LIFE AT WORK 2017 Awards: Best Lean Organisation IHS Markit Honoured for Women’s Initiatives

Due to social norms surrounding gender roles and businesses’ perception of the ‘ideal’ worker, women employees tend to experience more work-life conflict than their male counterparts. While many women successfully juggle work responsibilities and personal or family life, some are unable to perform their duties at optimum level and opt to leave the workforce due to the traditionally rigid work culture.

Today’s employers realise the value of providing a balanced work-life environment to retain valuable female talent. Employees of organisations with work-life practices (WLPs) and flexible work arrangements (FWAs) report increased job satisfaction, reduced job stress, a greater sense of job security and more control over their environment. These organisations also benefit from their employees’ increased well-being as they face fewer instances of staff tardiness, absenteeism and record lower turnover rates. This, in turn, has led to higher employee commitment, improved productivity and general improvement across the organisation.

One company which agrees with the importance of work-life balance and has introduced WLPs and FWAs for its employees is research and consultancy firm, IHS Markit Malaysia. IHS Markit Malaysia was recognised as the Best Lean Organisation at TalentCorp's LIFE AT WORK 2015 and 2017 Awards.

“IHS Markit has implemented WLPs and FWAs for more than five years now,” said Vimaleswari K. Ramasamy, Managing Director for IHS Markit’s Malaysian operations. “We provide our full-term employees with flexible work arrangements like Employee’s Choice of Day Off, Flexi-hours and Leaving Work Early.”

She added that the company endorses women working remotely as part of its maternity support policy that encourages female colleagues to return to work while allowing them to have quality time with their families. “One of the programmes, IHS Markit Career Comeback Programme – Icare, has helped position IHS Markit as one of the pioneers to help women professionals on career breaks transition back into the workforce,” she said.

“TalentCorp has supported our programme by providing resourcing and retention grants under its Career Comeback Programme.

"Our programme was introduced in September 2015 and ran successfully for two years, and helped onboard three women consultants who are part of the HR -Talent Acquisition team. The programme was further extended to support more departments within the company to enable more women to return to work with high-quality deliverables while maintaining operational excellence to support not just local operations but regional and global ones as well,” she added.

Vimaleswari observed that WLPs had contributed to the company’s positive branding and attracted the right talent for the right roles at IHS Markit. “It is crucial that our employees, including the ICare advocates, represent us as assets of the company and success stories of the programme,” she said. “The benefits of WLP are clear: female colleagues who are given the facility to spend quality time with their families will have a strong sense of belonging and be fully engaged in their work and continue to perform well.”

Vimaleswari noted that while bigger organisations may be better equipped to provide work-life support to their employees, smaller firms may find it more challenging to do so. She advised smaller organisations to do a holistic study of their business objectives to ensure that their work-life policies and practices will profit both company and employees in the long run. “Understanding corporate business drivers such as company goals, financial impact, operational effectiveness, workforce planning and return on investment for all initiatives is crucial to achieving successful WLPs and FWAs implementation,” she said.

On IHS Markit’s win at the LIFE AT WORK 2017 Awards, Vimaleswari commented,

“Being winners of LIFE AT WORK in 2017 has given us the impetus to continue driving initiatives to enhance employee engagement.

"Most importantly, this conveys the message that our people are our biggest assets at IHS Markit, and WLPs and FWAs are an important part of our employee engagement activities.”

“Collaboration with all relevant parties is important to ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of our WLPs and FWAs initiatives, which is crucial to build a healthy and productive workforce,” she concluded.

Introduced in 2013, LIFE AT WORK has been enhanced in 2018 to embrace the Future of Work which impacts the Diversity & Inclusion landscape of organisations in the area of:

WORK: Diversity and Inclusion, Learning & Development and Health Benefits

WORKPLACE: Benefits to employees, Flexible Work Arrangements, Employer/Family-Friendly Facilities and Work-life Benefits

WORKFORCE: Automation, Digitalisation, Gig economy, Usage of online mediums for Learning & Development, Usage of social media and digital channels

Award winners and participating organisations represent a network of LIFE AT WORK organisations and carry the LIFE AT WORK brandmark.

This year’s Awards is currently open for submission. To participate, visit www.lifeatwork.my.