Human Resources (HR) operates on two levels within the group. Firstly, there is the Group Human Resources division headed by the HR Director who sits on the operating board. This division is staffed by senior specialists whose role it is, in conjunction with the business and trading divisions, to set strategy and provide shared services such as recruitment, industrial relations, job evaluation, benefits administration, training and development and group succession planning and talent management.
Secondly, the trading and service divisions have well-established HR functions which are headed up by senior HR generalists who are members of their respective management teams. They devise and execute unique HR solutions in line with their division’s requirements, but within the parameters of the group strategy and drawing on the shared services where necessary.
These HR functions have dual reporting lines, one line to the individual MD and another to the Group HR Director.
Pursuant to a change in the leadership of Group HR, a new 9-point long-term strategy was developed taking specific cognisance of the business imperatives, the socio-economic landscape, best HR practice and the solid foundation that HR was built on, with the aim being to sustain and strengthen HR’s position as a strategic business driver that differentiates the group from its competitors.
At the core of the strategy lies a consistent performance management process that drives our approach to talent retention, development and attraction. The significant outcome of this is that new or revised job output models had to be developed for all positions in the group. This dovetailed particularly well with the job evaluation, e-recruitment, remuneration, talent management and leadership development projects.
In light of the need to provide more aggregate and real-time data to managers and employees, and the philosophy that employees should take responsibility for their personal information, the group has commenced the scoping process for a group-wide HR information system. It is hoped that a short list of vendors will be identified shortly.
The provision of a wide variety of generic and specific leadership, managerial skills and operational programmes ensures that employees have the opportunity to enhance their skills, whilst at the same time the group has a workforce that is current and can deal with all eventualities. There is a growing focus on aligning certain general programmes with the National Skills Standards, thus providing employees with a formal qualification.
The group is directing its efforts on store manager and graduate trainee training as one of the strategies to ensure an ongoing skills pipeline.
In excess of 14 800 staff participated in at least one training programme during the year. Further information on skills development appears in the Sustainability section of this report.
A discussion of both employment equity and corporate social investment initiatives appears in the Sustainability section of this report.
To ensure that our staff are competitively rewarded, we constantly benchmark and review our practices against the market. In addition, the group recently introduced a new and more relevant job evaluation system and to date most of the key jobs have been re-evaluated. Further research into variable compensation practices and share schemes is currently in progress in order to further enhance and reinforce the principles of performance-based remuneration. The retention of key staff is a critical output of this area.
The group has a well-entrenched process addressing talent planning. The board meets twice annually to review each division’s plans and to establish a centralised view of the group’s resources. During the year the process was enhanced by standardising the performance review and talent mapping process, thus facilitating more accurate, meaningful and consistent comparisons across divisions.
The various divisions run a number of tailored programmes such as our well-established leadership academies to help identify and track talent at all levels.
The group rolled out our Voluntary Counselling and Testing Programme during the year which is available to all employees in South Africa. The neighbouring territory programmes will be rolled out in due course.
Any employee testing positive will receive full support, including antiretrovirals as needed. Further information is available in the Sustainability Report.
