【CASE 4】APU Company, the largest beverage manufacturer in Mongolia

“Everyone creating long, happy workplaces for everyone.”

Renewal of corporate philosophy before the first century of the company’s operation.

APU Company is one of Mongolia’s leading companies. The company produces and exports 334 beverage products under 35 brands to four countries, including Genghis, a top-quality vodka named after the hero Genghis Khan, a wide range of local beers such as Altan Gobi, Sengur and Borgio, soft drinks, mineral water and dairy products. The company started operations in 1924 as Mongolia’s first vodka distillery with five Mongolians and nine Russians and has grown to become the country’s largest brewer and beverage producer with approximately 2,400 employees as of June 2022.

In 2021, shortly before the company’s first century of operation, the company renewed its mission statement to “Be close to the daily lives of the citizens”. The company aims at corporate management that links the global environment, the lives of the citizens and the happiness of every one of them, as one of its principles is “Always happy and environmentally friendly beverage products for everyone”. Furthermore, the company has been awarded by the government as an “employee-friendly company” under its “APU LIFE” policy, which consists of four guidelines, including creating a pleasant working environment for all employees and consideration for their mental and physical well-being.

The company is actively involved in the employment of persons with disabilities. As of the end of June 2022, there are 27 employees with disabilities, including hearing, visual, speech and internal impairments. Of these, 20 are working in factories/warehouses, four are in the administration department, and another four have been promoted to the managerial level. Two newly recruited masseurs from the Association for Persons with Visual Impairments have been employed, working shifts three times a week for three hours each.

Confidence nearly lost, but found a place to belong

We visited the company in late June. The company building, painted in red, the company’s corporate colour, stood out against the fresh blue sky of early summer. In one of the warehouses at the back of the building, corrugated cardboard boxes were assembled for transporting and delivering beverages. A woman in a light blue work uniform unfolded the folded corrugated cardboard into a box shape, placed a partition inside, and placed it upside down on a conveyor belt. The sound of the machine cutting the tape, which regularly echoes with a beep, clang sound, was vivacious.

This is T. S. Zhavzmaa, a staff member who worked silently. She is 25 years old this year and lives with a congenital hearing and speech impairment, wearing hearing aids.

She was born in Dundgobi Province, the youngest of four sisters. She has loved moving around since she was a child and started playing volleyball and table tennis in primary school, where she made significant progress, especially in table tennis. She was so well known that she participated in several official matches. Later, she once entered the National University of Industry and Technology but dropped out after one year. At that time, a Physical Education College, impressed by Zhavzmaa’s table tennis skills, invited her to re-enter the school. After graduation, she dreamed of becoming a physical education (PE) teacher, but after her application was continually rejected as “not possible for persons with disabilities”, she returned home.

Zhavzmaa then worked for a month as a part-time employee at APU Company through a referral from an acquaintance. She liked the working atmosphere, and after a fixed-term employment period of three months, she started working there full-time a year ago. When aspiring to become a PE teacher, she almost lost her confidence because she was constantly being told she was deaf and couldn’t speak well. However, APU Company was a comfortable working space for her as no one regarded her hearing as a problem, nor did they tease and keep distance from her for not being able to speak well. Everyone at the company treats her very naturally.

She works five days a week, Tuesday to Saturday. She leaves the house with her sister and family before 7 am and arrives at work at 8 am, assembling cardboard boxes from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm. As she basically has to stand for a long time, it burdened her back ached at the beginning, but recently she has become accustomed to the work and can meet the quota set for each hour. Once a week, during lunchtime, she rents a nearby school gymnasium and enjoys playing table tennis with others.

A person who looks after her warmly is her colleague and supervisor, E. Oyunchime. She used to run a retail shop with her sister but closed it when she became pregnant and joined APU Company 10 years ago. She now knows all the operations in the warehouse. With a son and daughter the same age as Zhavzmaa, she smiled to talk with Zhavzmaa, saying that “she is like another daughter”. They looked at each other and laughed in between conversations, which shows how well they worked together.

Oyunchimeg had worked in a warehouse with a male employee witha hearing impairment before Zhavzmaa joined the company. She can use simple sign language because she has a friend with a hearing impairment and did not find it challenging to communicate with the man. Whereas she saw the man occasionally become depressed because he misunderstood his colleague’s mouth movements and thought they spoke ill of him. Oyunchimeg recalled that “when dealing with persons with hearing impairments, I had to take into account that they have characteristics that can easily make them feel pleased or depressed” and added: “The factory line is a teamwork, and if one person is missing, the flow stops. That is why it is essential to create an environment where everyone can work for a long time”.

Next to her, Zhavzmaa told us brightly, “I also want to attend a master’s course at the Physical Education University from September 2022”. The company has a system whereby employees who want to study can adjust their working hours to balance work and study, and a grant of 500,000 MNT (about 24,000 JNY) is paid to them. This system, which encouraged Zhavzmaa’s desire to study, even after she had almost given up because of her disability, is another evidence of the company’s commitment to encouraging long-term employment for its employees.

Subordinate-minded “little boss”

S. H. Enkhsaikhan, the Senior Manager, oversees operations at the warehouse where Zhavzmaa and Oyunchimeg work. She has worked in the warehouse for 20 years and on the production line for the previous ten years.

Of the 150 employees working in the warehouse, two of them, Zhavzmaa mentioned above and another man who cannot hear at all, are with disabilities. The man has been working there for 15 years and is responsible for opening the lids of bottles.

Enkhsaikhan determined the job descriptions for Zhavzmaa and the man under the company’s regulations. The company has a systematic approach to human resources from recruitment to assignment, with all tasks assessed in advance and divided into three levels - light, medium and heavy work - and employment contracts awarded to recruits according to their disabilities, capabilities and other features. Persons with disabilities are assigned to one of the six kinds of tasks in the warehouse, instead of the factory or production lanes, for safety reasons. Unlike other workers, who rotate duties every month or two, the responsibilities of persons with disabilities remain basically unchanged. However, they are instead regularly transferred between four warehouses to ensure not to get bored with their work, changing their mood.

Enkhsaikhan appreciates that the staff with hearing impairments are “generally enthusiastic towards their work, and they are more enthusiastic when praised” and that “it is important to try to get to know them deep inside, not just whether they are having trouble at work”. She says that because they can be pleased or depressed by minor things, understanding their interests and personalities, paying attention to their communication ways and being aware of their daily conditions and changes are crucial. In fact, Zhavzmaa did not initially reveal how good she could play table tennis, but as the relationship gradually deepened, she talked about it. Furthermore, Enkhsaikhan considers supporting colleagues in building good relationships as the supervisor’s role. Therefore, she regularly organises internal events, explains the work individually to families with persons with disabilities, introduces them to colleagues on open days once every three months, and invites her subordinates to her home on holidays. 

Enkhsaikhan first worked with persons with disabilities in her eighth year with the company, when she was gradually given more management responsibilities. Although she took on the responsibility of supervising six persons with hearing impairments, she could not guide them all the time, so she worked closely with her colleagues, sharing information and taking turns to see how they were doing. Since then, she found that the persons with disabilities who she thought were “always blocked up and not happy” tried to enjoy life positively. At the same time, she noticed the necessity to treat them politely, as others’ words often hurt them. One of these six employees is the man mentioned above, who has been with the company for 15 years.

When asked about the significance of companies employing persons with disabilities, Enkhsaikhan enthusiastically answered, “Needless to say, as long as they work for a company, they need to make a profit. However, it is essential to consider how to make employees work happily, regardless of a disability, rather than just regarding them as a workforce” and “If more companies can think of ways to achieve this, then persons with disabilities in Mongolia will be more settled in the workplace”.

Enkhsaikhan’s warmth and willingness to devote her energies to creating a better working environment seemed to reach Zhavzmaa and Oyunchimeg. “She is strict at work, but I don’t feel like I’m being scolded because she can help and push us even when angry,” and “Our ‘little boss’, who is small and powerful, is a very wonderful person.” -They were both so happy to talk about it. Their happy profiles shined with respect and trust for Enkhsaikhan.

Creating a new organisational culture through employee training

To have persons with disabilities working happily, APU Company is promoting various initiatives. J. Ichinkhorloo, General Manager of the General Affairs and Human Resources Division, says: “A new labour law was enacted in 2021. In order to get more persons with disabilities to work in the future, we need to reform our organisational culture”, she enthuses.

One example, Ichinkhorloo mentioned, is the digitisation of CVs during recruitment interviews. The company is considering responding to the launch of the “e-job” recruitment system in August this year, where recruitment and applications process to be online, aiming to lower the paperwork hurdle and open the door to those who find it challenging to submit their applications on paper.

Furthermore, in 2021, the company launched a campaign to promote employment of persons with disabilities, provided sign language interpretation for internal video content for employees with hearing impairments, and held sign language classes for other employees at the daily conversation level. Additionally, the company has launched an internal intranet section called “Are you OK?”, which introduces videos of employees with disabilities showing how they work, their personalities and how they spend time with their families.

The company mainly focuses on awareness-raising activities and human resource development to deepen employees’ understanding of disability. Enkhsaikhan, mentioned above, is actively involved in teaching internal training courses to share her 30 years of experience within the company. Last year, a training programme was organised to select a few of her employees and train them as trainers by instructing them on how to effectively deal with recruits, persons with disabilities and senior staff. This initiative expects to develop the workforce more systematically as an organisation, and once certified, the trainers are paid a trainer’s fee in addition to their basic salary.

Enkhsaikhan teaches at the APU Academy, a coaching programme that started in January 2022, where she shares the company policy and philosophy with employees monthly. The participants are 40 employees each time, and by the end of June, 240 had taken part in the programme. Each time, she mentions how to interact with persons with disabilities appropriately and how to understand their disabilities.

G. Gantogs, General Affairs and Human Resources Manager, who oversees the series of internal training, believes that “an equal workplace cannot be mandated or forced by rules, but can realise through individual awareness”. Last year’s campaign quickly produced a positive outcome. One of the employees, who until then had been hiding a disability, revealed the fact of the disability. “We want to create a company culture where everyone understands and respects each other without having to hide their disability,” she said.

The efforts of APU Company, one of Mongolia’s top beverage manufacturers, such as the personnel allocation based on assessment and the training of trainers through the launch of internal training programmes, are encouraging as a step towards promoting the settlement of persons with disabilities in the workplace. Furthermore, the company is keen to review how it employs persons with disabilities. Enkhsaikhan mentioned, “We used to wait for organisations and NGOs to introduce us to persons with disabilities or for applicants to apply for jobs on their own after reading job information. However, in the future, we want to approach persons with disabilities from our side.” The company is highly interested in the job coach employment support system promoted by DPUB2. Soon the company will be working with DPUB2 to create a model for the employment of persons with disabilities.

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