Urban Group awarded Platinum Award in the "2004 Employers Gold Star Award"
Date: 05/03/2004

Following the achievement of the "Best Employer in Asia - Hong Kong Award" last year, Urban Group, Hong Kong's Largest Property Asset and Facility Management Group was awarded the Platinum Award in the 8th Employers Gold Star Award presented by the Employees Retraining Board. Moreover, Ms Chow Wai Lan who was employed as Building Attendant in Handsome Court under its management was awarded Outstanding Retrainee.

The Presentation Ceremony of the 8th Employers Gold Star Award and Outstanding Retrainees was held on 23rd February 2004. Mr Tam Yiu-chung, JP, Chairman of the Employees Retraining Board (ERB) said in the Ceremony, "ERB provides over 110,000 retraining opportunities to the Hong Kong people every year. This relies very much on the active support and participation of the Government, employers, retrainees and training bodies in the Employees Retraining Scheme."

Mrs Rita Fan, President of the Legislative Council and Officiating Guest of the Ceremony also revealed that, "The achievement of the employers being awarded this year are not only for their support to the retraining scheme, but also for their commitment to the development of Hong Kong's economy. They chose to work with ERB to employ the retrainees in these days of high unemployment, well demonstrates their insistence on improving the service quality of the respective industry as well as their openness in employing staff."

Urban Group, who received the Platinum Award this year, has been supporting employees retraining scheme by employing a large number of retrainees since 1999. According to its Managing Director Dr Edmond Cheng, "The award reflects the success of our "Human Capital' concept in human resources management. We regard our staff as our 'Quality Partners' to build up a quality corporate culture within the Group."

Urban Group actively supports the Employees Retraining Scheme to provide career opportunities for job seekers. It has been co-organizing with the Employees Retraining Board and the Hong Kong Young Women's Christian Association to conduct retraining programmes on property asset and facility management. Titled as "The Rainbow Project", the programme aims to help relieve the unemployment of the Hong Kong community and provides an opportunity for the middle level executives from different industries to rebuild their career in professional property asset and facility management. Over the past two years, Urban had employed 387 retrained staff from this programme."

Dr Cheng said the Award would enhance the competitiveness of the Group in the human capital market and they would continue to absorb quality people into the industry so as to provide excellent services for the customers of the 320 projects under their management.

Dr Cheng continues, "We launched our unique Urban Premier Management Model™ in 2002 to incorporate a good development mechanism among staff members of the Group. We also introduced the Balanced Scored Card concept to assess the performance of staff and implement the Quality Circle to encourage innovative ideas from staff, enabling us to provide more diversified services to our customers."

Urban Group, a member of NWS Holdings Limited (0659), is the Largest Property Asset and Facility Management Company in Hong Kong. It is now managing 320 project territory-wide with 180,000 residential units, serving a total of 1,000,000 people in Hong Kong.

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