SCAO Group’s D&I marks new milestone with 2nd committee

SCAO Group’s Diversity & Inclusion marks new milestone with 2nd committee

Our first D&I Committee has retired and passed the baton to the second committee in October 2021. Our sincere appreciation to the first committee for their hard work and now, let’s welcome the new committee!

Message from New D&I Chairperson

My name is Aaron, and I have been with SCAO for almost 9 years, working then in Tubular Products Dept and right now having assignments in the newly set up Energy Innovation Initiative Dept and Strategic Alliance Business Development Office (SABDO).

My view on Diversity & Inclusion:

I came from the second generation of Chinese immigrant in Myanmar and have been learning to deal with my minority background and culture since birth. I do not speak Myanmar well enough as a local or speak fluent Mandarin as a Chinese. Then I came to Singapore from Myanmar, for almost 12 years, I represented diversity wherever I go and I adapted to be included. Diversity, hence, to me is an identity. Only when I learn to appreciate it, it becomes my strength.

I cannot reach where I am without a good supporting environment, i.e. an inclusive system. I am lucky that both Singapore and Sumitomo enable me to be who I am and value what I am able to do regardless of my background. It may not be the case for any country or company.

I have positive experiences by embracing my diversity and the benefits of a good inclusive system.

Our Committee & Mandate

I am honoured and empowered to be appointed as Chairperson for the second Diversity & Inclusion Committee for SCAO region. Our committee mandates to promote inclusive behaviours among colleagues, improve job performance and achieve organisational success.

Thanks Horizon team for featuring our committee, team members and our work for all SCAO staff in the region. We thank your kind participation in our committee’s Programme and seek your continuous cooperation and feedback for our future events not just in Singapore, but in all offices around the region.

Our Committee Members (Singapore)

1st Engagement by new committee – SCAO D&I Town Hall Meeting

The second D&I Town Hall meeting was held on 8 April virtually. Our objective was to engage management members and all staff through an interactive communication session where we got to understand more about what we could do better to improve the D&I culture in SCAO.

Starting with an opening message from our Singapore Chief Operating Officer, Mr Kozo To, our D&I Advisor Mr Masato Nishimura, and D&I Committee Chairperson (myself), we featured some of our staff’s opinions of D&I in Hot Take session. We invited three colleagues with different profiles – a newest SCAO staff, a non-Japanese expatriate and a Japanese non-rotational staff and had exchanges of views.

The next major segment was our panel discussion comprising members with different background and capacity.

We had conducted a questionnaire in advance to the Town Hall meeting to understand the current situation of D&I in SCAO. The answers were used in the panel discussion and turned it to valuable information to know the status of D&I, also to think what we could do for ‘Inclusion’ listening to the panelists comments.

We received interesting questions from participants pushed from “Slido” (a popular interaction app), on their thoughts about D&I. Currently, we are working hard to answer some questions that were left unanswered through our up-coming D&I newsletter. We believe each staff were able to rethink what they could do and would take action to promote D&I in SCAO as takeaway from this Town Hall meeting.

D&I is a heavy subject, thus our committee came up with a fun approach via online bingo game to engage our colleagues throughout the virtual event. We had fun hosting, and we were encouraged to have the attendance of more than 90% of staff staying more than 1.5 hours out of the 2 hours session.

What is happening in the Region?

The recent inclusion KPI/KAIs exercise suggested that almost half of the inclusion issues arise from lack of engagement and understanding between managers and staff. In order to encourage interactions, our offices are initiating gathering, and casual events. I am happy to share some of the great work which my Regional D&I colleagues are doing here with our readers.