Fifty-plus of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre’s (the Centre) team members dressed in purple, white and green (2019 IWD colours) and enjoyed a walk around the lush 50-acre Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) park to mark the recent International Women’s Day (IWD). The stroll was followed by a casual high tea for team members to mingle, bond and celebrate the occasion.

The Centre focused on being loud and proud on this special day and themed their activities, including specially crafted food and beverage and décor, to match the 2019 IWD theme. All digital screens around the venue also displayed a celebratory message marking IWD.

According to the Centre’s Director of Global Business Development & Marketing, Angeline van den Broecke, “It was great to see such an excellent turnout from our team members to mark this special day. As an organisation, we are committed to celebrating Malaysia’s cultural diversity and demonstrating this through equal representation across the workforce.”  

She continued, “Celebrating IWD is a wonderful way to pay tribute to women we admire and respect all around the world, and also to those present in our daily lives who are actively driving initiatives and forums in this regard. #BalanceforBetter is a very appropriate theme this year as there is such a universal need for more active adoption of gender balance and for us to acknowledge initiatives that have brought important issues to the fore such as #MeToo and #TimesUp. We all need to find ways to assist in contributing to awareness and education on equality, in the workplace, and in social and domestic environments.”

Echoing van den Broecke’s comments, the Centre’s Director of Human Resources, Muhammad Vickneswaran shared that, “We constantly strive to be an ‘Employer of Choice’ and our main focus is and always will be on the growth and professional development of our team members. We believe an inclusive and diverse workplace environment is essential to our success and this is why we have great gender balance in our organisation. Currently we have 119 women (38% of the total organisation), of which 80 (67%) hold executive to senior managerial positions despite residing in an industry that is often perceived as male dominated.”

He added, “We can certainly do more. For example, we have just completed a review of our employee behaviour policies and regularly conduct internal training on workplace ethics. We also have active mentoring and coaching programmes to provide avenues for employees to provide support to colleagues. Ultimately, we want to create safe spaces for all our team members to flourish.”

International Women's Day provides an important opportunity to showcase commitment to women's equality, launch new initiatives and action, celebrate women's achievements, raise awareness, and highlight gender parity gains and more. For more information visit - https://www.internationalwomensday.com/.