Union Assurance: Great Place to Work for 4th consecutive year!

Friday, 15 July 2016 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Untitled-3

General Manager (Human Resources) Suresh Muttiah, AGM (Learning and Development) J.M. Niyas and Manager (Talent Acquisition and Resources Planning) Princy Dassanayake receiving the award

Untitled-4

Members of the management and the HR team after receiving the award

The Great Places to Work (GPTW) Institute recognised Union Assurance PLC for the fourth year running – as a workplace that is conducive to growth and personal development at the award function held on 8 July at the Oak Room, Cinnamon Grand.

The most important ingredients of their success are attributed to the open culture, work environment, genuine concern for the staff in their personal development and transparent performance management systems. These are essential to creating the vital factors of trust, relationships and loyalty which are the cornerstones of achieving success. Managers are trained and portray themselves as role models. It is pivotal that employees enjoy the work they do and are appraised impartially, to create a healthy, progressive and transparent culture. These practices have enabled Union Assurance to foster it as a great place to work.

The company has created unique training programs for all categories of employment. These training modules are crafted to impart knowledge on leadership and management. Moreover, they have formed cross-functional Centre of Excellence (COE) project teams for Coaching, Digital and Product consisting of identified talent within the company who, in turn, contribute to professional solution development initiatives.

They recognise their human capital as a key differentiator, and considering the growing war for talent within the sector for technical competencies, significant investment is made to make appropriate recruitment decisions. Structured variable pay schemes, and a variety of reward and recognition schemes also enable the organisation to retain talent.

They adopt an open-door policy. Staff can walk into the offices of the CEO and management. The CEO has a monthly event titled ‘Coffee with CEO’, whereby he is able to interact with staff. Apart from this, a multitude of staff forums has enabled us to establish an open culture.

Their employee engagement strategy, too, aims to ensure that staff is happy in and outside of their work environment. Many initiatives have been adapted to create work life balance, wellness and other activities to build an engaged culture.

Union Assurance General Manager of Human Resources Suresh Muttiah stated, “People are at the heart of everything we do at UA and we want to foster an open, safe, inclusive and stimulating working environment. The changes we see in workforce demographics brings about a new set of challenges in aligning people practices, whilst keeping this in mind it is incumbent on the HR department to be strategic in its approach, drive change as a business imperative, be the voice and champions of people. Also great places to work are not built overnight, to become one you require people to trust the people they work for, build pride in what they do and appreciate the people they work with. This is a journey and in this you need to continuously learn and reinvent.”