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Worker housing in one of our plantations in Sabah, Malaysia.

Wilmar is also committed to ensuring that our employees, contractors and suppliers are paid a living wage. We assessed all our employees and contractors to ensure that they are paid a living wage. We also assessed our suppliers using our Supplier Reporting Tool to ensure that they are also paying their workers a living wage. We base our calculations on available frameworks for countries we operate in, including the Global Living Wage Coalition, Wage indicator Foundation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Living Wage Calculator and the RSPO Living Wage Benchmark.

RSPO is a part of the RSPO Decent Living Wage (DLW) Task Force, which was formalised in January 2021 and formed to oversee the development of the RSPO DLW benchmarks globally.

In countries without furnished data on what is considered a living wage, we ensure that workers in our supply chain receive at least the minimum wage and have access to benefits such as savings schemes, free childcare and free transport. For Wilmar, we provide free housing, facilities and benefits for employees who choose to stay on-site at our operations in remote areas.

In Malaysia and Indonesia, we recruit workers directly and bear all recruitment fees and related costs to mitigate the risk of human trafficking and forced labour in our palm oil operations. This typically occurs through contract misrepresentation and debt bondage brought about by excessive recruitment fees charged by agents – a common problem in the agricultural sector especially when hiring foreign workers are involved. In cases where we do use recruitment agencies, it is only to support the documentation processes.

In Ghana and Nigeria, the use of any contracted agent is limited to logistical and administrative purposes only. Salaries and remuneration are transacted directly between Wilmar and our workers to prevent risks of exploitation.

We have 145 crèches across our plantations to care for younger children so that our workers can work with peace of mind.

Wilmar does not tolerate child labour, exploitation and abuse of any form and is committed to protecting and safeguarding the rights of children throughout our operations. We pay closer attention to our palm oil upstream operations where the risk of child labour is highest.

We published our Child Protection Policy in 2017, outlining our commitment to protect the rights of children living with their parents in our plantations as well as within our suppliers’ and contractors’ operations.

Since 2018, we have been conducting annual child safety assessments covering our upstream palm operations in Indonesia and Malaysia. This was expanded to our operations in Africa in 2020. These assessments are carried out internally by a team independent of the plantation operation reporting structure, with the aim of understanding potential risks to children, if any are reoccurring issues, and to record programmes or interventions being put in place to improve overall child safety.

In 2021, we identified and reported on additional measures linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. These include creating a safer environment for children, raising awareness among caretakers and children, and protecting the health of children and families living in our plantations.

In collaboration with our plantation Women’s Working Groups (WoW), we also studied health records in our plantation clinics to understand and identify any potential blind spots related to the health of mothers, infants and children.

Wilmar developed a Child Protection and Safeguarding Implementation Manual, in collaboration with Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and consumer companies including Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, PepsiCo, Neste and Procter & Gamble. The Manual is comprehensive field guidance for a universal understanding of the rights and protection of children and applies to the wider agriculture industry. We have progressed to the next phase by conducting two pilots, in Malaysia and Indonesia respectively, to test the practical application of the Manual. Key lessons from the assessment of the pilots will be shared with our supplier base in both countries.

In our oil palm plantation operations, Wilmar provides access to free and quality education to children of our employees as we firmly believe that education is the key to addressing poverty and improving lives. We also operate 145 crèches across our plantations to care for younger children.

Despite the challenges brought upon by the Covid-19 pandemic, these efforts persevered to ensure that these children have the facilities and instruments to gain a meaningful education that will allow them to thrive.

In 2021, Wilmar was recognised by the Global Child Forum, a Swedish non-profit foundation, as the highest achiever globally across all industries for championing the protection of children’s rights by integrating them into our operations.

With our workers undertaking a wide range of different tasks such as harvesting, operating heavy machinery and transporting goods, inculcating a culture of safety across our entire business is our highest priority as any lapses in health and safety protocols will potentially have an adverse impact on our people as well as our operations. We therefore strive to ensure the health and well-being of our employees, workers and everyone involved in our operations, which is their fundamental right, while ensuring we have a healthy, motivated and productive workforce.

We are reviewing and reissuing the standards under our Wilmar Integrated Management System (WIMS) while developing new guidelines to ensure we can manage emerging risks more effectively. These new guidelines will be supported by leading indicators that are meaningful, easy to measure, and that will improve safety. This will include the implementation of activities, practices and measures including:

• Implementation of WIMS
• High Risk Work Compliance Assessment
• Training
• Hazard and Near Hit Reports and Closures
• Environmental, Health and Safety Audit Results

In 2021, we focused on strengthening our seven High Risk Work (HRW) Standards, training and best management practices for high-risk work which includes workplaces involving the seven riskiest work types such as work at height and energy isolation.

We believe in the importance of having a work environment that is diverse, non-discriminatory and provides equal opportunities as we strive to attract the right talent and empower our employees to be their best and unique selves. Having a diverse workforce allows us to benefit from new and unique perspectives that help us to serve our wide range of customers.

Wilmar has in place key policies to support our approach to diversity, including our Equal Opportunity Policy and Board Diversity Policy, among others. Every Country Head and Business Head in Wilmar is accountable for ensuring that diverse and inclusive practices are implemented in the workplace. For instance, one of our packaging facilities in China is planning to hire over 300 persons with disabilities out of a total of 1,000 employees.

In Australia, we have committed to developing an Indigenous Recognition Plan and we are part of Diversity Council Australia Limited, an independent organisation spearheading equitable diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We also have in place an apprenticeship programme for both young men and women to apply and be evaluated based on their own merits.

We also recognise the importance of empowering women in our workplace and creating a fair and inclusive environment for them to thrive in. We are committed to providing our women employees with the best possible means to support them as we recognise that they may have particular responsibilities and vulnerabilities, both in and outside the workplace.

We launched our Women’s Charter in 2019 which outlines our commitment to respect women’s rights and ensuring their welfare while taking into account the diverse work environments in Wilmar, including plantations, factories and offices. The Charter, which applies to our operations globally, is complemented by a number of other policies, including the Sexual Harassment, Violence and Abuse, and Reproductive Rights Policy.

Our Women’s Charter outlines five key focus areas:

• Protection and care of female health
• Care of family life and welfare
• Protection from sexual harassment and violence
• Non-discriminatory, fair and equal opportunities at work and in worker representation
• Continuous education for personal and family life improvement

We formed the Women’s Committee Steering Group in April 2019 to ensure that there is consistency and alignment with these five key focus areas. We began establishing women’s committees in our palm oil plantations in 2007. Since 2020, we have had Women Working Groups (WoW) or Gender Committees in all our palm oil plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Ghana and Nigeria.

Through the efforts of our WoW, we have launched a number of initiatives focusing mostly on maternal health in our plantations. This includes trainings and group sessions to raise awareness on various topics ranging from reproductive rights to birth control options and the importance of regular screenings for breast and cervical cancer. We also ensure that there is equal access to health services while distributing maternal health cards to help track women’s prenatal health indicators.

In Indonesia, we provided training on prenatal care and maternal health during the Covid-19 pandemic for women in plantations.

We support efforts to help women take better care of their children and families by conducting trainings and group sessions on topics such as childhood nutrition and awareness on child diseases as well as conducting healthrelated campaigns with local hospitals or health authorities to provide a better understanding of the importance of childhood vaccinations.

We also established crèches, which provide a safe space for childcare while their parents are at work, as part of our efforts to enhance women’s welfare. To further improve the safety of our crèches, we have in place registration and attendance records which also include vaccination history. Through our crèches, we ensure that these children receive all the mandatory immunisations.

Our WoWs and Gender Committees were also set up as channels to investigate any sexual harassment-related cases. We also organised trainings in Malaysia and Indonesia to provide further knowledge and understanding of gender-based violence and sexual harassment.

Our global workforce, comprising approximately 100,000 people spread across 39 countries, is a key pillar of our success. We continue to prioritise attracting and retaining the right talent across our business and value chain by creating an engaging and inclusive workplace while adhering to the highest standards of human and labour rights across our supply chain. We appreciate the importance of local talent and employ local people in our overseas operations as far as possible to leverage their local knowledge and network.

Temporary workers play an important role in fulfilling either seasonal harvest needs, specialist or timebound tasks in our upstream operations, especially in sugarcane plantations and sugar mills as sugarcane is a seasonal crop.

All our employees, regardless of their employment status, are entitled to health care and parental leave in addition to receiving life insurance as well as disability and invalidity coverage.

We also recognise the increasing need and preference for flexible work arrangements, especially due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We have since amended our Human Resource policies to allow employees to exercise flexibility between working in the office or from home for work functions that are not tied to a specific site.

Our employees now have access to an e-learning platform, which is a key tool that enables us to continue delivering training during the Covid-19 pandemic. We are also developing more e-learning courses to cater to different employee levels to complement the current formal training, mentoring and on-the-job technical training.

It is imperative to our long-term success that we support and empower the surrounding communities in which we operate through rural development programmes encompassing education, health and in recent times, Covid-19 relief measures. We rely on effective stakeholder engagement and meaningful partnerships to ensure that these programmes have a long-term impact.

The establishment of our oil palm estates have resulted in the development of infrastructure in remote rural areas, such as roads, electricity and safe drinking water. In our palm oil operations, we support rural development through stable employment opportunities and provision of infrastructure such as schools, housing for our workers, roads for better access to and around our plantations and more.

We are also in a unique position to improve the livelihoods of our palm oil smallholders and sugarcane outgrowers as a large integrated business with a global footprint across the full value chain of food production.

Our independent smallholder programmes are specific to each country and aim to address the unique challenges faced by farmers in their respective locations. For example, in Malaysia, there are requests for support around the provision and application of fertilisers. In Ghana, farmers require support around the best agronomic practices. Our programmes also sometimes help farmers achieve relevant certification although it is not exclusively an objective.

We are committed to ensuring all smallholders in our programmes have access to a platform for expertise and sharing of best practices to enhance their livelihoods as well as guidance to achieve NDPE compliance.

We have implemented training programmes for sugar outgrowers, covering good farming practices for land preparation, planting systems, cane nutrient requirements, fertiliser application, weed control and the safe handling and application of chemicals.

We empower our subsidiaries to manage their own approach to economic and social contributions that are in line with the needs of local communities. Each subsidiary manages its own programmes which can include cash donations, employee volunteering or employee workplace giving.

Covid-19 vaccination drive in one of our plantations in West Sumatra, Indonesia.

From the early outset of Covid-19, Wilmar recognised the risks the pandemic posed to our employees as well as to our business. As the world continues to battle the pandemic, it is apparent to us that sustainability is an important pillar in building business resilience. Significant resources were channelled towards identifying and developing initiatives to mitigate risks, including implementing standard operating procedures to ensure the safety and well-being of our employees and their families as well as our surrounding communities. In tandem, we also ensured that our employees’ jobs, wages and related benefits were secure and not negatively impacted due to the pandemic as well as education continuity despite the closure of schools during lockdowns.

Wilmar also collaborated with local authorities in certain countries to organise local vaccination drives not just for our employees and their dependents, but for surrounding communities as well. Our multi-purpose halls were converted into vaccination centres, with all mandated regulations observed, and buses were chartered to ferry people between their homes and the vaccination centres.

We also recognise the difficulties faced by individuals, families and communities arising from the pandemic. We supported local and national relief efforts by contributing personal protective equipment (PPE), food products, medical equipment, disinfectants, hygiene products as well as monetary contributions.

The pandemic also saw the closure of schools which negatively impacted the access to education for millions of children. Children living in oil palm plantations faced additional challenges in home-based learning due to unstable internet connectivity in remote locations where our plantations are located, the unaffordable cost of mobile internet data for video streaming or virtual classrooms as well as the general lack of devices in households to access online education.

Working closely with the schools that Wilmar funds or manages in our plantations, we ensured that we were able to continue providing education through innovative solutions and novel approaches ranging from social media to smartphone apps such as WhatsApp, platforms such as Google Classroom and Zoom as well as local radio and television broadcasts to transmit educational programmes.

We also designed and implemented an ‘internal homework postal system’, with plantation offices and members of our Women’s Working Group printing and delivering worksheets for children, which were then collected and submitted to teachers for checking. Teachers could also conduct walkabouts to check in on their students. Where possible, we would also make laptops available for students attending home-based schooling.

These efforts continued well through 2021, especially when lockdowns were in effect.