Following are the welcome and opening video remarks by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Chris Sun, at the 7th Best Workplaces in Hong Kong 2022 Awards Ceremony of the Great Place to Work Institute this afternoon (July 27):

Ladies and gentlemen,

     I am delighted to join you at the 7th Best Workplaces in Hong Kong 2022 Awards Ceremony. I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to all award-winning companies.

     A "workplace" is more than just a place for work. If you discount the time we sleep, for those of us who work, we spend a significant part of our active time at the workplace. Apart from work, we also socialise, learn and grow at our workplace. A great workplace not only brings in more profit to employers, but also makes employees happier and also healthier.

     An employer-employee relationship is not a zero-sum game. Rather, it is a collaborative and interactive process, with a feeding loop that would amplify and reward those who adopt good practices, but at the same time punish those who fail to build harmonious employer-employee relationships. Great companies are great for a variety of reasons, but almost universally there is a common theme running through them, i.e. they all adopt good and harmonious employer-employee relationships.

     The Government has all along been encouraging employers to adopt good human resource management and also family-friendly measures. Over the years, we have put in resources to promote and also raise awareness on this front. We are glad to observe that more and more companies are adopting family-friendly measures and good human resource management practices.

     Apart from promotion, it is also incumbent upon the Government to strengthen employee rights and benefits in the legal area. The economic success of our economy owes much to the contribution and hard work of millions of employees. As our economy grows, employees should benefit from the wealth-creation process in the form of improved rights and benefits. Some of the notable improvements the Government has introduced in recent years include: increasing paternity leave from three to five days; increasing maternity leave from 10 weeks to 14 weeks, with the additional four weeks being reimbursable by the Government subject to a maximum monthly payment of not more than $80,000; as well as increasing progressively the statutory holidays from 12 to 17 by the end of this decade.

     In closing, I would like to congratulate the award-winning companies of this ceremony once again. I am sure they would keep up their excellent work on creating a great workplace for the employees. I look forward to more and more companies joining their ranks and reaping the reward of creating great workplaces that are not just profitable to employers, but also enjoyable to employees. Thank you.

Ends/Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Issued at HKT 18:08

NNNN