Our employees are essential to ICTSI’s success as a leading port developer, manager and operator, and the way we treat our employees is fundamental to the way we want to do business. This begins with ensuring respect for internationally recognized human rights and labor standards in all our workplaces. We are committed to investing in people to help them fulfill their ambitions, and to recruiting talent by offering rewarding and exciting career opportunities.
Context and commitments
Within the long-term context of helping to drive sustainable development in the nations where we operate, we continue to facilitate trade and deliver economic benefits through direct and indirect employment.
With our portfolio expansion unhindered by the COVID-19 pandemic, we continued to hire locally in our new sites, even as we maintained our multiple schemes to safeguard our current workers’ welfare. We continue to place a premium on the latter, particularly as pandemic-related threats keep emerging.
Groundwork
With disease prevention and mitigation efforts in place since the pandemic broke out in 2020, we stepped up our initiatives through sound science-based interventions, primary among which are vaccination against COVID-19 and continuous testing.
Simultaneously, other aspects of employee rights and welfare – including learning and development, talent management and retention, and workplace diversity and equality – comprised our business-as-usual initiatives for a higher capacity and more agile workforce.
Gains
By the end of 2021, we had inoculated more than 90% of our employees – a major stride towards achieving our goal of protecting our organization and contributing to the herd immunity targets of the nations where we operate.
We also posted encouraging gains elsewhere. In gender equality targets, we further expanded the ranks of our women port workers in our Americas markets, with CMSA welcoming its first female terminal tractor operator. Similarly, in Australia, VICT’s Berth and Vessel Manager was a runner-up at the Women in Shipping & Maritime Logistics Awards, in recognition of her key role in safely servicing the largest box ship to call at the Port of Melbourne.
Moving Forward
Employee engagement and freedom of association are critical aspects of employee development and a current focus for our management team. With the global pandemic nowhere near resolution, it is also vital that we incorporate COVID-19 measures into the “new normal” of our business operations.
KPIs
As a global employer, we act in accordance with international frameworks and conventions from the UN, OECD and ILO, as well as in compliance with local legislation where we operate. We are proud of our employment initiatives, which range from our COVID-19 vaccination program for employees and their families to learning and development programs and the promotion of diversity across our ports. We have a long-term strategy for nurturing our employees to optimize their full performance and full potential and recognize the undiminished dedication of our employees as they carry out their significant roles not only within the business but for the benefit of their own country’s economic growth and national development. This sense of value – how we regard, protect and develop our employees – has led to high levels of retention within our team.
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