Sustainability report: a review of Tiger Brands’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance

A SPOTLIGHT ON GENDER-EQUITY PERFORMANCE

In 2018, we launched the Tiger Women's Network, designed specifically for women in our workforce to network, dialogue and have access to mentorship, coaching and development during their career at Tiger Brands. From 2019, we started implementing our integrated gender-equity strategy. In partnership with Henley Business School, we developed and implemented the Tiger Brands' Rise Women's Leadership Development programme which gave participants an opportunity to develop their leadership and strategic capability through action learning projects designed to solve real business challenges. We have also integrated dialogues about unconscious bias into our leadership development programme and culture transformation journey.

In 2020, we commenced with the development and execution of our Women in Tiger accelerated development programmes for Women in Supply Chain, Bakeries and Customer, as well as creating the conditions for women to succeed in the core of our business.

As a result of these focused efforts, we have grown our female representation at top management level gradually over the last three years, from a baseline of 20% in 2018 to 40% in 2021. Female representation at senior management increased to 44% in 2021 from a baseline of 40% in 2018; this includes our female managing directors, who are leading four of Tiger Brands' eight core businesses in South Africa. Our management trainee intake in the last year was 100% female for the first time.

We received public recognition for our progress with the execution of our gender-equity strategy at the Africa Gender Mainstreaming Awards 2021 developed by Business Engage, where we were judged as Southern Africa Gender Mainstreaming Champion in the South African listed company category.

In addition to the Champion Award, we were named the winner in a further three categories:

• Women on Boards – recognising deliberate and targeted steps we have taken to increase the representation of women in senior leadership and decision-making roles. Currently, 54% of our board of directors, 40% of our group executive committee members, and 44% of our senior leadership roles are filled by women
• Empowerment of Women in the Community Award and the Economic Empowerment Award – these awards recognise our contribution to sustainable initiatives that provide income opportunities to women and poor communities, as well as our enterprise development programmes such as the Dipuno Fund and Agricultural Aggregator Model, that empower women-owned and managed businesses
• Tiger Brands was named second finalist in the Equal Participation Award.

Tiger Brands received a number of awards at the annual Accenture Gender Mainstreaming Awards including the Women on Boards award. Left to right: Deepa Sita (chief financial officer), Mahlape Sello (non-executive director), Maya Makanjee (non-executive director), Mary-Jane Morifi (chief corporate affairs and sustainability officer), Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi (chairman), Becky Opdyke (chief marketing officer), S'ne Magagula (chief human resources officer), Gail Klintworth (independent non-executive director), Emma Mashilwane (non-executive director) and Cora Fernandez (independent non-executive director).

CULTIVATING CORE CAPABILITIES

We continued to develop and grow core and future-fit capabilities. We have established a strong foundation for building our key talent pools by identifying the core commercial and specialised technical capabilities needed to execute our strategic agenda and business priorities. This has formed the basis for our sourcing, talent mapping and development actions. In line with our talent philosophy of "growing our own timber", we review our internal talent and succession plans annually to identify individuals with potential to grow further in the organisation, and we drive deliberate execution of our development plans to get internal talent ready for opportunities. Over the last three years, we have improved our succession bench ratios from 0:1 to 2:1 on average; our goal is to achieve a robust succession bench ratio of 3:1 across the board. This year we refocused our Supply Chain, Marketing, Customer, Bakeries and R&D learning academies on building core capabilities that drive strategy execution in the business of today, as well as ensuring that Tiger Brands is fit for the future.

In addition to retaining our strong focus on developing capabilities internally and promoting from within, where necessary, we have also assessed talent to be sourced externally for key positions to ensure that any identified capability gaps can be closed quickly.

We have made significant progress in the delivery of our Rest of Africa talent and capability agenda. We have registered permanent entities in Nigeria and Kenya, resourced key vacancies in our Rest of Africa business and undertaken coaching and mentoring as part of preparations for in-market placements.

We took advantage of the opportunities presented by remote-working arrangements to embed the use of just-in-time digital learning to accelerate the integration of learning into day-to-day work across the organisation.

Talent – 2021 performance summary

DEVELOPING INSPIRING, AGILE LEADERS

We continued to develop the leadership capabilities required to enable our leaders to engage our workforce and create the conditions for them to perform at their peak. We leveraged our targeted talent rotations and flagship development programmes Game Changer and LIFT to embed our leadership competences geared to improve our leaders' ability to lead self, people, performance, innovation and partnerships.

We measure our leaders' progress on acquiring these critical capabilities through our 360° MultiRater feedback platform that provides leaders with direct feedback from their teams, peers and line leaders on their behaviours and demonstrated ability to live the Tiger Values. We also recently launched mentorship circles for emerging leaders looking to learn from more experienced leaders.

Looking ahead, we will continue executing our fit-for-purpose leadership development programmes and rotations to strengthen our leadership pipeline, as well as to stimulate innovation and a growth mindset across our talent pool.

Our leadership development programmes

Our leadership competences

		318 leaders attended LIFT
		263 leaders have attended Game Changer
		Successfully completed annual talent reviews and identified key successors to key roles
		Launched our mentorship programme, and reviewed our leadership coaching approach
		Designed our Leader-as-Coach programme to be implemented in 2022
		Developed our WINGS high-potential accelerated development programme for launch in 2022.

CREATING A GREAT PLACE TO WORK

We are making progress on our culture transformation journey through our actions to create a great place to work and energise a consumer-obsessed and agile "one-Tiger team". We recognise that building a consistent culture requires time and deliberate actions. We have established internal alignment on the desired culture and have built a foundation for this through our shared values and winning behaviours. Our focus now is on consistently infusing our values and winning behaviours in how we operate on a day-to-day basis, creating collaborative teams that are consumer obsessed, agile, risk-embracing and innovative.

In November 2020, we initiated our new Voice of Tiger process, a group-wide employee engagement and experience survey. The survey was conducted digitally and made available in six languages, and we achieved a 73% employee participation rate from across all our sites. Our overall employee engagement score was a positive 70 against a global benchmark of 74, indicating that the majority of employees who participated in the survey experience Tiger Brands as a great place to work, are fully committed to our goals and values, and are prepared to go the extra mile to deliver winning performance.

The survey results highlighted clear strengths – which we continue to reinforce and celebrate – and opportunities for improvement were also identified. We are implementing deliberate actions to address these to further improve our employee experience and ultimately our ability to execute with excellence, speed and agility. The strengths highlighted by the survey indicated that our people feel connected to our purpose and that they are making a meaningful contribution to the execution of our strategy. The survey indicated that employees were confident that the leaders in the organisation would take action to address gaps identified through the survey and work actively to remove barriers to creating a great place to work.

The opportunities identified and prioritised for action were clustered into priority areas for action, which included: visible recognition for a job well done; more visibility and equal access to career opportunities across the organisation; more opportunities to challenge the status quo and contribute to the innovation agenda; improvement in empowerment and speed of decision making; treating each other with care and respect; and enabling our people to balance their work and home lives.

Our key actions to address the Voice of Tiger survey insights:

• We engaged all our teams on the outcomes and co-created solutions to address opportunities
• We launched the Tiger Dojo in partnership with Deloitte to introduced AGILE capability in the business focusing on two innovation projects – which resulted in vastly improved consumer centric mix development and the launch of two pilots in a third of the time a typically project would take
• We also utilised design thinking methodology to evolve our Tiger innovation governance process ultimately helping solve consumer pain points better in half the time
• We refreshed our recognition platform, Tiger Stripes, and made it digitally available to facilitate recognition for a job well done in day-to-day operations
• We held our annual Tiger Stripes awards ceremony virtually in December 2020. The awards recognise teams and individuals who have gone the extra mile and excelled in different categories. The categories of awards included: Innovation, Execution Excellence, Manufacturing Team of the Year, Customer Team of the Year, Brand Team of the Year, Leader of the Year, Covid-19 Heroes, and role modelling of the Tiger values and winning behaviours
• We further simplified our STI scheme to ensure line of sight, and to stimulate excellent execution across our categories. We revised the sales incentive scheme which is designed to motivate our customer facing teams and designed a production incentive scheme for our manufacturing employees
• We made progress on embedding our revised operating model and structure, through the revision of our organisation-wide delegation of authority (DOA). The new model liberates decision making at the frontline, and allows category teams to focus on the consumer, more consumer-centric innovation and delivery of results
• We reinforced learnings from our Heart of Tiger dialogues and leadership development programmes to renew focus on our shared value of care and respect
• We also improved communication and sharing of key career and development opportunities through our digital platforms and intranet
• We have reprioritised our business imperatives, accelerated the implementation of our technology enablement strategy, and run an awareness campaign to support employees to integrate work and life more effectively, and to improve their ability to cope with stress
• In November 2021, we will conduct our follow up Voice of Tiger Pulse to solicit further feedback from our people on how we are progressing in terms of opportunity areas identified in the 2020 survey.

ENHANCING EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING

Our employee wellbeing programme, THRIVE, has continued to play a critical role in enabling our people and their families to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic, and build the resilience required to deal with work-life integration issues, and physical, emotional, and mental-health challenges. During the year, we reviewed and re-engaged our people on our flexible working practices, seeking to continue and better enable effective work practice in a hybrid environment, as we continue to navigate the pandemic.

REWARDING WINNING PERFORMANCE

We reward winning employee performance to motivate excellence in the execution of our strategy, and to enhance our ability to attract, develop and retain high-calibre talent. We review and refine our reward and recognition strategy annually to stimulate execution of our strategy, to align with market benchmarks, and meet the interests of our employees and shareholders.

We have enhanced our remuneration strategy to improve alignment with our KPIs used to measure and reward performance against our strategy. The REMCO approved the implementation of a revised STI scorecard that drives the achievement of KPIs, maintaining a balance between the focus on financial, strategic and sustainability measures. We also revised the STI weightings for the group and business units to increase focus on the delivery of results at category team level. Further amendments were also made to the group and business-unit scorecards to improve line-of-sight for employees in the frontline of our business.

These changes to the STI structure further support our reward framework, which follows a "total reward" approach, consisting of guaranteed pay and variable pay, and a range of market-relevant benefits and professional growth opportunities that recognise individual and team performance.

We reward performance fairly and responsibly, in accordance with the reward philosophy outlined in our remuneration policy, and in alignment with International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions and relevant national legislation. We conduct assessments on pay fairness, and annually ringfence and manage a separate budget to address identified pay disparities (see IR section).

MAINTAINING WIN-WIN EMPLOYEE RELATIONS

We align and comply with all labour-related legislation and ILO conventions relevant to the countries where we operate. There have been no instances of non-compliance with labour standards reported in 2021.

One of the company's strategic intents is to establish and maintain a meaningful collaborative relationship with our key stakeholders, including our representative trade unions and employees. During the year we continued to progress implementation of our employee relations partnership framework to ensure better alignment between site leaders, employees, and union representatives. Site partnership forums and engagement channels continue to ensure that matters of mutual interest are addressed before they escalate into conflicts or industrial action. In line with this approach, our CEO and members of our executive team also engaged with our most representative trade union partners during the year on business strategy, business performance, employee safety and wellbeing, and other matters of mutual interest.

During the year, we successfully concluded 23 site-negotiations out of a planned 24, without industrial action. Regrettably, we experienced one protected strike at our Davita site due to a wage dispute. The strike lasted 44 days, with 1 056 manhours lost. Stabilisation efforts at this site are starting to have a positive effect, resulting in a more collaborative partnership with our trade union partners.

We continue to build the capability of our operational line and site-based human resources teams to improve employee relations and the negotiations approach. This has been supplemented by building the capacity of our shop stewards on negotiation skills.

Covid-19 response: Employee well-being

In 2021, we maintained our focus on managing the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on our organisation, employees, their families, consumers and communities. We continued to deliver interventions to ensure employee safety, productivity, physical and mental wellbeing.

The key aspects of our people response included the following:

• We facilitated remote work arrangements where possible during the lockdowns, and enabled return-to-work plans when necessary
• We initiated a mental health awareness campaign in October 2020, with daily mental health activations and activities
• We provided additional support to employees dealing with anxiety, loss, and bereavement
• We held group trauma interventions to assist with the fallout from the recent social unrest in South Africa
• We held Covid-19 vaccination clinics at some of our sites to support accessible vaccination
• We offered employees special leave for getting vaccinated (one day's leave per dose)
• We implemented customised screening, testing, self-isolation, and re-integration protocols
• We have enhanced our health, sanitation, and cleaning protocols, provided PPE and sanitiser to all employees, implemented daily hygiene and cleaning practices and weekly deep-cleaning, reduced employee movement within buildings, limited face-to-face meetings, and ensured distancing of workstations
• We have appointed dedicated site-based Covid-19 communications champions, and implemented a comprehensive Covid-19 internal communications strategy, including a website, safety and hygiene signage, daily awareness campaigns, multi-lingual messaging, and regular announcement of key safety decisions.