Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), a jointly-held, equal-ownership company formed by Mubadala Development Company of Abu Dhabi and the Investment Corporation of Dubai, has won five awards – including two Gold awards – at the Ideas.America International Competition, held last month in Colorado, U.S.A.
All five of company's shortlisted suggestions in the competition, which came from its highly-successful employee suggestion scheme, won awards. Although this is the first time EGA took part as a company, its DUBAL subsidiary won a total of 27 Ideas.America awards between 2006 and 2013.
This year, nominations came from both the DUBAL (Jebel Ali) and EMAL (Al Taweelah) sites.
EGA also won three awards in the Ideas.America Statistical Awards category, whereby the performance of a company's employee involvement programme is evaluated in various areas and compared against other companies' programmes. The accolades were: Performance Excellence (Gold); SEER Award for Performance Excellence (Gold) for 100% employee participation; and SEER Award for Savings per 100 Eligible Employees (Bronze).
Abdulla Kalban, Managing Director and CEO of EGA, said the company's success at the awards highlighted a deep-seated culture of innovation. "One of EGA's values is PERFORM, which talks strongly to excelling in operations through continuous improvement and innovation. Value adding-innovation has been a tradition at DUBAL since inception. It was adopted by EMAL and has carried on in EGA," he added.
The Ideas.America Association (formerly known as the U.S.A. Employee Involvement Association) has been in existence for 70 years and is a non-profit service organisation composed of members from all over the world in various sectors such as finance, commerce, industry and government.