Advancing Gender Equality at Work and Empowering Women in the Communities

Woman forklift driver at APRIL

This International Women’s Day, we celebrate APRIL’s progress in promoting gender equality in the workplace and reaffirm our commitment to creating an equitable environment for all. Since November 2020, APRIL has taken positive strides in promoting gender equality in the workplace as we work to achieve our APRIL2030 Inclusive Progress targets.

As a signatory of the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) since November 2021, we are working to become more aligned with global standards of advancing equal opportunities and participation for women at work. In January 2022, we also published our standalone Human Rights Policy, publicly committing the organization to promote equal opportunity and diversity in the workplace, including equal opportunity and participation for women, and seek to eliminate all forms of discrimination and harassment.”

Recognizing the challenge of advancing women leadership and women inclusion in our workforce, especially in our industry sector, we set a target for 1 in 5 by 2030. Two years into the journey we are proud to share that we managed to quadruple the number of new women recruited and increased 3% of the proportion of women in the workforce.

Last year was also a turning point for us in our journey as we have included a diversity target for each business unit. We are now seeing more women placed in male-dominated jobs; for example, our power department team has doubled the proportion of women.

Additionally, we are working to increase the number of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)-related roles such as technical operations and mechanical engineering. We have mapped out positions that can be filled by women across our operations and have this as a key focus area in our new hiring processes.

We recognise that our operations in Pangkalan Kerinci, Riau, can continue to improve to provide a safe and supporting environment for women if we advance gender equality. To ensure this, we have provided facilities for other needs such as lactation rooms in our buildings for new mothers which mothers can use anytime. We have created special seats for expecting mothers in our employee transport to further improve safety measures. Besides that, we also provides various benefits to support our female employees in Pangkalan Kerinci, including 24-hour healthcare services, mental health services, and day care facilities.

APRIL is continuously exploring alternative ways to ensure that roles within our company are equally accessible to both men and women. We are working to ensure that physically demanding jobs, which have traditionally been male dominated, can be open to all through the application of technology, innovation and automation. Our aim is to offer men and women an equal opportunity to manage our operations as a way to increase the number of women in our workforce.

Providing supplemental food counselling to expectant mother

Our work doesn’t finish there. We recognise the vital role we can play in creating opportunities for women in our neighbouring communities. Initiatives such as delivering nutritious supplementary food packages for expectant mothers and women empowerment supports through our community development programmes. Last year, we supported more than 70 women business owners that provided jobs to more than 1000 people. Our partnership with Krealogi also helped 30 local MSMEs, of which 80% are women-led, to increase their monthly incomes by up to 40% by improving their digital literacy.

Our community development program has also made a transformation in breaking the bias. Starting in 2022, we have trained local women as operators for heavy equipment and mechanics, which APRIL then absorbs 100% of them. Through these and other initiatives, we are proud to contribute to building a stronger and more sustainable community for all.

As we advance to 2030, we will continue working with all our employees to create a more inclusive and equitable workplace and the wider community.

Happy International Women’s Day!
#EmbraceEquity