Bring your whole self to work. Be unique. Be authentic. However you prefer to say it, we really mean it. Our culture embraces people’s diverse perspectives and creates a positive environment where everyone belongs.
At Meridian we support and value all of the different experiences and views that our people bring. Diversity and Inclusion is not about how you look, it's about how you think. Anyone can be successful at Meridian.
The differences we all bring to work help us to create a high performing environment. The way we individually think and the unique experiences we've had, help us to look at things from various perspectives and be innovative.
We look at diversity from the view that we're all diverse. Having a wide range of diverse people of different ages, gender, ethnicities, abilities and experiences, gives us a competitive edge in the market.
Being an inclusive culture means that we listen to and respect input from everyone who works here. We value and appreciate the uniqueness that makes us individuals. We want Meridian to be a great place to work for everyone!
We’re proud to be accredited with the Gender Tick. We're committed to achieving pay equity for male and female employees in similarly-sized roles, with similar skills, experience and accountabilities.
We’re honoured to be a member of the Accessibility Tick Programme. We're committed to ensuring Meridian is an accessible place for everyone to work.
We want to empower everyone in Meridian to create and embrace an environment that is inclusive, where everyone feels welcome to be their authentic self and to support our ambition to reflect the society and communities in which we live and operate.
Meridian’s Belonging Policy outlines our strategic priorities which include achieving an overall balance of gender across workforce, and gender balance in our senior leadership roles.
At an operational level, Meridian is striving to achieve targets for representation of women across the workforce, through initiatives which will enable progress toward the following more-specific gender targets. These targets are:
| % Women (Operational target) | |
|---|---|
| All employees | 50% |
| All Management positions | 50% |
| Junior Management positions | 50% |
| All top management (Senior Leaders) | 40% |
| Employees in revenue-generating functions | 50% |
| Employees in STEM related roles | 40% |
| Female | Male | |
|---|---|---|
| Executive | 40% | 60% |
| Senior manager | 28.8% | 71.3% |
| Mid manager | 36.4% | 63.6% |
| Mid non-manager | 33.5% | 66.5% |
| Junior manager | 78.8% | 21.2% |
| Non-managers | 60.1% | 39.9% |
| Total | 47.7% | 52.3% |
As at the end of FY26, 47.7% of employees across the Meridian Group and 40.5% of our people leaders, are female. Females also comprise 50% of our Board and 40% of our Executive Leadership Team. At senior management level, 28.8% are women – we want to increase that.
To further improve gender balance at all levels, each year we aim for 50% of our new hires being women. We’re also closely monitoring the retention of women who are already in our leadership roles and will respond with appropriate initiatives if an adverse trend arises.
We are also continuing to develop programmes to improve our gender balance. We believe that increasing gender diversity will help bring diversity of thought and better outcomes overall. Meridian uses gender-balanced recruitment panels and implemented training that supports managers to build collaborative teams, create succession plans and understand the benefits of diversity within teams. We operate graduate and apprentice programmes that are successfully attracting a balance of male and female candidates, reflecting an improvement in the number of women choosing technical careers.
However, some parts of our business are still predominantly male, in particular in our Engineering and Electrical functions where 80% of employees are male. However, our female GM of Generation, and several other senior female leaders within this predominantly-male business area, are great role models for women aspiring to join and lead these technical sides of the business. The relatively remote locations of our generation assets, combined with low staff turnover, means we see growth in gender diversity within our technical roles as a long game, but we continue to make gradual progress each year.
Gender pay equity is having the same or similar pay for different work of equal value, regardless of job holder gender.
The gender pay gap is the overall gap in average pay rates across the organisation for women compared to men. It is impacted by the representation of gender at different levels of the organisation.
| All employees (excluding CE) | Males (excluding CE) | Females | Gender Pay Gap FY26 | Previous year Gender Pay Gap FY25 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Median salary | $120,000 | $139,000 | $95,000 | 31.7% | 31.5% |
| Average salary | $128,609 | $145,148 | $112,445 | 22.5% | 22.2% |
| Median total remuneration | $137,280 | $163,386 | $107,027 | 34.5% | 33.3% |
| Average total remuneration | $152,525 | $174,034 | $132,144 | 24.1% | 23.6% |
The table shows the difference between full-time, full-year equivalent median and average base salaries and the total remuneration of Meridian employees by gender, regardless of the nature or seniority of work. The overall FY26 median gender pay gap is similar to FY25.
Meridian has an ongoing focus on increasing the number and proportion of women at senior, higher-paying levels of the organisation. This will help to address the overall current gender pay gap, which is largely an outcome of gender representation differences in roles at different levels. Meridian also reviews its salary data to ensure that there is no inappropriate pay gap (i.e. not due to performance, skills, experience, etc.) between men and women performing roles of similar size, type and seniority. Comparing the median salary of men and women in roles of a comparable size and nature, Meridian has a minimal gender pay gap at most job levels. The median gender pay gap (by ‘Position in Range’ across roles of similar size) is 1 percent.
Meridian welcomes employees from a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds, reflecting the ethnic makeup of the locations in which we operate. We encourage our people to let us know which primary (and secondary, if applicable) ethnicities they identify with, so that we can track our progress in ethnic diversity. Of those employees who have disclosed their ethnicity, 6.4% are Māori and 2% are Pacific Peoples.
We would particularly like the proportion of our employees who have notified us that they are Māori, to be reflective of the representation of Māori in the places Meridian operates.
The table below shows our current progress.
| Ethnicity | FY25 | FY26* |
|---|---|---|
| European | 77% | 78% |
| Māori | 4.8% | 6.4% |
| Pasific Peoples | 2% | 2% |
| Asian | 10.2% | 11.1% |
| Middle Eastern, Latin American or African | 3.7% | 5.9% |
| Other | 0.5% | 0.8% |
| Unknown | 1.7% | 0% |
The Mind the Gap initiative across New Zealand also encourages employers to disclose their ethnicity pay gaps (for Māori and Pacific Peoples.
Meridian is committed to attracting particularly more Māori employees into the workforce, at all levels.
We acknowledge and are concerned that the types and levels of roles that most Māori and Pacific Peoples within Meridian fill are our lower-paying roles, which results in larger ethnicity pay gaps for our Māori and Pacific Peoples employees, compared to our other employees.
Meridian monitors ethnicity pay gap for Māori and Pacific Peoples against pay of employees of other ethnicities. There is virtually no ethnicity pay gap (0.2 percent) for Māori and Pacific Peoples against other ethnicities, in all roles of a similar size. However, comparing median salaries across all roles, the larger ethnicity pay gaps below reflect that many of our Māori and Pacific Peoples employees are in lower-level (and therefore lower-paying) roles. Our diversity initiatives aim to address this over time.
We’re committed to finding ways to attract more Māori into the company, and growing our capability to understand and be supportive of Māori in our workplace. We want to be in a stronger position to hire and/or develop employees of these ethnicities into our more senior, high-paying roles
| Māori | Pacific peoples | |
|---|---|---|
| Ethnicity pay across roles of a similar size gap (Position in range) | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| Ethnicity pay gap across roles at all levels (Median salary) | 33% | 36.3% |
*For FY26 Ethnicity data includes employees’ secondary ethnicity, where provided.
Te Kete Tikanga Māori is an educational resource for Meridian staff and whānau to learn about Te Ao Māori (the Māori world). It focuses on basic teachings to support their day to day mahi (work).
Interactive features within the app include pronunciation of Māori words, maps with Māori names and iwi groups, values and principles, mihimihi/pepeha (introductions), ngā mihi (greetings), poroporoaki (farewells), whakataukī (proverbs) and waiata (songs).
One of the app’s key features is that it allows staff to input their own personal information to create a customised pepeha. Meridian staff will find this resource particularly helpful when leading, or being part of health and safety discussions that involve the local Māori community.
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