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The bystander majority

The bystander majority

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Thursday, April 30, 2026

Leigh

The workplace is one of the last places we still show up together The Helen Clark Foundation's Social Cohesion report, released this month, makes for uncomfortable reading. Social cohesion in Aotearoa is declining across every measure — belonging, participation, trust in institutions, sense of fairness. Loneliness has risen from 1% in 2010 to 14% of people reporting it often. The community infrastructure that used to hold us together — clubs, congregations, neighbourhood networks — has thinned out significantly compared even to Australia. What's left? Largely, the workplace. The report identifies 41% of New Zealanders as "ambivalent" — moderately connected, low participation, no great hostility but no active engagement either. Not perpetrators. Not champions. Just present. This is the group most likely to witness something uncomfortable at work and say nothing. Most likely to see a colleague struggling and look away. Most likely to have the capacity to act and not know how. The report also finds something useful: contact works. Having sustained, meaningful interaction with people different from yourself consistently predicts stronger belonging, more accepting attitudes, and greater willingness to engage. Proximity alone doesn't do it, and one-off events don't either. What shifts behaviour is repeated, purposeful contact around shared goals. The workplace is one of the few places in New Zealand where that kind of contact still happens naturally — where people from different backgrounds, ages, and experiences spend sustained time together. And the stakes in that environment are real. In the past year alone, 27% of Māori, 30% of Pasifika, and 26% of Asian New Zealanders reported experiencing discrimination. That's the daily reality for a significant portion of any workforce, and the ambivalent majority sits right alongside it. Be There works in exactly this space. The programme builds the relational skills to act when something's wrong — to check in, call in, or step up — and it does it through the kind of structured, repeated interaction the research says actually shifts behaviour. It's grounded in kaupapa Māori and trauma-informed practice, which matters when nearly half of Māori and Pasifika New Zealanders sit in the alienated cluster the report describes. The report is honest that no programme fixes the economic conditions driving disconnection. Financial stress is the dominant predictor of low cohesion, and that requires policy, not training. But the report is equally clear that belonging matters independently — that even among people who are struggling financially, a strong sense of belonging keeps people participating in their communities.

  • Writer: Leigh
    Leigh
  • Mar 17
  • 3 min read

A look at what Be There Group is building across the Tasman — and what it means for the movement here in Aotearoa.


Some organisations talk about culture change. Be There Group actually measures it.

This Gold Coast-based team — the people behind the Be There framework that we've brought to Aotearoa — has just recently been recognised as one of the most innovative organisations in the entire Asia-Pacific region. And honestly? We couldn't be more proud to be part of their movement. We think you should know what they've been up to.


First: they just won an international award. A big one.

Be There Group has been named Gold winner for Most Innovative Startup of the Year at the 2026 Asia-Pacific Stevie® Awards — one of the most prestigious business innovation awards in the region, with over 1,000 nominations from 29 countries.

They also took home Bronze for Innovative Achievement in Diversity & Inclusion.

The judges described their model as a training approach that treats bullying, racism, and gender inequality as something far more serious than a compliance obligation. That framing is important. It's not a box-ticking programme. It's a framework designed to change how people actually behave in real moments — which is a much harder thing to do, and a much more meaningful thing to achieve.

Here's what the data shows, from their own participant evaluations:

94% of participants felt safe and encouraged to contribute after training. 99% felt confident recognising when bystander intervention is needed. 95% felt empowered to actually intervene safely.

Those aren't satisfaction scores. Those are capability indicators. That's what shifts culture.


What makes their approach different

Be There Group's whole model is built around the active bystander — the idea that ordinary people, in ordinary moments, are the ones who actually shape culture. Not just policies. Not just leadership statements. People.

Their training is trauma-informed, evidence-based, and designed for the reality of high-pressure, complex environments — mining, construction, infrastructure, finance, sport. They work with organisations like Perenti, Inland Rail, Mirvac, Volvo, and Hastings Deering. These aren't soft environments. These are places where culture change is genuinely hard — and where it genuinely matters.


Beyond the training room

What strikes me most about Be There Group, though, isn't the awards or the client list.

It's their commitment to violence prevention and safer communities.

They donate $200 from every contract to Women of the World (WoW), supporting violence prevention in rural and regional communities. They've established the Be There Foundation — a registered charity — specifically to deliver prevention education to schools and communities that can't access funded programmes. And they're building First Nations–informed, community-led train-the-trainer models so that prevention knowledge stays embedded locally, long after the facilitators leave.

That's a philosophy we recognise here in Aotearoa. That's what it means to work upstream. To think about who gets left out of the systems we build. To stay accountable to the communities doing the hardest mahi.


What this means for us

Here in Aotearoa, we're just beginning. We're building something grounded in this same kaupapa — bringing proven frameworks to life in our own context with our own communities.

Knowing that our Australian partners are doing work of this quality — and being recognised for it internationally — gives us confidence that what we're bringing to Aotearoa is the real thing. Not a training product. A movement.

The call is the same on both sides of the Tasman: move from silence to support. From awareness to action. From passive observer to active participant.

We think Aotearoa is ready.

To learn more about Be There Group's award-winning work across Australia, visit betheregroup.com.au. To find out how Be There Aotearoa can support your workplace or school, get in touch with us.

 
 
 

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