What it does: Develops real estate properties for retail, hospitality, healthcare, education, and commercial industries.
Best known for: Its key properties like the Sunway Resort Hotel and Spa and the Pyramid Tower Hotel.
Staff stats: More than 16,000 employees all over Malaysia.
The good bits: The company offers its regular employees medical insurance, scholarships, and admission discounts to company resorts and theme parks.
The not so good bits: Management is criticised for the quality of its leadership, with some employees pointing out discriminatory practices in departments that are not heavily multi-cultural. Other employees have noted management's lack of support for employee-driven initiatives to make work experience better.
The founder of Sunway Group, Jeffrey Cheah, envisioned a Malaysia that is entirely different from the tin mining wasteland that it was back in the late 1970s. Cheah articulated his vision to then Culture, Arts, and Tourism Minister Tan Sri Sabaruddin Chik as they both stood on an 800-acre mining land that is now Sunway City.
In 1986, Sunway built Sunway Lagoon Theme Park, the first theme park entertainment in Malaysia. In the following year, the company established the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation (JCF) which then developed the Sunway Education Group (SEG). The group built Sunway College which then built partnerships with notable institutions and became Sunway University.
In 1993, Sunway built Menara Sunway. A 19-storey global headquarters that houses its 12 business divisions. In 1996, the company built Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa, their 5-star flagship hotel with 1,500 guestrooms, suits, and pool villas. In 1997, Sunway Pyramid was built, a shopping mall with up to 1,000 retail outlets. In 1999, the group built the Sunway Medical Centre, the first hospital in Southeast Asia to receive full accreditation from the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards.
Fast forward to 2010, in staying true to his commitment to promoting sustainable education, Sunway founder Jeffrey Cheah endowed his equity in SEG valued at MYR 1 billion today. The funds will build schools and award scholarships to deserving students throughout the founder's lifetime. In 2013, Sunway built The Pinnacle Sunway—a 27-storey office building that supports the growth of the ICT industries in Malaysia.
In 2014, Sunway built Malaysia's first green township in Sunway City. The city houses seven business components of the company in a fully-integrated green township. In the following year, Sunway opened its first elevated Bus Rapid Transit, the Sunway Line. During this time JCF has built connections and educational collaborations with institutions like the United Nations, Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.
In 2016, the company collaborated with Viacom International Media to create Nickelodeon Lost Lagoon at Sunway Lagoon. In the same year, the Sunway Clio Hotel was opened. Before closing 2016, Sunway opened Sunway Velocity Mall, a 1.4 million square foot shopping mall just 3 kilometres from Kuala Lumpur.
In 2017, Sunway constructed its water treatment facility which produces around 10,000 metric tons of water per day. The facility serves as the water supply of commercial buildings in Sunway. Today, Sunway City is home to more than 200,000 residents and more than 150 species of flora and fauna.
Inside Sunway Group's offices is a culture of free speech. Employees, even ones on the entry-level, can speak their minds and share their ideas at meetings. The executives also make time to interact with mid-level and entry-level employees. For people new in the company, however, it may take some time to learn the jargon that long-time employees like to use often.
Sunway and the programmes it has developed for educational institutions has always been synonymous with each other. With Jeffrey Cheah Foundation's efforts, the company has provided scholarships, restored and adopted schools, empowered teachers, organised special training programmes, and collaborated with notable institutions since its conception in 1987.
Other than its contributions in promoting sustainable education, Sunway has also partnered with organisations like Cryuff Court Iskandar, Sisters of the Infant Jesus Convent (IJC), and Alzheimer’s Disease Foundation among others, to aid communities all over the world in ameliorating ailments, poverty, and harsh living conditions.
Sunway's many business divisions have a common flexible vibe in its offices. Employees have to be flexible in order to meet their targets on-time. They often multitask so they need to develop a habit of working at a consistent pace to cope with the workload.
Sunway accepts online applications as well as on-site submissions. The company shortlists its candidates before calling them back for a brief phone interview. During the phone interview, the HR officer asks simple questions, confirms the position being applied for, and schedules on-site interviews.
During the on-site interviews, applicants will be given a written technical assessment that should be done within an hour. In the test are situational scenarios that will test applicants' decision-making skills and technical expertise. Only those that pass the test will be called into a face-to-face interview with the HR officer. Chosen applicants will be given a job offer on-site.
The entire recruitment process can take two and five weeks.
Sunway is a company with various business divisions, what that means for young professionals is the abundance of opportunities they can find inside the company. Professionals can seek opportunities in any one of the divisions. As an employer, Sunway is generous in giving opportunities to its employees so long as employees can prove their progress throughout the year. There is an annual performance review in most departments where employees have an opportunity to showcase their contributions in the previous months. Employees that prove to have performed well will be given better responsibilities and a raise that supports the workload they are going to be responsible for in the coming months.
Interns at Sunway earn at least MYR 1,000 per month. As they land a position in particular business divisions and gain a more specific assignment in a particular department, they can earn at least MYR 2,700 every month. Top performers who end up handling their own departments can earn up to MYR 3,650 every month.