Top Asian employers highlight strong female workforce representation

Diversity strong among HRD Asia's Employers of Choice

BY Dexter Tilo 19 Jun 2024

Strong female representation in the workforce is the common denominator among this year's Best Companies to Work for in Asia, which was unveiled last week.

Among HRD's Employers of Choice is Lebanon-based Malia Group, which has achieved a 56% female representation among its executive-level employees.

This includes their CEO, Joanne Chebab, who has been leading the organisation since January 2016.

The vast female executive representation comes despite women still being "vastly underrepresented" in the CEO role, according to the recent data from the Russell Reynolds Associates.

Michel Mchantaf, head of human resources at Malia Group, shared that their success is due to their HR team's strong emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

"We work with competency-based interviewing and don't discriminate between genders," Mchantaf told HRD. "We also remunerate based on performance and competencies."

In the firm's Lebanon operations, there is also almost a 50:50 ratio between genders in most roles.

Mchantaf shared that among their strategies is encouraging women to apply for roles and adopting inclusive communication.

"We were among the first companies in Lebanon that assigned female employees to warehouse supervisor positions because the stereotype is you will be dealing with a man," he said. "All our group communications are gender neutral and also our career pages."

Female representation at work

Another Employer of Choice, SEEK, has also achieved a 55% female representation in its workforce. Among its strategies to ensure diversity include:

Third-party gender-neutralising technology to help reduce gender bias in job advertising
Gender balance on candidate long and short lists, where possible, ensuring female representation on interview panels
Targeted education such as "Overcoming Bias in Hiring" workshops for the hiring team
A requirement for recruitment agencies when used to provide A gender-balanced short list of candidates, where possible, before proceeding with interviews

Philippine-based organisations, Aboitiz Land and Ayala Land Premier, also have a huge number of women making their workforce, with 56% and 59%, respectively

Rob Guevarra, manager for talent management and organisational development at Aboitiz Land, said they also try to use diversity as a "foundation in terms of giving a positive work experience to our team members."

Find out more about this year's Employers of Choice here.