Workforce of More Than 80,000 People
Data as of December 2023
Great Place to Work & Live: Decent Work & Living Environment
Decent Working and Living Environment
Everyone deserves the right to decent work and a home environment. SD Guthrie recognises that ensuring a decent working and living environment for all workers means providing equal and fair opportunities for employment; proper living arrangements and amenities; social protection; and also respecting workers' rights by empowering them with the right platform to dialogue.
We remain steadfast in our goal to create a productive labour force by delivering fair income within reasonable working conditions. For our operations located in challenging and developing areas, we provide appropriate and adequate living arrangements and access to basic needs. These are considered central to the well-being of our people.
Stories & Initiatives:
Our Current Global Workforce
Ensuring Favourable Working Conditions
SD Guthrie is committed to paying fair living wages to all our workers. In our global upstream operations, this means ensuring workers are paid at least the national minimum wage and provided with free in-kind benefits such as food, housing, transport, education facilities and medical access.
Typically, workers are paid monthly, daily or piece-rated in the oil palm industry. Piece-rated workers are paid based on their productivity. The productivity rates are guided by rules on the National Minimum Wage and the relevant Collective Bargaining Agreements of each country.
Work hours are also guided by the Collective Bargaining Agreements, the National Labour Laws and the International Labour Organisation's convention on hours of work.
Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC)
Due to our strict No Deforestation commitments, we have not developed any land in Indonesia and Malaysia for many years. Our only areas of expansion have been in PNG and SI, which are low carbon developments in line with the requirements from the RSPO New Planting Procedures and the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA). We actively engage with local community leaders and members before any land development to obtain FPIC from the communities. This approach ensures that communities impacted by our projects are well informed and that we have obtained permission from landowners who hold legal and customary rights. Our actions are informed by effective conflict resolution frameworks based upon social impact assessments and periodic stakeholder consultations carried out by independent third parties. All our operations conduct regular formal and informal engagements with all local stakeholders, especially at those locations where communities are most affected by our projects.
Freedom of Association
We respect our employees’ right to enter into collective bargaining agreements and form or join trade unions. Trade unions and collective bargaining agreements vary from country to country, depending on national laws, but generally cover all workers and staff – including executives and non-executives. In the absence of a formal workers’ union at certain localities, we encourage employees to form joint consultative councils and other similar platforms empowering workers to raise their concerns and safeguard their rights.
Workers' Housing
All our workers live within our compounds in furnished houses, in line with the Employees’ Minimum Standards of Housing, Accommodations & Amenities Act 1990 (Act 446) in Malaysia. However, we go above and beyond these requirements to ensure their well-being and comfort.
In Malaysia alone, SD Guthrie owns about 19,000 houses for workers, which are all maintained to specifications and guidelines provided under Malaysian law, including Act 446. Whilst houses vary in terms of size, a typical house for SD Guthrie workers would be a three-bedroom unit with a bathroom and a toilet as well as a kitchen, living area and dining area. Such a property would house no more than 5 workers, if they are single, or one family.
A mobile app, ‘Oil Palm Pal’ was introduced in 2021 as a digital housing complaints system. Workers can use the app to log their complaints in their native languages. These complaints are documented and resolutions are monitored. To support this, handymen as well as electricians and wiremen have been hired across all OUs to assist in the speedy resolution of repair and maintenance requirements.
Medical Surveillance / Risk Assessment
SIME (Spot, Intervene, Modify, Execute) Programme
We have always believed that safety is an important part of our culture. We introduced SIME, a programme designed specifically as a behavioural-based safety awareness assessment that promotes a positive intervention culture to ingrain this behaviour.
Employees are given SIME cards to identify and mark unsafe acts or conditions, step in where necessary to improve or correct the situation, eliminate or reduce the chance of an unsatisfactory act occurring and ultimately ensure that the act or condition does not re-occur. We recognise the efforts of those who implement safe working conditions.
