How is iBakery an inclusive workplace for employees with different abilities?
iBakery is a social enterprise of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals. We have been training and hiring people with disabilities, and feeding Hong Kong with a delicious menu at the same time for the past decade. Our baking factories, bakeries, cookie shops, restaurants, and snack kiosks are all operated by our team of different abilities.
On the business front, we have to be self-sustainable, which is the same as other businesses. Our social aspect is what differentiates us from other bakeries and cafes – we strive to enable our colleagues to find their strengths, build up their work confidence, and perform their best. Currently, 60% of our team are people with disabilities.
How does HR help the organisation become self-sustainable?
The core theme of our business is “ability”, which includes the abilities of individual staff members and our team as a whole. We focus on “what we can do” instead of “what we cannot do”, therefore a lot of effort is dedicated towards staff training and development.
Furthermore, we take our human resources into consideration when formulating our business strategies, for instance the direction of product research and development must be able to create opportunities for the whole team to participate in, the skill sets required must be feasible for our team to acquire, and the business expansion must be manageable by our team. Although we vary in abilities, we share the same mission and passion which we call the iBakery DNA and hope all of our team members come to work with this DNA.
How does iBakery enable its staff while building a reputable brand image?
We always want to know why our customers like iBakery. According to their feedback in our satisfaction and social impact questionnaires, apart from our food and service, they also appreciate a lot our dedication towards training and creating opportunities for people with special needs.
The quality of our products and services reflects our team’s abilities. Thus empowering our staff members holds the key to sustaining our business and actualising our social mission. If branding means to create an identity, the more we work on empowering our team, the clearer our identity becomes, and the more engaging we are with our customers and supporters.
