PROVIDING equal opportunities means people with disabilities, the elderly and even breast-feeding moms should be treated just like any other person.

And uplifting their social conditions should be the responsibility everyone, including business entities.

SM Prime Holdings, a publicly listed firm of the SM Group of Companies, certainly owns up to its duty of giving access to the physically challenged—among its many customers—as they, too, deserve an enjoyable and hassle-free leisure malling experience. SM, the company asserts, is always in full compliance of codes respecting the rights of the physically challenged, as well those with special needs.

“People with disabilities are important members of our society as they are members of some of our immediate or even extended families,” Annie S. Garcia, Shopping Center Management Corp. (SCMC) president of SM, told BusinessMirror in an interview. “We always find ways and means to make our facilities accessible to them, thus making sure that they are very welcome in our malls.”  

The same kind of accommodation is extended also to other groups such as senior citizens, as well as pregnant or breast-feeding women, SCMC assistant vice president for operations Bien C. Mateo said.

Considering that it serves millions of people daily at its numerous facilities, the country’s leading mall operator is cognizant of its responsibility to continue searching for ways to improve its service to its customers.

“Other than just simply opening our doors [to the public], there’s so much more to customer service,” explained Garcia, noting the “nonhandicapping” environment it has started to provide in all of the shopping centers operated by SM Supermalls.

“That is what we’re really trying to do. We try to service as many as we can to the best of our ability. But we really need to always up the ante. We always need to improve better and better.”

How it started

THIS program by SM to provide a barrier-free environment at the malls for people with disabilities began with an unfortunate incident.

Garcia recalled how an encounter with a very worried mother, whose 17-year-old autistic son got lost while they were shopping in one of SM malls four years ago, taught the company how to take care of its special customers.

When the mother approached a mall guard about her lost son, it took several hours for the mall administrators to finally find the boy.

“That incident taught us,” she said. “This was enough for us to begin seeking guidance from the experts.”

To further achieve the task of taking care of every customer who enters its malls, SM has consulted various organizations such as the Philippine Autism Society, the Down Syndrome Society, the National Council for the Welfare of Disabled Persons, as well as local government agencies.

Learning how to handle special customers from the experts, the SM officers “slowly realized that we are not just mall administrators managing retails stores for profit. We now broaden our responsibilities and integrate the role of a public servant into our position as well,” Garcia said.

Strategic planning

REALIZING that various customers do come and visit malls with family members and friends, the SM Supermalls management began mapping out a strategy to make its facilities more accessible to disabled persons to truly enjoy their family-bonding moments and shopping trips. This revolves around a four-point program focusing on planning inputs, training programs, information campaign and establishing breast-feeding areas.

The first step was to get the company’s employees to actively participate in the planning stage of the construction of its new malls.

In adherence to the provisions of the Magna Carta for the Disabled, all the shopping centers operated by SM Supermalls are made accessible to the handicapped. 

This, according to Garcia, covers mall facilities such as the arrival and parking areas, walkways and ramps, public phones and signages, entrances, doorways, corridors, stairs, elevators, toilet facilities, and drinking fountains.

“Our architects and design teams now place greater emphasis on implementing accessibility codes and making certain that the requirements are incorporated into the design of every new shopping mall we construct, precisely because we want a safe environment for the handicapped,” she said.

She added: “We have also learned to look back at our older and existing malls and began to upgrade our facilities for the handicapped.”

Training sessions

After guaranteeing the nonhandicapping environment in SM malls, the shopping-center operator spearheaded projects nationwide in support of its thrust on caring for persons with disabilities through training sessions.

Staff training is done regularly with quarterly general formation and quarterly accessibility audits—all aimed at ensuring the sustainability of the program.

According to Mateo, regular training sessions are intended to help managers, staff and tenant employees on how to assist persons with disabilities.

To make these sessions more meaningful, he said resource speakers from various organizations are invited to share information about the physically challenged.

For all frontliners such as security guards, janitors and cashiers, a general formation is held on a quarterly basis. 

“It is in this session that we share and ingrain in them the value of maintaining a nonhandicapping environment that is truly safe and accessible to persons with disabilities,” Mateo explained.

To ensure the program’s full enforcement, SM Supermalls also conducts quarterly audits of all facilities for the handicapped, with the organized working committee addressing the concerns of the physically challenged inside the malls. 

The committee members meet regularly to ensure that malls conduct physical evaluation and inspection of facilities for the handicapped in accordance to standards. In so doing, it reviews the design aspect of the facilities from the point of view of persons with disabilities and makes recommendations to undertake necessary improvements.

“So if there are weaknesses, we have to correct them,” Mateo said.

Information drive

APART from training its employees, SM also sought to make its shoppers more aware and supportive of the disabled by embarking on an intensified information campaign on mall accessibility.            

“We have started to build awareness so that shoppers also may understand and lend their support to accessibility,” Garcia said.

In this information drive, SM Supermalls management stresses that access for the handicapped must be kept free at all times; priority must be given to the handicapped in elevators, lifts and ramps through proper installation of signages; shoppers are taught the importance of respecting facilities exclusive for the use of the handicapped; retrofitting all the cinemas with wheelchair slots conveniently located by the aisle of the theater; replacing the drinking fountains in food courts to become accessible to wheelchair-bound customers; establishing priority checkout lanes in supermarkets and hypermarkets for the handicapped and senior citizens; showcasing the special musical talents of the physically challenged; and providing employment opportunities through job fairs for the handicapped. 

Since this week is annually observed as National Deaf Awareness Week, Mateo disclosed that SM is working with the cinemas to show a film for deaf moviegoers with captions so that they could understand it.

He pointed out that the management came out with the idea after being told by a deaf community that they are only given the chance to see their favorite movies with captions in pirated VCDs or DVDs.

“With that conviction, we thought maybe we should do something about it,” Mateo stressed.

Breast-feeding mothers

ON a similar note, SM Supermalls also established a platform to promote the initiatives of the Unicef toward breast-feeding. 

Garcia recalled that breast-feeding mothers who frequent their malls with their babies used to “go to our comfort rooms to breast-feed them.”

After a discussion with a local organization—the Children for Breastfeeding and Nurturers of the Earth—she said SM “decided to innovate and set up breast-feeding stations in our malls.”

To date, SM has already set up 18 breast-feeding stations nationwide with the rest to follow soon. They typically are small rooms with a sofa where breast-feeding mothers can feed their children privately.  

“Now breast-feeding mothers out shopping in our malls can feed their babies or simply express milk in clean, secure and comfortable environments when the need arises,” Garcia said. “This move is in support of the needs of the Filipino families that shop in our malls.”

Citations here and abroad

FOR all its efforts, SM Supermalls has been recognized here and abroad.

Its programs have caught attention overseas such that SM officials, headed by Garcia, were invited to a conference in June to talk about the role of the private sector in promoting a nonhandicapping environment and in empowering the disabled.

The conference was attended by government and nongovernment organizations from 19 countries. It was held at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific’s Development Center on Disability in Bangkok, Thailand.

“We are grateful to Mr. Akiie Ninomiya [chief adviser of Japan International Cooperative Agency] and Mrs. Kanitta Kamolwat for having given us the confidence to share our program with a bigger audience and on a global platform in the prestigious United Nations Convention Center in Thailand,” Garcia said, recalling that they were the only member from the private sector invited to the meeting.

“All the participants were amazed with the SM program. They did not know that a company like us could actually have a committee focused on implementing programs for the handicapped.

“This, indeed, has emboldened us to continue forging ahead,” she said.

A month after the UN conference, the changes that the SM Supermalls management has put in place resulted in a recognition from President Arroyo, who conferred the highest accolade, the Apolinario Mabini Award, to some of the SM malls in July at the Heroes Hall of Malacañang Palace. 

“These awards are a testament to our commitment and a constant reminder for us to always serve the handicapped in our business environment,” Garcia said.

Social, business impact

SINCE SM Supermalls started to become involved with helping persons with disabilities, it has seen concrete gains to the company’s bottom line.

“These translate to additional persons that can buy from us,” Garcia noted. “They are additional persons who will shop or dine here. Hopefully for us, that’s additional sale.”

Nevertheless, Garcia reiterated that when they first started out on the program, “we didn’t think of it really like that. It goes a little beyond that. Whether you eat or not, for us, it’s important that we are physically able to make you go and have access in our facility because today you may not eat; but you may want to come back in the future. So we invest on that.”

While the SM Supermalls management aspires to make shopping a little bit more pleasant for everyone, Garcia added that “it is really our business, anyway, to really do it. So it makes good business sense and, at the same time, we feel and we’re happy to be part of the CSR of the company.  

“Although educating the public and the business community on how to deal with persons with disabilities is a long, tedious process, we commit to continuously find ways and means to help them while they are in our environment. In doing so, we believe we are expressing the most powerful and humane part of our business organization that is to serve the public that has been patronizing us all these years,” she said.

Mall for all

PROVIDING equal opportunities means people with disabilities, the elderly and even breast-feeding moms should be treated just like any other person.

The audacity of hope

THE jungle trail is perilous. Even that is a treacherous understatement. To get to the refugee camps, the off-road vehicle has to be hauled up a steep incline from a winch. Then you have to slog through the quagmire of the monsoon season in the alternating heat and rain.

On the edge of Myanmar, prodemocracy movement keeps the faith

MAE SOT, Thailand—This bustling border town has long been a magnet for refugees fleeing Myanmar’s repressive military government and searching for a better life. But many arriving now, on the run from authorities for their role in organizing prodemocracy rallies last month, are not looking to settle here. They are preparing for their return.

Four ways to encourage more productive teamwork

In today’s densely interconnected workplaces, working with others—globally and productively—drives organizational and personal effectiveness. Employees work in teams formed to tackle projects, in virtual teams with colleagues and clients, or in ad hoc combinations. Whatever the provenance of the teams in your workplace, your organization depends on them.

Munchausen At Work

One particularly disturbing psychological disorder is Munchausen by proxy, in which a caregiver exaggerates, fabricates or induces illness in another person in order to get praise for then helping the victim. A similar pathology occurs in workplaces when employees create fictitious organizational problems, only to solve them. This behavior, which I call Munchausen at work (MAW), wastes managerial time and resources and can threaten morale and productivity.

The calling

Oscar Sañez wears a pin of the Philippine flag on his business suit and carries a photo of his role model Jose Rizal in his wallet—close to wearing his patriotism on his sleeve.

Winning: Knowing when you’ve stayed too long

Q: What criteria should be used to determine if you have been with the same company too long? Jason Morrow, Salt Lake City                 

A: Your question reminds us of a friend of ours, an investment manager at a highly regarded company in the Midwest, who drove to work one morning, parked his car in the usual spot and then found he simply could not bring himself to get out.

Smooth sailing

IN today’s global commerce, which requires seamless logistics solutions, a country’s geographical setting is indeed a determining factor in trade.

Advertising under siege

AGREEING with Mcluhan, marketing strategists Al and Laura Ries arrived at a conclusion that’s less than comforting to advertising people: if advertising is an art, it belongs in a museum, not in the marketing department (The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, Harper-Collins).

When it comes to quality, consumer electronics giant Sony Corp. scores highly among buyers

CONSUMERS the world over are now shifting to products of high caliber—and Sony, among other brands, is certainly their first choice.

He’s no Paris

There are moments for many parents when they look at their children and see themselves. It happened to Bill Marriott a few weeks ago during breakfast in Tokyo.

Winning: When a raw deal isn’t one

Q: What is wrong with the Yankees? How could they stick a manager as great as Joe Torre with such a raw deal? Stephen MacMillan, Boston                 

A: Since we’re going to take issue with your perspective in a few paragraphs, allow us to begin this column with our points of agreement.

Finding the peace within all of us

Brute force can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom. The thousands of people who marched in the cities of Eastern Europe in recent decades, the unwavering determination of the people in my homeland of Tibet and the recent demonstrations in Burma are powerful reminders of this truth.

Madness, death and solitude

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

Huffing&puffing

New Zealand-born Australian tobacco executive Jeremy Flint, general manager of British American Tobacco (BAT) Philippines has quit smoking and has abstained from the habit the past five months or so.

Place your bets on the future you want

Which firms will gain and which will lose as governments and businesses begin to take climate change seriously? Corporate balance sheets provide a few clues: As greenhouse gas emissions get costlier, the relative value of such assets as natural gas, which produces less carbon dioxide than coal when burned, will increase.

Five Questions

Restoring the fortunes of a company that has fallen on hard times often calls for bold moves, says Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of Confidence: How Winning & Losing Streaks Begin and End (Crown Business, 2004).

Winning: Boardroom benchwarmers

Q:  I sit on a board with two members who, for the past year, have said and done very little. Regardless, both were just reelected unanimously with the support of the nominating committee. What’s your take? Name withheld, New York 

A: So, two seat-warmers on your board were just reelected unanimously, you say? Doesn’t that mean you voted for them, too? If so, don’t worry. You’re definitely not the only board member in history to endure an ineffective or otherwise dysfunctional fellow director.