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Employee recognition is no longer just about rewards. UD Trucks Thailand shares how embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion into everyday recognition is helping create a workplace where every employee feels valued, heard, and empowered.
As employee expectations continue to evolve, organisations are rethinking what meaningful recognition looks like. For UD Trucks Thailand, recognition goes beyond awards and forms part of its broader commitment to building employee experience from the frontline up through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DECI).
The organisation's DECI strategy is centred on creating equal opportunities and ensuring every employee feels valued, regardless of whether they work on the frontline or in corporate functions, the team tells HRO. By promoting visible leadership sponsorship, decentralising recognition, and celebrating employees' diverse voices and unique stories, UD Trucks Thailand aims to strengthen trust, workplace inclusion, and a culture where recognition is embedded into everyday leadership.
The approach earned UD Trucks Thailand a silver award for ‘Best Diversity and Inclusion Strategy’ at the Employee Experience Awards 2026, Thailand. Following the awards, HRO speaks with Wilawan Vispapaew, Managing Director, Region Thailand, and Prasit Wongmongkoldej, Head of UD Trucks Operations Bangkok, to learn what this recognition means to the organisation, and why the team believes the future of employee experience lies in making recognition more authentic and equitable.
Find the full interview below.
Q What was the biggest insight or lesson that influenced your Employee Experience approach this past year?
Our most critical insight this year was that a genuine employee experience must be built from the frontline up, not imposed top-down. New hires, particularly mechanics and engineers from diverse backgrounds, often struggled with complex workflows in isolation. To address this, we shifted from passive onboarding to an empathetic, structured support ecosystem.
This approach became a tangible expression of our DECI commitment, anchored on three pillars: a peer-to-peer Buddy Programme to foster early inclusion, monthly New Joiner Clinics for real-time dialogue, and Probation Congratulations to honour probation milestones. By prioritising psychological safety, equitable support, and continuous listening, we reduced new-hire resignations from 16.07% to 9.30%.
The takeaway is clear: our promise of a better life is only realised when it is felt equitably by the frontline first – proving that belonging drives resilience and performance.
Q How did you bring leaders, managers, and employees together to support the execution and success of the initiative?
We approached this cultural transformation through shared ownership rather than a top-down mandate. Leaders pioneered the change by hosting active-listening forums and recognition events, making their commitment visible, personal, and easy for every employee to recognise, rather than a procedural checkbox handed down from above.
Managers served as key enablers, integrating value-based assessments into daily operations and reinforcing behaviours aligned with our organisational values. Employees, in turn, became active co-creators of our culture, leading cross-site initiatives such as the DECI musical collaboration, which brought together colleagues from diverse departments and functions, deepening inclusion, collaboration, and a shared sense of belonging.
By turning corporate strategy into a collaborative mission, we didn't just build engagement, we built trust. Today, that collective effort is reflected in an employee engagement score of over 4 out of 5, a consistently positive experience that continues to strengthen organisational resilience, sustainable performance, and long-term success.
Q What challenge behind the scenes tested your team the most, and what did it teach you about building stronger Employee Experience programmes?
Our greatest challenge was proving that ultimate dependability (UD) is not a corporate slogan, but a core value genuinely lived across the organisation. Building trust, especially among frontline employees, required us to move beyond policies and good intentions.
We needed tangible evidence that our commitment to diversity, equity C inclusion (DECI) was real, ensuring recognition, opportunities, and appreciation were distributed fairly across all employee groups, not only among office-based staff. To do this, we dismantled traditional hierarchical barriers and embedded DECI into the fabric of our culture across multiple locations. Visible leadership sponsorship and consistent engagement strengthened connections between employees and created a workplace where everyone felt valued and heard.
This taught us that exceptional employee experience programs are not built on sophisticated frameworks alone, but on authenticity, trust, and inclusion.
The proof is real: zero labour and equity-related complaints since 2016, a culture where fairness and dependability are lived daily.
Q As you reflect on the journey, what does this recognition at the Employee Experience Awards 2026 mean to you and your team?
This recognition is far more than a corporate trophy; it deeply validates our core philosophy that employee experience must be built from the frontline up, while serving as a powerful testament to our concrete DECI strategy.
For equity: It confirms to our leadership that visible sponsorship and breaking the divide between corporate and frontline staff successfully builds institutional trust and equal opportunities.
For inclusion: It proves to our managers that decentralising recognition authority directly strengthens workplace inclusion, making every team member feel safe and valued.
For diversity: Most importantly, for our employees, it demonstrates that their diverse voices, backgrounds, and unique stories are genuinely celebrated and heard, rather than simply documented.
Winning the silver award for 'Best DECI Strategy' and being named a finalist for 'Best Rewards C Recognition' (U THAM D) marks a brilliant milestone in our DECI journey. However, the true reward lies in sustaining an authentic, inclusive culture owned by everyone, proving that a “better life” is a lived daily reality for every single employee.
Q As employee expectations continue to evolve, what is one area of EX you believe HR teams will need to rethink in the year ahead?
HR must rethink recognition to align with employee expectations. Traditional, standardised awards no longer resonate with today’s workforce, which values immediacy, authenticity, and inclusion. Employees now seek recognition that is peer-driven, context-specific, and seamlessly integrated into daily workflows.
The U THAM D programme demonstrates that recognition can be a powerful vehicle for DECI. By ensuring equity for frontline staff, mechanics, engineers, and office employees alike, diverse contributions are valued beyond polished corporate frameworks. Anchored in UD core values and the “going the extra mile” philosophy, this mindset must be sustained through consistent action.
To achieve this, leaders at all levels must evolve from evaluators into cultural champions. Recognition authority should be decentralised, embedded in everyday leadership behaviours, and strengthened through peer-to-peer networks. This transforms recognition from compliance into a cultural engine, building authentic, equitable employee experiences and driving organisational resilience.
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets section!
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