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Success Stories
Cargill

About Cargill Group of Companies

Cargill is an international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services. Founded in 1865, the privately held company employs 160,000 people in 67 countries. Singapore is Cargill’s Asia-Pacific headquarters, and the office currently has about 500 employees. Cargill Singapore is proud to have won the Singapore Ministry of Manpower’s Work-Life Excellence Award 2008. Cargill believes that engaged employees are the starting point for its success: They create partnerships with key stakeholders, develop the knowledge and leadership to anticipate needs and, when combined with a passion to innovate, deliver results for customers and Cargill. Thus, the company places top priority on building trust between employees and the organisation, and fostering a culture of openness and participation.

Cargill invites its employees to give input into the design of its work-life policies. As a result, programmes receive greater acceptance as employees themselves generate the ideas. This also contributes to lowering turnover rate and absenteeism, and even the number of employees claiming medical leave has declined. In regularly conducted Employee Engagement Surveys, Cargill’s employees express increased satisfaction with the quality of work-life in the company.

 

Employee Support Schemes

Health Benefits. Health-screening benefits are available to all employees and an annual screening is part of the core benefits. Cargill also appointed the St. Gregory Fitness Centre as its corporate fitness provider. Furthermore Cargill participates regularly in the annual JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge. As an incentive, the company pays the participation fees and provides T-shirts for its runners. At the 2008 event over 40 Cargill employees took part. Senior management leads by example for the two health schemes. They frequent St. Gregory Fitness Centre during lunch breaks and after hours and take part in the Corporate Challenge. This has encouraged many of the employees to participate as well.

Family Benefits. Employees can claim up to S$3,000 in maternity benefits to subsidise their delivery or post-natal expenses. This initiative was introduced in line with the Nation’s promotion of marriage and procreation. Every year, Cargill also hosts a Family Day event outside Singapore and pays the accommodation and transport expenses for its employees and their families. Past events have taken place at the Holiday Inn in Batam, and Pulai Springs in Johor Bahru, among others.

Community Programmes. Volunteerism is an integral part of Cargill’s corporate culture, and is coordinated through employee-led Cargill Cares Councils. In Singapore, up to 60 employees at a time participate in a range of meaningful initiatives including care for the elderly, helping to build schools and teaching kids as well as fund raising. The Cargill management fully supports these initiatives, and employees are allowed time off from work to take part in such activities. Active volunteers are recognised through the annual Volunteer of the Year award.

“Ensuring work-life balance for employees is an important goal for Cargill. We think it makes good business sense to enable employees to fully participate in both their work and family life. We promote a healthy life style and family-oriented activities, and extend the benefits we provide to family members as a platform for employee engagement. We actively support our employees to bring their families and loved ones to company sponsored events such as our yearly Family Day.
Bram Klaeijsen, Regional Director, Cargill Asia-Pacific

 

To find out more about Cargill, please visit: http://www.cargill.com/worldwide/singapore.htm