Founded in 2009, Sea Limited (formerly known as Garena Group) started out as an online gaming and social platform for users to discover, download and play online games.
It has since expanded its business to include digital financial services as well as e-commerce.
This year, its digital entertainment arm, Garena Online, was also nominated by the Creative Media and Publishing Union (CMPU) for the NTUC May Day Awards, in the Partner of Labour Movement category.
Read Garena Online’s full citation here.
We caught up with Sea to find out more about their unique work culture and their close working relationship with CMPU.
What is the work culture at like at Sea Limited?
Sea has developed a unique company culture that keeps us true to ourselves as we grow. In 2014, we codified our culture into our manifesto, which mandates that our company be ‘a place where talented people thrive at scale, enjoy freedom of ideas, and achieve the unimaginable’. This is embodied by our five core values – we serve, we adapt, we run, we commit, and we stay humble. Through this manifesto, we constantly strive to display a strong commitment to welfare and the development of our workers whoever or at whatever job level they might be.
Describe Sea’s relationship with the union, and why the company believes in this close union-management relations?
Sea recognises the collective importance the Government, employers, and unions have in driving Singapore’s social and economic development forward together through close collaboration. As such, Sea shares a close working relationship with NTUC to support our workers with the welfare and opportunities they require to ensure their well-being, development, and prospects.
Why does the company sponsor union membership fees for its workers?
We fully sponsor our workers’ union membership fees as firm believers in Singapore’s brand of progressive trade unionism and as a mark of solidarity with our unions. It also reflects our focus on employee welfare; we want our workers to be able to enjoy the membership benefits without having to worry about the costs. To this end, we have developed the Sea Intranet, a one-stop platform for our workers that enables easy application for union membership and membership highlights, and provides convenient access to a host of common administrative procedures including claims; leave management; and corporate discounts, facilities, and benefits.
Sea works closely with Creative Media and Publishing Union (CMPU) to bring across soft skills training to its workers. Can the company tell us more about this?
In Sea’s multi-year history working with the Creative Media and Publishing Union (CMPU), we have developed a strong track record of supporting soft skills training and development. Our workers are already very gifted technically, so we want to also hone their soft skills as a complement. As such, we take an intentionally holistic approach to training and curriculum planning in our employee upgrading programmes.
What are Sea's next steps for their workforce during these unprecedented times?
During this exceptional period, Sea has doubled down on our efforts to ensure the well-being of our employees are in accordance with our policies, benefits, and guidelines. We will continue to invest into innovation, technological, and infrastructure to support our workers during this time.
