teams.
During these visits, leaders join operational activities, observe live customer interactions, and listen to employee concerns and ideas, while also identifying friction points that never show up in dashboards or reports. Combined with town halls, focus groups, and pilot project feedback loops, these practices turned Trust Index™ insights into a habit of continuous listening rather than a once-a-year survey moment.
4. Growth programs: that employees use and get value from
To support employees through transformation, Apollo focuses on “the belief that meaningful employee experiences should be embedded into everyday work and not treated as separate activities or one-time benefits,” explained Duc Anh. Apollo built practical, everyday programs that connect culture, skills, and wellbeing like:
Personal Learning Program (PLP): Teachers choose their own development pathway and earn learning credits through workshops, self-study, observation, and peer learning.
AI for All: AI-powered tools and “AI Buddies” give staff faster access to information, reduce repetitive admin, and help teams work more proactively.
AOS for wellbeing: Process redesign intentionally focused on role clarity, reduced duplication, and simpler workflows to reduce stress and cognitive overload.
The Results: Turning Insights into a New Story
Within the first full cycle of Trust Index™ measurement and Apollo Operating System (AOS) rollout, Apollo saw strong indicators across trust, retention, internal growth, and employee advocacy. The organization now combines rapid nationwide expansion with a more consistent, data-led experience of care, fairness, and opportunity across over 78+ centers. Apollo’s internal people metrics also started to tell a more compelling retention and growth story.
“Nearly 20% of employees have stayed with Apollo for more than 5 years despite the fast-moving nature of the education industry. Also 70% of management roles are filled through internal promotion, strongly supporting Apollo’s ‘Build, not Buy’ people philosophy.”
One of the clearest signals was the strong sense of care and belonging reflected in Apollo’s Trust Index, where Apollo achieved an 85% score in the Caring category. The organization’s top scores sit well above 90% across multiple demographic cuts, including age and gender, even in a workforce representing more than 50 nationalities.
Apollo’s leadership, the combination of Trust Index™ data and real employee stories fundamentally changed how they talk about culture and helps shape how they show up in the market. When it comes to Apollo’s advice for other organizations thinking about Certification, Duc Anh said,
“Don’t approach the survey as a branding exercise, approach it as a leadership and transformation tool. The most valuable part of the process is not the certification itself, but the honesty it creates,” and “the real value comes from what organizations choose to improve after listening to their people.”
