2020 was a difficult year for many, and even more so for groups that were disadvantaged to begin with. But even among the news of layoffs, furloughs, and salary cuts, businesses around the world have been quietly stepping up to provide support. While not all are as high profile as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's US$1 billion pledge—and certainly few businesses can match that—small commitments to continue with existing philanthropic efforts will have made a difference to many.

One way of supporting disadvantaged groups this year has been, simply, to continue hiring and training them so that they do not lose a stable source of income in a very rocky job market. Hiring and employment is more intensive than simple financial support, but according to companies that pursue this route, it is far more beneficial to the people involved.

“It’s about dignity,” says Adriana Lim Escano, founder and CEO of fashion brand Abry, which employs underprivileged women. “I also believe being outside their circumstance helps them appreciate and be inspired by what life has to offer, while having supportive relationships with colleagues—all that adds to value and dignity.”

Agreeing, Andrew Lim, the co-founder of healthy snacks startup BoxGreen, which has an open hiring policy and employs and trains ex-offenders to help them reintegrate into society, says:

“Gainful employment can build up a person's spirit, provide a purpose and direction in one's life, and also instils a sense of dignity.”

The hiring and employment approach also helps underprivileged people build their skills and experience, creating a springboard that they could some day use to move on to a better future, according to Janelle Soh from F&B group Popejai, which specifically hires from disadvantaged groups. “Many of our beneficiaries lack working experience and struggle with finding a job,” she says. “But despite their inexperience, we believe they have the potential to be independent and effective workers in the workplace.”

People Matters asked these enterprises, which were recently awarded by Company of Good, an arm of the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Center of Singapore, how their approach works and where they are planning to take it. Here's what they shared.

Flexible work for those who can't meet 9-6 requirements

Many underprivileged women never manage to enter the workforce or earn a stable income. For some, caregiving obligations or health issues prevent them from meeting typical 9-6 working hours; others face discrimination or stigma that cuts them off from opportunities. But well before COVID-19 made remote work a global trend, Abry CEO Lim Escano was using flexible working arrangements to find a way for such women to work, learn on the job, reskill, and build a path for themselves in the workforce.

“We pay them at market rate, and they are required to produce what other non-beneficiary employees are producing, so they are not treated as a disadvantaged group,” she says of her approach to empowering her staff.

“We want to help them achieve what the rest of their colleagues can.”

Onboarding these staff does come with its own challenges, as some of them may come with existing mindsets or behavior patterns from their background, or have family circumstances that affect their ability to work. Hence, Lim Escano and her team developed a coaching method specifically for them, one successful enough that they are now considering developing it as a standalone training service in 2021—although, she adds, the COVID-19 crisis has shown them that they will first need to tweak it to include more in-depth skills and capability development.

Making the whole working environment inclusive

Inclusiveness is frequently thought of as a matter of organizational culture, but for special needs or physically disabled employees, inclusiveness also extends to whether their physical working environment allows them to carry out basic tasks. This led to the team at Popejai redesigning equipment, workspaces, and even entire outlets to accommodate the needs of their staff—90 percent of the F&B group's workforce comes from disadvantaged groups, including those who are physically challenged by the standard working environment and tasks.

“For example, our special needs employees struggle to cut the vegetables at a consistent length as they are unable to estimate the desired size of the vegetables,” says Soh, who is an assistant marketing manager with the F&B group. “To assist them to be effective workers, we have designed customized chopping boards with templates that serve as a guide for our employees when they are cutting vegetables to achieve the desired standard.”

“Likewise, our cashier uses a wheelchair. One of our solutions involves redesigning the cashier table to be of a lower height so that it is easier for the cashier to access the cash register and service the customers.” Even the restaurant's table layout, she adds, has been adjusted to provide more space for the wheelchair's movement—something that customers who also use wheelchairs probably appreciate.

Ignoring stigma to ease people back into employment

If asked directly, many companies would probably say they are willing to hire ex-offenders—but the percentage that actually do so will be far lower, and even more so at a time when hiring plans are either frozen or delayed.

“Ex-offenders often have difficulty finding employment once they get back into society,” says BoxGreen co-founder Lim. And certainly, while the stigma is very slowly decreasing—statistics from the Singapore Corporation of Rehabilitative Enterprises, a statutory board overseeing the reintegration of offenders into society, show that the number of employers willing to hire them is creeping up annually—it is still difficult to translate acceptance into an actual job for them. In fact, the Ministry of Manpower is actually introducing significant wage subsidies for companies that hire ex-offenders in a bid to improve their chances of employment.

“We believe everyone should have a second chance and an opportunity to contribute to the wider community,” Lim explains his team's own decision to take on ex-offenders. “Giving back to society has always been one of our biggest motivational drivers. We worked with ex-offenders with the same sense of enthusiasm, which in many ways pushed us past whatever challenges we faced.”

BoxGreen actually operates a packing facility within Changi Prison, providing employment and training to a team of inmates who will hopefully be able to use their work as a springboard for returning to society on their release.

Hiring and employment: a way to do good as part of the business

Not all companies will be able to implement social hiring policies, of course. But if 2020 has taught us all one thing, it's the value of being flexible and inclusive for the sake of the workforce. We have learned to work remotely and to tolerate the incursion of family into work life; we have learned to show empathy and leeway for the difficulties faced by others.

Perhaps, moving forward, that flexibility and inclusivity—with the tools, policies and processes, and changes in organizational culture that have come about to support it—can be extended to employing underprivileged people and showing them the same amount of empathy in the workplace.