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

We continually implement and improve our programmes to detect issues early, manage risks, and to prevent and reduce harm to any of our employees, visitors, and contractors. Behavioural safety and exposure reduction are being addressed through employee engagement, capacity building and addressing any office and production ergonomic working conditions. We are building synergy between our safety management standards and operational discipline to achieve a level of operational effectiveness that enables an LTIFR improvement year on year. Our effective internal and external auditing programme provides assurance on our SHE systems, supports the monitoring of performance, and enables risk management and continual improvement.

Behaviour-based safety	Demonstrated leadership	Effective communication	Responsibility and accountability
OWNERSHIP AND INVOLVEMENT AT ALL LEVELS

SAFETY

Our safety management system ensures that for every incident that occurs, a root-cause analysis process is triggered, which informs future preventive measures and contributes to the continual improvement of our operational safety culture. We continue to apply disciplinary action where appropriate and where incidents have occurred due to employees not adhering to the defined safe work practices. A detailed investigation is carried out for every fatality and lost-time injury, involving a multi-disciplinary team and senior management. The results are reviewed at group level to ensure that the whole company learns from the incident.

We are placing emphasis on the implementation of MECP across all our plants. We prioritised our activities on 10 sites with the greatest need for improvement. We started by building safety capability at the shop-floor level, which enables better communication and more practical application of hazard identification. We subsequently conducted self-assessed audits at our 10 priority sites to gauge the maturity of our risk management programme.

The MECP programme is supported by the ongoing rollout of our behaviour-based safety programme, which drives employee safety through management, peer observation, and the provision of initial non-punitive feedback to the transgressor. We delivered capacity-building and safety initiatives this year to improve our operational safety culture and inspire our employees to take personal responsibility for their health and safety. We implemented a series of safety and health campaigns across the group, which focused on robust action-planning for topical risks that required closure. The campaigns included interventions to curb the increase of trauma injuries to hands and fingers, slip and fall incidence, and unsafe conditions related to moving machinery and machine guarding. We have seen significant improvement in the reporting of near misses, and a reduction of unsafe conditions and acts being observed and reported at our sites. These results have empowered us to shift our focus towards the leading, rather than lagging, indicators of safety performance.

In 2021, we improved our total recordable case frequency rate (TRCFR) from 0,79 in 2020 to 0,46. We recorded a 23% reduction lost-time injuries (LTI) and improved our lost-time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) from 0,34 in 2020 to 0,31. The majority of our lost-time injuries were recorded in our Grains division and related to Albany route-to-market security incidents (see below). Despite these route-to-market challenges, we are happy to report zero fatalities across the business in 2021. These positive safety results show the effectiveness of the initiatives we have delivered in this fiscal year.

Our safety performance

NR – not reported.

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Our core occupational health programme focuses on the delivery of health risk assessments, occupational hygiene surveys, medical surveillance, and the provision of primary health care. Despite the ongoing pressure from Covid-19, we continue to deliver health and wellness interventions and initiatives, and invest in advancing our programmes to safeguard our employees from all priority health risks. All our health initiatives are underpinned by the delivery of continuous health awareness campaigns and interventions.

Responding to Covid-19 has remained a key focus of our occupational health and wellness programme since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, and we continue to deliver and adapt our health interventions and initiatives in response to the prolonged presence and impact of the pandemic (see We ignite our people through a purpose-led culture). Our focus has shifted this year from initial preventative protocols to the proactive screening and vaccination of staff. We have tested staff regularly for Covid-19 using antigen nasal swabs, and have conducted a total of 28 559 antigen tests to date. We further established pilot vaccination sites in Gauteng to ensure accessibility of vaccines to staff, with 23% of our staff having been fully vaccinated to date. Both these health initiatives have been underpinned by the delivery of continuous Covid-19 and health awareness campaigns and interventions.

We continued with site occupational hygiene surveys and health risk assessments for different tasks within the manufacturing environment. We identify our top health risks through these due-diligence processes, including any abnormal or significant health-surveillance results, and these are reported to top management for inclusion in operational risk management planning and strategy, and to drive continual improvement in our performance.

We continued to run routine staff medical surveillance programme, where the monitoring and management of chronic disease among our staff is a key concern. We screen all our employees and contract labour for Covid-19 and lifestyle diseases including diabetes, cholesterol, HIV/Aids and hypertension. Employees who are found to have more than one of these chronic conditions are encouraged to enrol in THRIVE, an employee assistance programme for those at high risk.

Our facilities continue to deliver programmes that drive behavioural transformation in partnership with the wellbeing department in human resources (see We ignite our people through a purpose-led culture). Through these programmes we have delivered wellness support to employees who have experienced health or wellness-related incidents or challenges, including Covid-19-related bereavement and support achieving better work-life balance. We also continue the development of our leaders and supervisors to inspire a culture of health and wellness, and to lead by example through a practice of leadership that is visible and felt (see We ignite our people through a purpose-led culture).

Our employee wellbeing support programme offers 24-hour telephonic counselling and face-to-face counselling from professional psychologists, social workers, dieticians, bio-kineticists, and financial and legal advisers. Our onsite clinic services include occupational health support and essential primary healthcare, which is free to all permanent and temporary employees onsite. We provide an ongoing primary healthcare service to all employees, and manage the risk and incidence of infectious disease through the primary healthcare programme.

We continued to build our capabilities for reporting work-related illnesses, and are strengthening our tracking mechanisms and occupational-health ways of working in response to the impact of Covid-19 risk and the shift towards digital-first work arrangements. Improving the flexibility of work hours, providing advice and support on the ergonomics of workspaces, and aiding the navigating of new challenges in work-life balance have been key focus areas.

ENVIRONMENT

Over the last few years, we have improved our environmental governance and legislative adherence through key industry partnerships, and continue to invest in reducing our environmental footprint in accordance with the environmental stewardship pillar of our sustainable strategy (see Environmental stewardship). Our focus is towards developing innovative environmental solutions that address the key impacts relating to our processes, manufacturing facilities, products and by-products.

We continue with our mandatory reporting to the DFFE, and monitor relevant legislative developments with interest. We have registered with DFFE in respect to the new EPR regulations, and follow developments relating to the forthcoming front-of-pack nutrition labelling regulations in South Africa.

From a due diligence perspective, we continue to conduct root-cause analysis on environmental infringements, and ensure that corrective and preventive measures are implemented and continually improved. We have increased the frequency of our site reviews and internal reporting, and this has improved our management of environmental incidents.

SECURITY

We make a continuous effort to understand current and emerging security trends, including cyber security trends (see We ignite our people through a purpose led culture), to ensure we have the necessary mitigation measures in place to guard against our security threats. Accordingly, consistent work is undertaken at all our facilities to continuously improve our security controls and security management. Guiding our actions are site-level security risk-assessments that employ a security management system methodology to review security and ensure the presence of appropriate physical security measures and access controls.

We had multiple sites impacted by the civil unrest and looting which took place in South Africa in July 2021. Most significant was the R100 million direct and indirect loss we incurred from the looting and vandalising of our Tastic and Snacks & Treats sites. These sites have recovered from the impact, but our business continuity plans were well-tested by these events. We have reviewed these events and are currently implementing security improvements based on lessons learnt through this experience.

Our biggest security challenge and the most significant risk to our business this year, continues to be the threat to our people from route-to-market incidents in the Albany business. We have recorded a total of 572 Albany route-to-market incidents over the last five years, ranging from petty theft to major robbery and violence, and with an increasing trend in incidents over the last three years. We recorded 105 incidents in 2021, fortunately with zero loss of life, yet with 83% of the LTIs in Bakeries being route-to-market related. These incidents amounted to a total loss of nearly R1 million over the year, including the theft of a truck from one of our bakery sites. Reducing these safety and security incidents in the Albany business has been an area of key focus for the business in recent years and will be a top priority in 2022. While we continue to implement preventive measures, including the provision of armed security vehicle escorts on high-risk routes, the risk remains very high and difficult to address due to the complex and unpredictable nature of the external environment. We are currently analysing route-to-market incidents and investigating alternative interventions with the aim to renew our strategy for reducing these incidents significantly in 2022.