As of 2019, MCS employed 8,720 regular staff, comprising about 370 in MCS Property; over 400 in Intermed Hospital; over 770 with MCS Coca Cola and about 1,360 at Unitel. In addition, the company had about 1,000 temporary workers across these subsidiaries for non-core activities to meet short-term workload. Services such as security, housekeeping are outsourced to licensed contractors.
As per the recent statistics in 2017, 2018 and 2019, female hires accounted for approximately 40% of all hires in MCS. At subsidiary level, among direct regular employees, percentage of female employees are 25%, 38%, 62% and 85% in MCS Coca Cola, MCS Property, Unitel and Intermed Hospital, respectively. Accordingly, the subsidiaries tend to keep relatively high percentages of female manager/executive varying between 27% to 63%. MCS strictly adheres to non-discrimination policy to achieve equality and diversity of employees.
Human Resources Policies and Procedures
MCS sets a group-wide comprehensive human resources (HR) policies and procedures that cover recruitment processes, employment practices (including prohibition of child or forced labor), working conditions, worker health screening, performance evaluation career progression and professional development, ethics and training needs (including health and safety), grievance mechanism and collective bargaining. The subsidiaries develop their own HR policies and procedures by adapting the group-wide HR policy. The Company’s HR policies are consistent with the requirements of Mongolian labor law and IFC PS2 requirements. HR manager in each subsidiary company is responsible for implementing HR policies and guidelines and report to MCS HR team.
Grievance Mechanism
The subsidiaries have a documented grievance mechanism available for all employees regardless of employment type to raise all types of issues including unethical conducts and sexual harassment. Various channels are available including open door policy, emails, intranet and suggestion box, whereby grievances can also be raised anonymously. No serious grievances from employees or strikes have been reported in the past three years.
Freedom of Association
There is a strong tradition of organized labor and worker’s rights in Mongolia. Employer encourages trade union activity and collective bargaining, and there is no restriction to any employee to join a union. Such a policy is commonly accepted across MCS.
Occupational Health and Safety
MCS follows all national statutes governing the protection of the workforce. High standards of workplace health and safety are maintained by each operating unit at subsidiary level, such as good housekeeping, safety training, daily safety briefings, good safety signage, employee health and accident records. In activities where use of personal protective equipment (PPE) is applicable, managers enforce the use of PPE among employees. The subsidiaries whose activities require handling of hazardous materials (e.g. fuel oil, chemical dyes, cleaning solvents, wastewater, sludge) adequate safety procedures have been implemented as per the Material Safety Data Sheets and records are maintained in Material Safety Data Sheet. For the construction sites, safety management practices of the main international contractors are followed in addition to its own procedures for meeting Mongolian workplace safety standards.
The Company monitors safety related KPIs, which include lost time injury frequency rates (LTIFR) and severity rate (SR). These indicators track the number of lost time injuries and lost workdays for every 200,000 man-hours worked. Statistics in recent five years (from 2015 to 2019) have shown that both LTIFR and SR are decreasing across MCS. LTIFR and SR in 2015 were 0.45 and 6.34 which improved to 0.18 and 2.21 in 2019, respectively. The subsidiaries also track near misses as safety related KPIs.
In the subsidiaries, no injury or incidents have been reported in MCS Property and Intermed Hospital since 2015 (i.e., LTIFR and SR are zero). LTIFR (0.45 in 2015) and SR (16.39 in 2015) have improved to 0.27 and 3.92 in 2019 in MCS Coca Cola. Likewise, both LTIFR and SR have also improved in Unitel (from 0.99 and 7.75 in 2015 to 0.40 and 2.83 in 2019, respectively).
In addition to the subsidiaries’ effort of preventive measures and corrective actions against accidents or incidents, MCS EHS team regularly conducts assessment of subsidiary companies’ risk management procedures.
Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Workforce
MCS’s business operations are not seriously disrupted by the COVID-19 and most are running relatively normally. MCS has not implemented any significant changes in terms of reduction of personnel, salary and benefit cuts, or changes to vendor contracts. Support is provided to employees by providing instructions on a regular basis for preventing COVID-19 risk in accordance with the instructions from the Ministry of Health, and allowing employees, particularly elderly, pregnant women and those with children, to work from home or remotely. Employees in sales, service, factory, medical areas are provided with necessary PPEs such as masks, gloves and sanitizers at their respective workplace. No employees live in workers’ accommodation in the business areas of the subsidiaries.
Currently, there are about 20 expatriate employees in MCS Property and none of their work are suspended. However, some of them are stranded in other locations due to flight suspensions. Protection and prevention measures are applied to them same as that of local employees.
In the case of Intermed Hospital, 10% reduction of working hours was implemented among ~200 medical and office staff due to the decreased number of visitors for elective procedures and for prevention of infection, however there was no significant impact on the staff incomes because the decreased work hours was compensated by temporary income tax adjustment as per government policy to tackle the COVID-19. In addition, no nosocomial infections have been reported to date as Intermed Hospital has tightened and implemented robust infection prevention measures including infection filtration of customer flow, hand sanitizing, cleaning and disinfection of environment and surveillance of nosocomial infection, etc.
