JOB CREATION AND EMPLOYMENT
With the stable global and local COVID-19 situation, the world entered a new endemic norm in 2023. While life has largely returned to pre-pandemic normal, the impact of remote work on how our workforce communicates, connects and delivers, continues to evolve. New opportunities for digital transformation and collaborative methods need to be adopted to sharpen our competitive advantage of driving engagement and achieving organisational agility.
Through a three-pronged approach of developing, engaging and caring for employees, CDL Group is committed to driving productivity, employee satisfaction and talent retention for organisational excellence. In 2023, the Company received silver awards for Employee Experience and Well-being as well as for Workplace Culture and Engagement by the Singapore Human Resource Institute.
The Group’s recruitment process adheres to strict guidelines on non-discrimination and fairness, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion or age. Besides providing jobs and caring for our direct employees through comprehensive benefits schemes, we also invest significantly in training to upskill our employees to ensure they are future-ready.
The scope for this section on human capital and development covers the CDL Group, including our wholly-owned subsidiaries, unless otherwise specified.
Job Creation and Employment
The Group adheres to the guidelines on job creation and employment in the countries we operate in. In Singapore, we follow the Tripartite Guidelines on Managing Excess Manpower issued by the MOM and its tripartite partners, Singapore National Employers Federation and the National Trades Union Congress. We support and share a similar philosophy as the Tripartite Guidelines, which strongly encourages companies to manage excess manpower and consider reorganisation as a last resort. The Guidelines also suggest providing company retraining programmes for workers, redeployment of workers to alternative areas of work, implementing shorter work weeks, temporary layoffs, flexible work arrangements and managing wage costs through a flexible wage system.
At the Company and CBM Pte Ltd, there have been no major reorganisations which resulted in the loss of jobs in the past five years. Despite the continued business challenges due to COVID-19, the Company is proud to have not undertaken any major reorganisation or retrenchment exercise since the pandemic, hence preserving the livelihoods of our workforce. In the event of termination or employee resignation, minimum notice periods are required to be fulfilled, depending on the employee’s job grade:
| Company | Notice Period |
| CDL Corporate Office | A minimum notice period of one to three months needs to be fulfilled, depending on the employee’s job grade. Due to operational requirements, middle and senior management are required to provide a notice period of two and three months respectively |
| M&C | Majority of employees’ notice periods are one month. For Assistant Directors to Senior Vice President and above, two to three months’ notice period needs to be fulfilled. For M&C New Zealand, middle and senior management are required to provide a notice period of one and three months respectively |
| CBM Pte Ltd | For field and office employees (below executive level), a minimum notice period of one week to one month needs to be fulfilled. For office employees (executive level and above), a minimum notice period of two months needs to be fulfilled |
Our Employees
As at 31 December 2023, CDL Group hired a total of 8,083 employees for our operations across the Group. Close to 6% of our employees were hired on a temporary basis. In 2023, the Group had 289 employees with non-guaranteed hours.
