For the past years, Chang Shin Co., Ltd. has always paid due attention to improving the spiritual and material life of its workers and the construction of corporate social culture (CSR). The company always considers its employees the most valued asset and has an ongoing programme called "Investment in People". Chang Shin Co., Ltd also has instituted several programmes on environment protection. To have a comprehensive look at the path to become a leading footwear manufacturing company Vietnam, the Vietnam Business Forum had an interview with General Director Park Choon Taek. Quynh Ngoc reports.
Could you please tell us about the business activities of Chang Shin Vietnam Co., Ltd. along with its achievements so far?
Chang Shin Vietnam Co., Ltd. is a footwear manufacturing company located in Thanh Phu, Vinh Cuu, Dong Nai. Our headquarters is in Pusan, South Korea and we have 2 sister factories, in Qingdao, China and in Indonesia. The company was established in 1994 and started operating in July of 1995 with a capacity of around 300,000 pairs of shoes/month. We have steadily grown and expanded over the years - thanks to the very strong support of the Vietnam government, the diligence and skill of our people and the trust of our customers, and we now have over 23,000 employees and production volume of around 1.5 million pairs of shoes/month which are exported worldwide.
What is the strategy of Chang Shin Company to remain stable and continue developing?
Our company's vision is to "be the best beyond all expectations". This means that we have to exert all necessary efforts in order to meet and exceed the expectations of all our stakeholders, which includes our customer, the shareholders, our employees, our suppliers, the government and the community. This involves ensuring that our products meet or even exceed the quality requirements of our customer, that the right products are delivered at the right time, that costs are controlled and resources effectively used, and that our operations are done in a sustainable way.
In order for our business to remain viable despite the current economic head winds, our strategy is to apply the principles of sustainable manufacturing, which include:
- Lean manufacturing: elimination of all forms of waste, and enhanced operational efficiency & productivity;
- Green business practices: energy conservation, reduction & management; waste reduction/reuse/recycling & management; pollution prevention, water conservation, green building and implementation of other environmental best practices;
- People empowerment: inspire our people - our most valued asset - and empower them to achieve their highest potential through training and education, effective communication, ensuring occupational safety & health, appropriate welfare programs and a comfortable working atmosphere.
- Equitable practices / social responsibility: keeping our "license to operate"; generating and leveraging on the goodwill from the community and related shareholders.
In your opinion, what is the significance of CSR Award 2012, and especially with Chang Shin Company?
The Vietnam CSR Award is a very prestigious national recognition for companies who have effectively implemented CSR in their business, and as such it is an award that can inspire and generate a lot of pride among the employees and other stakeholders in a company. As a recipient of this award in 2009, we have seen how it has helped raise our reputation and standing in the eyes of our customers, the government, the community, our suppliers and our very own employees, and so we are eagerly hoping to have the privilege of winning this award again this time.
One of the objectives of the CSR Award 2012 is to honour enterprises that have implemented CSR very well, and have excellent achievements in the fields of labour and environment. So what has your company done so far in the field of labour and environment in the period 2010 to 2012?
As I have mentioned earlier, we consider our employees the most valued asset in our company, and as such we have an ongoing program called "Investment in People" that we started some years back. Basically we focus on 3 areas: training and education, communication and welfare.
To increase our people's skills and knowledge, we established a Human Resource Development & Training Centre, and implemented various long-term training courses aimed at enhancing not only the work skills of our people but also their life skills. Training courses includes various topics on Environment, Safety & Health (ESH), Mutual Trust & Respect (EQ/IQ), language training (English / Korean), production operations, quality assurance, lean manufacturing and different supervisory & management topics. We also offer free high school education for those of our employees who want to finish high school. We also send some of our people to special external training - including training abroad - for further capacity building.
To promote better awareness, understanding and teamwork, we use many different communication channels including "GM free talks" which is a regular open discussion between me and team members, as well as with supervisors and managers; monthly newsletters; weekly policy deployment meetings, monthly meeting with our Trade Union and other forms of communication such as public address systems and information boards.
To enhance passion and enthusiasm in the job, we also provide our employees with many kinds of motivation and welfare programmes including Sports Events, Tet Festival, various contests (singing, cooking, art, etc.), employees' supermarket, free cataract surgery for employees' relatives, free houses for very needy employees, free reproductive health checks, recognition of their academically-outstanding children; free use of the Chang Shin Club for their celebrations, regular visits at rental houses and formal recognition of outstanding performance.
In the field of environment, we have instituted several programs to continually reduce our environmental footprint, and this includes many different waste reduction & recycling projects; energy reduction projects (including the application of solar thermal systems, optimizing machine location and layout to reduce system losses, insulation systems, the use of energy-efficient lighting systems, the use of efficiency enhancing devices, etc.); water conservation programs (including the use of treated waste water for irrigation and flushing toilets); the continued use of waterbase chemical systems; the continued use of non-powder chemicals to minimize dust generation and other related programs.
We also continue the development of eco-friendly products (i.e. products that use environmentally-preferred materials and are designed with less waste) that meet our customer's stringent standards.
We have also invested in electric boilers to completely replace bunker oil steam boilers, thus totally eliminating air emissions from bunker-fired boilers.
We have invested in green buildings, and in June 2012 we received the Gold LEED Certificate for operations and maintenance category from the US Green Building Council, for our Product Creation Centre building. This is the first Gold LEED certificate for "existing buildings, operations and maintenance" category in Vietnam.
Finally, we continue to raise peoples' awareness about the importance and need for environmental protection through various activities including the celebration of Earth Hour, World Water Day, World Environment Day; community clean up activities, gardening, tree-planting, "Xanh-Sach_Dep" campaign, training and sharing best practices with other organizations and companies.
As a typical business which has engaged in social activities for many years, can you talk about how to make the CSR Award become more effective and meaningful in the future?
The CSR Award is a great way of encouraging enterprises to integrate CSR into their business activities. It could therefore be more impactful if many more companies were recognized for their efforts in corporate sustainability and responsibility, so I would like to suggest that enterprises be categorized into small-and-medium (SMEs) and large companies, and that separate sets of awards be given for each category. Again, for the purpose of recognizing as many deserving companies as possible, it could also help if different special awards are given out.
Lastly, winners of CSR Award should be encouraged and given the chance to share their best practices with other interested companies (and other companies should be encouraged to learn from CSR practitioners), so that more and more organizations will be persuaded to implement corporate sustainability and responsibility.
Vietnamese
