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Occupational Safety and Health

 

The Group integrates safety and risk management in its daily operations to cultivate a safe and healthy work culture. Despite numerous challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic and floods, we have continued to strive towards ensuring the well-being of employees and business associates are taken care of.

 

Safety and Health Performance

 

The Group aims to advocate the best practices and to ensure the performance of Environment, Health and Safety (“EHS”) with the adoption of the following management systems:

  • ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System
  • ISO 45001:2018 Occupational Health and Safety Management System.

  

The Group established Safety Committee to consolidate best practices from all operating companies as well as to incorporate common and specific safety visual standards. The strategical implementation of control, sustainability and improvement have been defined as the Four Pillars of EHS.

 

 

The chart below shows the Group’s Lost Time Injury Frequency (“LTIF”) rate:

 

Note: Prior year’s figure has been restated to reflect financial year instead of calendar year in order to be consistent with other data. Prior year’s figure has also been restated to include impacts from downstream businesses.

 

The Group has set the LTIF baseline as 2. Although the target has yet to be achieved, numerous efforts were put into organising safety programmes and initiatives, such as Genba walks, safety drills and trainings in order to reduce industrial accidents. We also emphasise on encouraging employees to participate in identifying and mitigating unsafe conditions in the workplace.

  

Disaster management

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The Covid-19 pandemic has continued to impact on the Group’s operation. As the factory requires most of the employees to be physically present to ensure manufacturing processes can be executed smoothly, we put great emphasis on the employees’ status of Covid-19 vaccination. The chart on the left shows the vaccination rate of the employees in the Group.

We have also put in place briefings, awareness notices, strict standard operating procedures and ongoing monitoring of SOP compliance to prevent Covid-19 infections in the workplace.




 

5S

 

The Group implements 5S as the foundation for preparing a conducive working environment for the employees. While instilling 5S into the culture, we notice that 5S has helped to enhance self-discipline and morale of employees, improve safety, productivity, quality and cost through Kaizen, on top of waste elimination and creation of more space. The Group practices periodic 5S audit, whereby our 5S auditors will share their findings at the end of the auditing processes, appraise good practices and highlight areas of improvement to the auditees.

 

 


Human Capital

 

The Group fosters an inclusive and diverse work environment as we emphasise on upholding the labour rights of the employees.


Employment Best Practices

1680153992_31.pngHuman capitals are fundamental to the Group’s core values of honesty, integrity and respect for people. Our approach is guided by the relevant laws in Malaysia, inclusive of the below non exhaustive list:

  • Employment Act 1955 (Act 265)
  • Industrial Relations Act 1967
  • Holidays Act 1951 (Act 369)
  • Children and Young Persons (Employment) Act 1966 (Act 350)
  • Employees’ Minimum Standards of Housing, Accommodations and Amenities Act 1990 (Act 446)
  • Employment (Termination and Lay-Off Benefits) Regulations 1980


The Group considers engagements with employees essential as they provide valuable insights on what matters the most to them. Multiple sources and touchpoints have been used, such as targeted engagement through focused groups and one-on-one interviews, to understand specific sustainability issues as well as topics of interest. Townhalls, department meetings, feedback platforms and employees’ events are some of the approaches taken.


General Workforce Statistics

The Group continues to invest and give the younger generation a chance to contribute to the success of our long-term growth. The inclusion of younger staff allows them to join us on the rapidly changing trends in innovation and technology as well as building future leaders.

In terms of age demographics, the Group’s mix of employees at different age groups has remained fairly constant over a number of years. The competition in the market has led to movements among the younger and potentially more mobile employees. Therefore, the proportion of younger employees among overall employee population has shrunk as compared to previous years. Nevertheless, the overall mix remains healthy.

 

  

In terms of gender balance, we do not set any targets, but continuously strive to achieve a balance of genders at departmental and group levels. Although there are more male employees at the Group level, we continue to make an effort to identify more female candidates, especially for technical positions, where female applicants tend to be fewer. This approach has yielded a gradual but steady growth in the female population in general despite engineering still being a male-dominated field. This is true both among our management specifically and among the employees’ population in general.


Employees by Gender
FY 2022FY 2021FY 2022
Male (All levels)
90%90%90%
Female (All levels)
10%10%10%
Male (Executive and above)
68%68%69%
Female (Executive and above)
32%32%31%


Learning and Development

The Group has conducted development analysis to understand the development needs of the employees. This allows the identification of knowledge and skill gaps within the organisation against external factors, such as industry and regulatory changes, employee expectations and the latest innovation and technological advancements.

The Group also places great emphasis on “On-the-Job” training (“OJT”) as we believe that the workforce will be able to gain more from first-hand technical experiences. With this, we have toffered more hours of OJT than classroom trainings. Employees are trained by internal subject matter experts or external trainers on the application of new methods and on the machinery and systems used in the Group’s operations. Soft skill trainings and team building activities are also arranged to build team spirit and ensure that the employees are aware of the latest leadership and management thinking, approaches to stress management, and people management.

Staff developments and trainings are central to the Group’s Human Resources policies. In view of the Covid-19 pandemic, employees underwent trainings specifically on Covid-19 Standard Operating Procedures as well as Do’s and Don’t’s. The practical approach to Self-test is also included.

We will continue to focus on people development as a continuous effort to raise the employees’ service and skill levels to ensure a steady supply of talent for now and the future. There has been a significant reduction in training hours and expenditures in FY 2021 and FY 2022 primarily due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the MCO in Malaysia, together with the enforced absence of physical classroom sessions and the slowdown in some of the Group’s businesses.

 

Community Engagement

 

The Group strives to create a positive influence and betterment of the community in the areas that we operate in. To this end, H2H club had been established as a vehicle to facilitate the integration of corporate social responsibility activities across the Group. To draw the goodness out of people, H2H club gathered and brought enthusiastic employees together in the spirit of volunteerism to help the less fortunate, both within and outside of the Group by carrying out the activities below.

 

December 2021 – Little things make a big difference

 

On 16 December 2021, a tropical depression made landfall on the eastern coast of Peninsular Malaysia, bringing torrential downpours throughout the peninsula for three days. Declared by the government officials as an “once in a century” disaster, many were affected by the flash flood including our employees staying in the affected areas of Selangor. To relieve the burden of employees negatively impacted by the flood, H2H club initiated a fund-raising activity which resulted in a total of RM33,000 accumulated to assist 44 affected employees.

  

  

May 2022 – Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri

 

Rumah Anak Yatim Gemilang, Sik Kedah, established since 1997, is an orphanage home which provides shelter to a total of 66 children from the poor and orphans. Members from H2H club made a visit to the orphanage home on 27th May 2022. During the visit, the members had an interactive get together session and cheerful lunch treat with the children. Apart from that, the H2H club sponsored bedsheets and groceries, which were the most required necessity. The visit was then wrapped up with duit raya given to each of the children to celebrate the Raya festival.  

 

 

June 2022 – “Give blood and keep the world beating”

 

World Blood Donor Day takes place on 14 June each year. In support of this, SSB organised a blood donation campaign on 16th June 2022, in collaboration with Penang General Hospital. The campaign attracted 160 participants with 135 successful donors. As a token of appreciation for their essential contribution, refreshment was prepared and each donor was also given 5kgs rice.

 

Besides the blood donation, SSB also coordinated with an in-house clinic, Qualitas, to be involved in this campaign by providing free health check to donors, which the response was positive.

  

  

The above activities were executed with strict preventive measures to avoid any potential exposure to the Covid-19 pandemic.