MEMBERS of the Sagicor Pro-Millennial Mentorship Society, including 1st Vice-President Stephen Levy (with trophy) celebrate the silver Workforce Optimas Award that Sagicor Group Jamaica received in the category of Vision for 2019. The award was presented last month.

The Workforce Optimas Awards recognises companies around the world for human resources and workforce management initiatives that achieve business results for the organisations. In the Vision category, awards are made to organisations that anticipated internal or external trends and responded creatively, effectively and proactively.

In Sagicor’s case, the award was based on the financial services conglomerate’s Pro-Millennial Mentorship Society — a programme it started in 2017 to provide customised professional development for its millennial employees through interactive training and real-world problem-solving. The mentorship programme, the compnay says, embraces a collaborative, group approach to mentorship — as opposed to the more traditional one-on-one approach — which fosters professional intergenerational relationships between employees across the four generations represented at Sagicor.

“We are tremendously proud of this recognition by an international body and especially so for the Sagicor Pro- Millennial Society programme,” said Karl Williams, senior vice-president of group human resources and corporate services, adding that the initiative was born out of a vision to do something different within the organisation to connect and engage with the millennials, who make up over 50 per cent of the organisation’s workforce.

“As the only Jamaican organisation among a list of international companies to receive awards in various categories, this is reinforcement that we are doing something right here at Sagicor to advance the important role of HR in organisations,” Williams added.

The Optimas Awards are given by Workforce magazine across 10 categories each year.