The Asian Woman Index Awards were held as part of the Asia Women Leaders Forum 2016, which is organized by the Asia Business Daily and sponsored by seven organizations including the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. The awards are aimed at promoting the better utilization of female workers at leading Korean companies through the use of objective evaluations, encouraging the most successful examples.

According to the Asian Woman Index Awards’ female workforce utilization index, POSCO ranked first among Korean companies, with high marks in recruiting and fostering female employees. Among POSCO’s strong points were the introduction of the first public recruitment process in Korea that specifically targets women, the fact that a quarter of POSCO’s new college graduate recruits are women (twice the industry average), having the first female executive in the steel industry, and providing special leadership training for female workers.

In addition, POSCO has created a culture supportive of work-life balance, which includes providing paid leave for childbirth and childcare, paid paternity leave, and up to two years of childcare leave. As a result, POSCO was judged to be the most female-friendly company with a 100% return-to-work rate following childbirth and a 97% return rate following parental leave.

Other winners at the first Asian Woman Index Awards included the telecom KT, which won the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Prize; LG Electronics, which received the Work-Life Balance Division Prize; GS Engineering and Construction, for the Gender Equality Division Prize; SK Telecom, with the Organizational Culture Division Prize; and, Shinhan Bank, which won the Staffing Division Prize.

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Since 2005, the WEF has released the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World Index (Global 100 Index) through Corporate Knights, the Canada-based media and investment advisory company. In the belief that corporate competitiveness and sustainability involve not only a company’s financial performance but also its contribution to environmental and social sectors, corporations are evaluated across 12 “key performance indicators” and ranked accordingly.

Receiving favorable evaluations in R&D innovation, energy efficiency and governance index, among others, POSCO maintains its leading position in the domestic manufacturing industry. Among Korean corporations, Shinhan Bank (18th), LG Electronics (44th) and Samsung Electronics (94th) also made the list. Meanwhile, BMW, the German automobile company, came in first while other global conglomerates such as Coca Cola (13th), Intel (38th) and GE (70th) followed.

Being selected as one of the top 100 corporations in 2016 is significant, as there were many difficulties in the market last year, including global oversupply, slumps in major industries and strengthened import regulations in export destinations. Furthermore, structural regulation was conducted for financial structure improvement.

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