April 21, 2022
Gojek employees, known as GoTroops, at Gojek Headquarters (Courtesy of Gojek)
GoTo Group, Indonesia’s Largest Technology Group, Named One of the Top Employers in Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong Region by Glints, Receiving Glints Best Employer Awards 2022 in the Diversity and Inclusion category.
The annual Glints Best Employers Award recognizes and celebrates 10 companies from Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan for their outstanding achievements in building and managing their workforces, especially now globally post-pandemic.
With the theme “Beyond Boundaries”, the Glints Best Employers 2022 award includes five award categories; Diversity and inclusion 2.0, talent transformation, thriving workforce, tech talent magnet and smart teams.
GoTo, which oversees Gojek, Tokopedia and GoTo Financial, is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. The group wants each employee, whatever their background, to feel welcome and appreciated, and not hesitate to show their best personality on a daily basis.
In a statement, GoTo noted that through creating a diverse, egalitarian and inclusive culture, businesses can become more innovative, productive, resilient and responsible.
For GoTo, ensuring diversity and inclusion requires a comprehensive and thorough process, engendering various policies and programs to ensure that all employees know they are valued, engaged and supported. This policy is consistent with GoTo’s diverse business ecosystem, which includes on-demand transportation, e-commerce, food and grocery delivery, logistics, and financial services.
According to Tanah Sullivan, Head of Sustainability at GoTo, the group needed to understand what diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) meant to them as it differed from country to country – employees in Vietnam, in Indonesia, India and Singapore would see DEI differently from each other. .
“It was still a somewhat new topic in this region, so we couldn’t just copy and paste from a market where DEI meant something very different than here,” she said.
Tanah said GoTo pooled all employee input from its markets to help the group form a holistic vision for DEI, after which it set up a DEI council to develop and manage DEI policies, with employee representatives. different functions at different levels within the board.
After establishing the council, GoTo held monthly virtual meetings with employees to seek feedback and set up employee resource groups (ERGs) to allow them to collectively make policy recommendations and request additional resources if needed. .
This infrastructure provides all employees with access to the same pool of resources within GoTo, enabling them to champion and drive change within the organization and giving them a level of autonomy not found often in other companies.
Giovanni Sakti, senior director of engineering at GoTo Financial, said the company’s DEI initiatives have helped him keep an open mind when hiring engineers. Instead of focusing on specific schools or degrees when screening applicants, he continued, the company recruits anyone who passes its employment tests.
“Graduates from vocational schools have passed our tests and entered our ranks,” he explained.
Gojek’s workforce development program integrates DEI into recruitment and talent management, as well as conducting DEI training programs to educate against unconscious bias and promote inclusion.
The company has also formed voluntary employee-led ERGs that facilitate interpersonal relationships between colleagues, while the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provides preventative assistance and support to employees in their personal and professional challenges.
Gojek’s product manager, Aakanksha Vijayvargiya, said she has benefited from being a member of the Women@Gojek ERG, which is an “integral part” of her professional life.
“This not only facilitates employee retention and helps attract new talent, but also builds employee trust and engagement,” she said.
Tokopedia employees at Tokopedia Tower, Jakarta (Courtesy of Tokopedia)
At the same time, Tokopedia has implemented a number of policies and programs to support employees, parents, expectant and new mothers, and employees with disabilities.
The company offers pregnant mothers 90 days of paid maternity leave that they can use before and after childbirth, and also considers those who have had a miscarriage by offering them 45 days of paid miscarriage leave.
Tokopedia’s NakaParents ecosystem offers parents online counseling, webinars, virtual appointments and home child vaccinations, while the NakaDifabel program focuses on employment opportunities for applicants with disabilities.
Tokopedia’s customer experience manager, Karunia Khairunnisa, said the NakaParents ecosystem is a “fantastic privilege” as it makes her feel “supported and appreciated”, allowing her to properly balance her role in the business. and as a working mother.
