ST Engineering’s Chairman Kwa Chong Seng today presented President Halimah Yacob with a cheque of $398,000 for President’s Challenge 2021 at ST Engineering Hub. The amount was raised through its employee physical wellness initiative – ST Engineering Movement – whereby the Group pledged a dollar for every kilometre clocked by employees who took up the workout challenge to walk, run or cycle over a four-week period from July to August this year.

ST Engineering Movement: Keep fit and do good

ST Engineering Movement was launched to encourage employee physical, mental and social wellness through regular exercise. It also served to increase team bonding, albeit virtually, when physical connections were limited due to safe distancing measures, by rallying employees towards a single goal outside of work to raise funds for charity.

Over 3,300 ST Engineering employees took up the challenge and achieved 367,476 km collectively, the equivalent of circling the earth nine times. As a result, the Group donated $398,000, which includes $80,000 contributed by employees, to President’s Challenge 2021. Another $50,000 was donated to the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) in support of its Student Relief Fund @ SIT (COVID-19).

Group President & CEO Vincent Chong said, “A healthier workforce is a happier workforce. ST Engineering Movement gave us an opportunity to galvanise fitness momentum among employees in Singapore, and make health a priority. This shared experience outside of work sparked spontaneous interactions across the Group, drawing employees closer as we motivated one another to move more together. As a result, we were also able to raise more funds to help the vulnerable.”

ST Engineering has been supporting President’s Challenge since 2000, and has contributed more than $8 million to date to lift communities and empower lives.

Launch of Women Support Group; helmed by Women@ST Engineering

ST Engineering also launched the Women Support Group which is aimed at promoting the social, emotional and mental resilience of its female employees. The launch was made more meaningful with President Halimah Yacob as witness, given her unwavering support for women in the workplace, as well as the fact that the Ministry of Social and Family Development has dedicated 2021 as the Year of Celebrating SG Women. The Women Support Group is an initiative of the Group’s women committee, Women@ST Engineering.

President Halimah Yacob said, “From Women@ST Engineering to the Women Support Group, ST Engineering’s commitment to advance women’s roles at the workplace is commendable. Engineering has been a predominantly male profession, so the effort of ST Engineering to cultivate and nurture the next generation of women leaders is an important signal. With higher visibility of female role models and proliferation of their success stories, more young girls and women would aspire to be at the frontiers of engineering, science and technology. These fields, when enriched by diversity of thought and perspectives, can seed greater innovation. I am also delighted that ST Engineering is championing a healthy lifestyle through its ST Engineering Movement initiative and concurrently advocates for charity and President’s Challenge. It is a win-win approach for employees and communities.”

20% of ST Engineering’s 15,000-strong workforce in Singapore is female. To better engage its female workforce, it has introduced its first three support groups – Professional Enrichment, Health & Wellness, and Family Caregiving Support Groups. These support groups will provide women with a platform to connect, tap on professional network of advisors to share and address problems or issues, receive a broader range of perspectives, promote networking and connection as well as share coping skills and strategies towards self-growth and realisation. It will progressively roll out new support areas to address women employee needs across different phases of their careers and life stages. These support groups will be led by women employee-leaders, who will receive formal training from professional coaches on skills such as facilitation and coaching.

The Women Support Group is one of several initiatives by Women@ST Engineering. Other initiatives include:

• Leadership workshops on change management, team leadership, career planning, influencing and executive leadership.
• MentorConnect programme, a cross-company mentorship programme that provides mentoring, leadership and networking opportunities to its participants. To date, four female mentors and 24 female mentees have participated in this programme with other companies.
• Leadership and Networking Events:
• Finding the Blue Whale in Us had industry leaders sharing about how to build confidence for women to discover their unique presentation styles and acquire public speaking skills for impactful delivery
• International Women’s Day 2021 Leadership and Panel Discussion had speakers highlighting how to create an inclusive world and make a real difference by choosing to challenge for positive change
• Succeed in Both Worlds with Minister of State, Sun Xueling had panellists exchanging insights on how they had navigated work and home challenges to set stretched goals for success.

From left: ST Engineering Group President and CEO Vincent Chong with President Halimah Yacob and Chairman Kwa Chong Seng

Stephanie Hung – Chairperson of Women@ST Engineering

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