Month: October 2014

BY ELROY UTA

With Halloween landing right at us in a few weeks, the Food & Beverage and Kitchen Departments of Xavier Sports and Country Club  spiced up our office area and gave a fresh Halloween-themed ambiance to the office. It also gives an opportunity for guests and customers to take some quick photos.

Through time, Halloween has grown into an important event to look forward to and is now one of the most popular holidays, second only to Christmas. When you ask a random person what he or she thinks about this time of the month, most likely you’ll get Halloween as an answer. We Filipinos love traditions, and Halloween is a season for us to visit our departed love ones in cemetery and for the kids to engage in scary costumes and play trick or treat. It is also one of the best holiday traditions to celebrate with our families and also at work.

For a company, it’s also a great way to spice up the work place. Celebrating Halloween at work appeals to the kid in us and helps create a sense of fun and it’s also creatively entertaining.

Well, first a little disclaimer: when I say celebrate Halloween at work, I’m not tellingyou to pull a scary prank on your officers or to your co-workers. I don’t want to be responsible if anyone is called up by HRD for misbehavior!

As with any corporate activity, we all look up to Human Resources for events and activities. But, in our small way, we can spice up our office for Halloween. One great idea to celebrate Halloween is to beautify our own cubicle or table just like the way we adorn it with Christmas decorations, this will put fun on an otherwise dull office ambiance. We can then offer prizes for the best and most festively decorated work stations. Here are some.

Another great idea is office Trick-or-Treating (but without the tricking.. We can encourage all employees to bring treats in loot bags to be shared and employees can then go cubicle to cubicle or officer to office trick or treating for fun.

To appeal to our corporate social responsibility, we can partner with some community events for charities and company employees then can participate in full costume and passed out treats. However, this activity needs the participation of the whole corporate community so this needs some serious planning.

I believe that celebrating the Halloween tradition at good for boosting employee morale . This will greatly enhance the team building aspects of the group by encouraging everyone to work together to decorate their shared work area. These ideas will spark creative thinking and open up boxes of possibilities for celebrating Halloween at work.

Additionally, when a certain department makes their own ideas to celebrate holidays like Christmas, employees are more likely to participate in it, just like what we experience every time we decorate our office for Christmas.

Sounds fun, right? Do you have some Halloween ideas for the workplace?

BY RUFINO T. MAGBANUA |

Upon the invitation of Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) Chair Paul G. Dominguez, ABCI President Robertino E. Pizarro attended the annual meeting of PBSP Mindanao on September 8, 2014 at SMX Convention Center in Davao City.

Pizarro was accompanied by Juan Paolo P. Pizarro, plantation Operations Manager of ABERDI.

During the meeting, PBSP launched the Inclusive Agribusiness Program for Mindanao, geared to incorporate stakeholders within the company value chains as suppliers, consumers, employees and distributors to create shared value.

Currently, PBSP is working with various agribusiness companies involved in rubber, coffee, cacao, oil palm, and seaweeds to enhance their inclusive business models and improve income and productivity of farmers in Mindanao.

Pizarro lauded the inclusive agribusiness initiative of the PBSP, saying that the program comes in time as the government seeks to transform Mindanao from the “Land of Promise to the Land of Promises Fulfilled.”

The program has outlined clear strategic imperatives towards harnessing the resources of Mindanao for the common good.

PBSP introduced its current undertaking to advocate inclusive business and to draw support from the organization’s member companies, non-member companies, civil society organizations and government officials.

The program upholds PBSP’s Inclusive Business Imperative (IBI) campaign in Mindanao, aiming to particularly address poverty, job generation and the need for climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Pizarro commended PBSP’s efforts for inclusiveness, equitability and meaningful progress, “one that has enabled countless Filipinos to live more dignified and productive lives.”

“Instead of viewing communities as mere locations for factories or markets for their products, PBSP and its partners sought to develop those communities into partners towards development—whether through PBSP’s flagship program for tuberculosis control, for example, or the construction of public school classrooms through your initiative, or even the sustained promotion of corporate social responsibility in all of your activities,” he said.

The priority industries of PBSP’s inclusive agribusiness program include coffee, cacao, corn, palm oil and rubber.

Meanwhile, Dominguez inked a Memorandum of Understanding with Mindanao Development Authority chair Lualhati Antonino for a collaboration to implement PBSP’s initiatives and programs that aim to achieve inclusive business growth for the Mindanaoans.

BY QUARREN DEL ROSARIO |

ABCI believes in the idea of continuous improvement in the workplace. Since 2012, the company had adopted the Japanese way of promoting productivity and quality of products and services.

Empowering employees to utilize their potentials for improvement in quality and to create an environment of work that stimulates commitment towards excellence are among the goals of Quality Circle and Easy Kaizen. The Quality Circle (QC) is under the Productivity Improvement Program of the company.

There are 8 existing circles with 9 QC projects in the company coming from different departments with their respective circle names and projects such as:

Department	Team Name	Title
1. ABCI – Vertical Construction	Obelisk	“Modern Steel Form Shoring System for Terrace Pre-cast (Cast Canopies and Molding)”
2. ABCI – Horizontal Construction	The Horizons	“Fabricated Manholes and Lean Concrete Application”
3. ABCI – Sales & Marketing	The Realtors	“Backlog of Previous Accounts”
4. ABERDI – Mill	The Millers	1st Project: “Design and Fabrication of Bucket Cups in the Bucket Elevator” 2nd Project: “Fabrication of a Mechanized Vibrating Nuts and Fiber Separator”
5. ABERDI – Opol Plantation	Verdant Fields	“Increasing Efficiency in Planting and Proper Handling of Palm Oil Seedling During Hauling”
6. ABERDI – Kalabugao Plantation	Mountain Bounty Bunchers	“Rearranging of Frond Piles and Installation of Signages/Numbering of Permanent Harvesting Path”
7. ABCI – Purchasing	The W.A.C.K.Y.	“Eliminating Delay in Providing the Team-Requested Materials”
8. ABCI – HR	HR A.I.M.S.	“The Innovative Ways and Solutions for the Reduction of Frequent Delays in Payroll Processing”

This year there are three circles that are still working on their projects, namely ABCI-Accounting, ABCI-Crushing, BRC-Chalet & Housekeeping and XSCCI-Kitchen and Dining. The circles will present their projects to the management on December 12, 2014.