A sustainable workforce is vital to the viability and success of our business in the long term. As the Group commits to higher sustainability standards, we recognise that we can achieve our goals only if every employee is on board with the mission.
Sustainable Leadership
Across the Group, our leadership embraces the triple bottom line – Planet, People and Profit. In keeping with our core values, they guide respective teams towards transforming ideas into actions and results.
At Wilmar Sugar Australia (WSA), for instance, the management team conducts monthly site visits to provide updates on new initiatives, business achievements, and accord formal recognition to employees’ service milestones. WSA also acknowledges significant team and individual achievements in production and safety performance, and managers conduct regular safety walks to highlight safe and sustainable work practices.
Our joint venture company in India, Adani Wilmar, organises leadership effectiveness development courses as part of its talent development initiatives. These courses are targeted at the senior management level to help them build and maintain high-performance teams.
Embracing Diversity
As an international organisation with over 90,000 employees in 30 countries, we embrace the diversity of our people to leverage each other’s strengths and experiences to stay innovative and push for greater performance. For instance, women comprise 24% of our entire workforce, and 57% of the Group’s headquarters with 22% in the senior management team. We believe in advocating inclusiveness and providing support to all employees including women.
Talent Management & Development
Looking ahead, the Group will continue to explore talent management strategies through working with external stakeholders such as local and overseas universities, vocational and technical schools for young talents as well as internal stakeholders such as employees themselves.
Our subsidiary in China, Yihai Kerry, has been proactively nurturing talents to guide fellow colleagues through the Yi Shi Hui (益师荟) programme. The programme aims to effectively transfer internal best practices to create a shared learning environment and cultivate more core talents. Managers who have demonstrated good performance and enthusiasm for training and development are selected for this programme and will eventually become internal training specialists.
Employee Engagement
A sustainable workforce is strengthened by employees who are engaged, motivated and empowered. Different engagement programmes are implemented across our global offices and sites according to the nature of operation, local culture and needs.
Our subsidiary in Ukraine, Delta Wilmar, encourages a collaborative work environment by holding monthly workshops where best work practices and ideas are exchanged amongst departments.
In Australia, WSA has developed a multi-skilling framework aimed to create roles that will increase workforce sustainability while maximising employees’ flexibility and engagement. The core of the initiative is to offer opportunities and benefits that meet the needs of both the company and employees.
Besides job rotations which enable employees to experience different tasks and challenges, the Group’s global footprint means there are opportunities for overseas assignments. For instance, the production, quality assurance and procurement staff from Vietnam attended workshops in China and Denmark last year to gain a global perspective and to leverage each country’s expertise, experience and resources more effectively.
Innovation
Innovation is one of our six core values because we recognise that new and viable ideas are crucial to business process and efficiency optimisation. Therefore, it is important that we create a conducive environment that promotes and fosters innovation. One such example is the Best Innovation Award for Rice Bran Oil Technology created internally and presented to employees in Vietnam whose innovative thinking have resulted in lower costs, improved yields and enhanced quality for the rice bran oil supply chain.
Yihai Kerry organises annual seminars to share innovative practices and expand on budding ideas and solutions. These include areas relating to production line layout, channel innovation, management model changes and technology iteration. Viable projects are then replicated and promoted within the Group.