Sands China placing its people first

Sands China Ltd. has long strived to nurture and improve local talent, contributing to Macau’s development as a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure.

As a leading developer of integrated resorts, the company has placed people at the heart of its strategy, making sure that is has nurtured, and will continue to nurture, the development of its team members alongside the growth of the company.

The longevity of team members’ service testifies to the success of that strategy, as the number of team members that have reached their 10-year company anniversaries approaches 10,000.

The pandemic across the last two years significantly impacted the operations and mode of work; however, the company has actively assisted employees to cope with the effect of the virus by providing strong and consistent support. 

Every cloud has a silver lining, and the company has taken the opportunity to innovate its team members’ learning experience.

From developing more versatile talent and providing successful career paths to enhancing team members’ quality of life – platforms to attain these goals are generously provided by the company.

As Dr. Wilfred Wong, Sands China’s president, has pledged, “At Sands China, we spare no effort in talent development.” “We care about team members’ physical and mental health,” he added, as the firm hopes to promote family harmony through its parenting education initiative, thereby propelling the development of the local community.

Diversified employment opportunities

Along with the company’s development over nearly two decades, Sands China has created more than 85,000 diverse local employment opportunities. While developing into the largest integrated resort operator in Macau, Sands China has created 1,300 new jobs for a wide range of non-gaming business areas, including MICE, entertainment planning, shopping malls and retail, food and beverage, and property management. In doing so, it has made continual and essential contributions to the rapid development of Macau’s tourism and leisure industry. 

To date, nearly 9,900 team members have served the company for more than 10 years, representing 40% of all team members. Over 3,700 of them have reached their 15-year milestones. More than 1,200 team members have remained with the company since helping launch Sands® Macao in 2004, representing one-third of that property’s opening team. The 17 intervening years have witnessed a significant growth in the percentage of local residents among Sands China’s management team members, soaring from 20 per cent in 2004 to 91 per cent in 2021.

“Our team members continue to be our most valuable asset. We have set deep roots in Macau for almost two decades, and long-serving team members have been essential to the continuous and steady development of the company,” said Dr. Wong.

“The entire executive management team expresses its sincere and deep appreciation to our long-serving team members for their unwavering dedication to the company’s growth. With all team members staying united, we are confident that we will always be ready to overcome any challenges as we continue to deliver extraordinary experiences for our guests and visitors,” the president added. 

In gratitude to some of those veterans of the company, Sands China recently honoured a group of more than 180 long-serving elderly team members in the company’s popular Golden Age Programme at a Golden Age Navigation Ceremony at The Venetian Macao.

Introduced last year, the voluntary programme shows appreciation for elderly team members who are ready to begin a new chapter of their lives, providing them with a wide range of post-career benefits.

“Our elderly team members have made tremendous contributions to the company’s development, and some of them have served Sands China for as long as 10 or even 15 years during the prime of their lives,” said Wong.

“With the Golden Age Programme, we hope to reward their devoted service as they move on with enthusiasm to the next phase of their lives. We are happy to know that they will continue to be members of the Sands China family, and I wish them a new set of successes in this fresh chapter of their journey,” Wong added. 

Vaccination rate on the rise

As a company that cares about the health of its team members and the wider community, Sands China is actively encouraging team members to volunteer to get vaccinated. Besides offering vaccination sessions and hosting two seminars, Sands China’s vaccination efforts include hosting more than 50 roadshows, showing promotional clips produced by the Health Bureau and by the company, and displaying promotional posters at its properties’ back-of-house team member areas. 

Sands China’s staff has answered the call for voluntary vaccination. The vaccination rate among them has now reached 94%.

Channels for e-learning

Amid the pandemic crisis, Sands China launched a number of new smart learning platforms to encourage team members to strive for excellence and enhance their level of service during the pandemic, so that they can move forward in their career paths.  

The company introduced new online learning platforms, such as LinkedIn Learning, to allow team members to self-study and improve their professional capabilities by accessing tutorial videos by industry experts without being restricted by time, language, or location.

Since offering LinkedIn Learning in February 2020, team members have completed a total of 9,200 training hours and 8,766 courses. Sands China was subsequently bestowed with the “2020 Learning Rising Star” award by LinkedIn.

To further encourage team members to develop the positive habit of self-study through e-learning platforms and multimedia resources in a comfortable and safe setting, the company launched Learning Lab, which has attracted nearly 700 team members.

As the company actively encourages personal development as a way to climb the career ladder, Sands China also uses WebEx and other platforms to transform traditional teaching into online interactive teaching. Examples of training which has benefitted from this shift include the Manager Competence Development Programme and Personal Effectiveness Training Series, tailor-made by the Sands China Academy for middle management. 

Under this initiative, over 4,600 team members have been attracted to attend over 230 online interactive courses spanning over 8,800 training hours.

Enhancing team members’ quality of life

Sands China undertakes various initiatives in order to promote team members’ well-being, family harmony, and work-life balance, in line with the company’s belief that its team members are its greatest asset.

So as part of the company’s continued commitment to enhancing team members’ quality of life, Sands China Ltd. recently signed a letter of intent with the Education and Youth Bureau (DSEDJ) to collaborate on a Parenting Education Programme.

As one of the largest private corporations in Macau, the company considers it a duty to proactively promote parenting education among its team members, seeing it as something that will increase their happiness and help build social and family harmony.

Expressing gratitude for team members’ contributions

Sands China refers to its employees as team members not as a gimmick, but based on a sincere belief that each one of them is an essential component of operating the business. Expressing gratitude to team members for their essential contributions to the running of an effective team remains a priority for Sands China.

Notwithstanding the business challenges of the pandemic, the company held firm to its annual practice of distributing a discretionary allowance. Equivalent to one month’s salary, the allowance is being awarded to more than 25,000 eligible non-senior management full-time team members on Jan. 17, 2022, in appreciation of their dedication and contributions in 2021. A total of 99 per cent of Sands China’s total employment is benefiting from either the discretionary allowance or other incentive schemes.