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| Labour practices and human rights |
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Employment
The group actively engages in workforce planning to align with its strategic objectives. Implementing these plans have, at times, been difficult in Sri Lanka due to the stringent labour law regime of the country, with which we fully comply, despite the obvious drawbacks in terms of competitiveness. The group's constant vigil in ensuring that the group has a workforce that lends to its strategic objectives continues to add value. In this regard, the company has moved from traditional “lifelong” employment to fixed term contracts, in certain businesses, in line with the industry requirements and norms.
Employee relations
Collective bargaining, formal and informal, is prevalent in the group and has worked well for all its stakeholders. We see a trend in formal institutionalised collective bargaining with the intervention of recognised trade unions, being replaced with oneonone bargaining, such as between the employer and groups of employees. We believe that as the trust, transparency and effective communication in the company increases, this would be the norm, rather than the exception.
All business units have direct access to HR personnel. There is continuous dialogue, facilitated by HR personnel where appropriate, regarding workrelated matters, including productivity improvements, health and safety maintenance, training and education relating to workrelated issues as well as pertaining to matters of general interest that could affect employees and their families.
There are many people management policies and practices that contribute to building employee engagement. These effective "Employee Engagement" initiatives enable the creation of organisatonal citizenship and commitment which in return ensures the success of employee relations.
Learning and development
The function of Learning and Development (L&D) is to partner with the organisation towards achieving our vision of “Building businesses that are leaders in the region” by developing a pipeline of leaders at all levels and building the required competence in employees, so that they can perform their roles adequately to meet business challenges.
Our competency framework captures the knowledge, skills and attitudes that have enabled our organisation to consistently grow and develop in the past, and would also be essential for survival and growth in the future. Therefore, the competency framework forms the basis of all our HR initiatives, including L&D, as human
resource competencies will be the only nonreplicable sustainable competitive advantage we have in today's world, where all other enablers could be replicated by others over a period of time.
To keep pace with the change in the business environment, L&D has become a continuous process. In addition to training away from work, training on the job and job rotation form part of the learning processes. Business results are impacted by the action people take. L&D supports this by building people's adaptive capacity for effective action to achieve the desired results.
A few noteworthy events that showcase the group's commitment in this area have been highlighted below.
Retail academy
During the year, the Retail sector (of the CF&R industry group) formalised their ongoing training initiatives for employees with the establishment of a Retail Academy at Moratuwa. The academy is accredited by NAITA for NVQ training and by the City & Guilds Institute of UK as an approved training institution. Over 11,000 mandays of training to nonexecutive staff and 2,600 mandays of training to the executive staff were provided.
Leisure group employees bag numerous awards
In the Leisure industry group, consequent to the branding of properties, the focus has been on continuous improvement in the standards of services to deliver the brand promise. Members of our hotel staff have won numerous awards in competitions organised by the hotel industry in Sri Lanka, validating the effectiveness of our training efforts. Hotels in the group produced the winner and runnerup of the Marie Brizard bartender competition organised by the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management held in July 2007. At the Chefs' Guild competition in 2007, our resort hotel chefs bagged a total of 24 medals, including two gold and five silver. The Cinnamon Lodge produced the winner the of E&J Gallo wine appreciation competition held in February 2008.
Non-binding workstudy scholarship programme
The John Keells Computer Services (JKCS) workstudy scholarship is an award of access to a private institution offering IT degrees granted to individual scholars, both in terms of financial aid towards furthering their education as well as the chance to gain valuable work experience in the field of software development. There are many exceptionally competent students deserving of the opportunity who cannot afford a degree, and are enthusiastic recipients of workstudy scholarships. This in turn would be a good investment for JKCS.
JKCS initially awarded workstudy scholarships in December 2007. The programme is run with the participation of the Imperial Institute of Higher Education and in association with the University of Wales, in which required modules within the curriculum are specified by an MOU between JKCS and the institution. This four year workstudy degree programme requires 32 hours of work per week. Workstudy students recognise the challenge of balancing study time with work, as their demanding schedule requires a fine balance of time and energy, learning and work obligation.
This initiative is aimed at addressing the known gap between the supply and demand of IT graduates in Sri Lanka. It results in an output of quality graduates who are immediately employable, having acquired four years of relevant work experience. The programme is a winwin proposition for all stakeholders: the student, the university, the government, the local IT industry and JKCS.
Diversity and equal opportunity
We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on any indicators of diversity. The performance oriented culture where promotions and remuneration are based on merit alone supports this. Further, the group values, which are integrated into every aspect of the group's processes and systems that touches employees and the whistleblowing mechanism that is in place for transgression of JKH values, policies and grievance handling mechanisms that are in place to ensure that the opportunity to discriminate is minimised. The group has an antisexual harassment committee which is chaired by an executive member of the board, demonstrating the group’s commitment to preserving the dignity of work for all employees. Our commitment to diversity has been further strengthened by the fact that the Employers’ Network on Disability of the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon, is also chaired by an executive memeber of the JKH board.
Human rights
We subscribe to the UN Global Compact. The principles articulated therein are but an extension of our value system. We do not discriminate and actively promote nondiscrimination. We do not engage child labour, in forced or compulsory labour. Overtime work is based on the needs of the market. Due importance is given on ensuring a worklife balance.
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