SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2023
Supplement to the integrated annual report for the year ended 30 September 2023
Supplement to the integrated annual report for the year ended 30 September 2023
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Our key policies
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Our goal is to attract, retain, and cultivate diverse top talent, develop the capabilities of our people and leaders, and ignite the passion of our teams to bring their best self to work every day, in the pursuit of innovation, growth, and execution excellence.
Recent global events have transformed work habits, emphasising the role of technology and digitalisation in unlocking execution, agility and competitiveness. These changes also underscore the importance of hybrid and flexible work practices, talent management and employee wellbeing. Global talent shortages and increased attrition continue to challenge many organisations in the markets in which we operate.
In this challenging context, we are committed to retaining key talent through targeted actions, including improving our value proposition by enhancing employee experience, accelerating proactive talent acquisition, deepening talent development through focused programmes, prioritising internal talent mobility, and continually refining a competitive reward strategy. Furthermore, we enhance our organisational culture and engagement by responding to feedback from the Voice of Tiger survey and fostering a focus on consumer obsession, execution excellence, agility, and innovation. Our THRIVE programme supports employee wellbeing, strengthening our ability to engage, grow, and retain talent crucial for executing our business strategy.
Our people strategy enables the execution of our business strategy, supporting Tiger Brands to win in the market. The strategy sets us on a path to rigorously develop and effectively mobilise our talent, so that our people and the business achieve winning performance. The three pillars of the people strategy – talent, leadership, and great place to work – shape our approach to attracting and sourcing diverse talented people who have the core and leadership capabilities to achieve our aspirations for igniting execution excellence, accelerating innovation, and creating an agile culture that is highly focused on the consumer.
We use people analytics to develop and implement future-fit workforce solutions, and to track our performance against targets relating to talent, diversity, learning and skills development, employee engagement and sustainability.
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Our 2030 targets
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We have laid a strong foundation in talent acquisition and management by identifying and developing the essential skills that align with our strategic goals and priorities. This has involved a concentrated effort on internal growth and promotion, accelerating the development of core and future-fit capabilities across disciplines such as Supply Chain, Bakeries, Customer, Marketing, and Research and Development. Through regular talent reviews, core capability gaps have been identified and formed the basis of our learning and core capability development actions in order to ensure we achieve a talent base that is future-fit.
In 2023, we sharpened our focus on talent acquisition due to more challenging market dynamics, accelerated the development of a diverse talent pipeline for critical skills, and continued to build core capabilities and inspire leaders for agile, high-performing teams. By strengthening our targeted talent management processes across the organisation and at all levels, we've improved our ability to transition talent effectively across categories and functions, thereby enhancing our capacity for internal talent growth. As a result, we were able to internally appoint two category managing directors during the year.
The focus on internal placements and skills shortage in critical technical areas in the market have depleted our middle to senior leadership talent pipeline, creating readiness gaps in succession planning. To address these capability gaps, we have established a talent acquisition hub to better leverage talent insights, and prioritise the filling of critical vacancies and proactively building robust talent pools.
Over the last three years, we have enhanced our ability to grow our own talent and improved our succession bench strength. We have also made substantial progress in our Rest of Africa talent strategy, filling essential positions, and implementing graduate development, coaching and mentoring to prepare for in-market placements. In 2023, we made a total of 409 new hires in critical and leadership roles, filling 32% of our leadership vacancies through internal career moves and promotions. Tiger Brands was once again recognised as one of South Africa's top employers. Despite the challenging talent market in South Africa, our attrition rate for core and leadership positions has dropped by 3% from 13% in 2022, to 10% in 2023.
We continue to make progress on workforce diversity, increasing African, Coloured, and Indian (ACI) representation, and promoting gender equity and the inclusion of people with disabilities. During the period under review, we continued to implement targeted programmes to support the achievement of our gender-equity goals, with women development programmes in Customer, Bakeries and Supply Chain gaining momentum. The Tiger women's network offers networking and development opportunities, as well as personalised coaching and mentorship for women at all levels. Training in unconscious bias, and various other dialogues supporting a culture respectful of diversity and non-discrimination continue to form part of our leadership development and cultural transformation efforts.
Performance
In 2023, our workforce is 96% ACI, with management level representation 84,9% ACI in junior, 64,1% in middle, 57,6% in senior, and 63,6% in top tier management. Internal leadership placements were 83% ACI, and our management trainee intake was 100% ACI. Females made up 31% of our workforce, 38% in junior, 41% in middle, 46% in senior, and 30% in top management. The year's management trainee intake was 82% female. The percentage of people with disabilities in our workforce has remained constant at 0,6% of our workforce. The full employment equity profile is available in the Appendix.
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2023 highlights
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We foster high performance and ensure talent development across the organisation through our foundational talent programmes. Targeted skills development is executed through our learning academies, which are aligned to our core capabilities and digitalisation goals. Remote working arrangements have enabled us to integrate digital learning more seamlessly into daily work practices. In 2023, we accelerated the implementation of our targeted development programmes to strengthen internal pipelines and support the growth of our own talent.
Performance
In 2023, 3 298 employees were trained through our academy core capability programmes. We invested R93 million in learning and development across all areas of our business, averaging R861,68 per full-time employee. Our investment in learning and development as a percentage of labour cost was 2,8% in 2023, compared with 3% in 2022. We spent a total of R7,8 million on bursaries, with R6,4 million through Thusani Trust (2022: R4,4 million) and R1,4 million within Tiger Brands (2022: R2,2 million).
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2023 highlights
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Building talent through the Thusani Trust Bursary SchemeWe foster education and talent in local communities through the Tiger Brands Thusani Trust Bursary Scheme, established in 2005. This scheme financially aids deserving students from the families of ACI Tiger Brands employees in pursuing higher education in South Africa. Since inception, the Trust has funded a total of 2 334 students and celebrated 530 graduates to date. In 2023, the Trust had a total of 78 students of which 11 students received an average of 75% and above in their final results. |
Our aim is to develop agile, inspirational, future-fit leaders. We are consistently building leadership across the organisation through future-fit development programmes and targeted rotations. Utilising leadership assessment tools and development programmes such as LIFT, WINGS, and Game Changer along with mentoring and coaching, we are enhancing performance, stimulating innovation, and catalysing our desired culture. We track progress on leadership behaviour shifts by using a 360° MultiRater feedback platform that helps foster a growth mindset among our leadership talent pool, and aids with bringing our values and behaviours to life.
Our WINGS high-potential leadership programme was launched in 2022, with the first cohort now completing their first rotation in various parts of the business. The 12 to 18-month accelerated leadership development programme aims to bolster succession planning by fast-tracking the development of experienced talent by rotating them into various roles across the business, and providing mentorship and coaching from senior leaders to support their learning. Already, the programme has successfully promoted two employees to senior leadership roles in supply chain. The selection of the second cohort was completed in September 2023 and these delegates are currently being on-boarded onto the programme.
In 2023, we introduced the Re-imagine Tiger leadership development programme in partnership with GIBS Business School. The programme features action learning projects sponsored by the executive leadership team, which the inaugural cohort will tackle collaboratively to develop innovative solutions for key business priorities that will accelerate the Tiger Brands' growth agenda.
Performance
In 2023, 163 leaders participated in leadership development programmes, and 32% of leadership vacancies were filled through internal placements.
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2023 highlights
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LEADS PERFORMANCE |
LEADS SELF |
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| LEADS INNOVATION |
LEADS PARTNERSHIPS |
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We are dedicated to creating a great place to work, and to continuously enhance our employee value proposition and employee engagement to strengthen and grow our culture. Our aspiration is for a culture that is collaborative, innovative, agile, and consumer-obsessed where our people are inspired to execute on strategy with excellence. Our culture transformation roadmap clearly defines the aspiration for our culture, and identifies the priority actions for getting there. Ensuring employee partnership in the culture transformation journey is a key pillar of our approach.
We conduct an annual Voice of Tiger (VoT) employee engagement survey to gauge employees on the quality of their experience at Tiger Brands, and their level of engagement in their roles and at the workplace. The survey results provide useful data and key insights that crystalise further actions to enable our culture transformation journey. We take action on these insights together with our teams over the course of each year. Our last VoT survey was conducted in November 2022, with the next survey planned for May 2024.
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Voice of Tiger 2023The results of the November 2022 VoT survey highlighted key areas where we are doing well, and where we can improve. We are taking action on these insights, informed by wide engagement across the organisation. |
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Key survey insights
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Key progress and outcomes
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Performance
In 2023, we achieved an 85% participation rate in our VoT survey (2022: 73%), with the overall engagement score of 70 representing an increase from 66 in 2022, the global benchmark of 75. This indicates a generally positive work experience among employees, yet with room for improvement. A further highlight was achieving first runner-up in the Graduate Employer of Choice category for the Manufacturing and FMCG sectors at the annual South African Graduate Employers Association (SAGEA) awards.
We are building a culture in which innovative ideas proposed by employees can be quickly vetted and implemented using an AGILE project delivery method. An example of this approach is our pilot project, Tiger Trolley, an e-commerce platform providing Tiger Brands' products to staff at reduced prices. Employees can choose to pay through salary deductions and receive delivery to their location within 48 hours. This platform aids employees in saving on groceries during challenging economic times, strengthening our employee value proposition, and demonstrating our commitment to cross-functional collaboration for sustainable business innovation. Since its launch in 2022, 54 413 orders have been processed through the platform, saving employees 35% to 50% on grocery items.
Our employee wellbeing programme, THRIVE, makes physical, emotional and mental health support available to employees and their families. This includes 24-hour telephonic counselling and access to professional dieticians, bio-kineticists, and financial and legal advisers. In line with our goal of prioritising better work-life balance, we have embraced hybrid and flexible work arrangements, offering employees more autonomy in where and when they work.
Performance
In 2023, our THRIVE wellbeing programme addressed a total of 990 cases, including individual participants, group participants, and online-access cases, and spanning concerns such as personal development, mental health, relationship issues, organisational and managerial issues, and addictive behaviours. This represents an increase from 837 total cases in 2022.
We reward the contributions of our employees to inspire exceptional performance and attract and retain top talent. We revise our reward strategy annually to boost performance, align with market standards, and satisfy the evolving expectations of employees and shareholders. We administer rewards fairly and responsibly, complying with our remuneration policy, International Labour Organization conventions, and relevant laws. We also assess pay fairness and maintain a distinct budget to rectify any identified pay disparities.
Our remuneration policy states an explicit objective to address unjustifiable pay differentials. Our pay practices mitigate against unjustifiable pay differentials between employees in the same role and between race and gender groups. A five-year-long, company-wide initiative to address this has succeeded in significantly narrowing the gap between the lowest-paid groups and the higher-paid groups. We follow a systemic approach in day-to-day decision-making by matching individual pay and pay scales to similar roles in the market, and clear guidelines direct decision-makers to ensure that new appointments, promotions, and other pay review opportunities are executed accordingly. At every compensation review opportunity, we consider, report, and address pay differentials seen through various lenses, including gender and race.
Our reward framework follows a "total reward" approach, consisting of guaranteed pay and variable pay, and a range of market-relevant benefits as well as professional growth opportunities that recognise individual and team performance. Our remuneration strategy is aligned with the key performance indicators (KPIs) used to measure and reward performance against our core business strategy. Long-term incentives are used to attract, retain, motivate, and reward eligible executives, senior managers, and key talent to influence the performance of the group and align their interests with the interests of the company's shareholders. This, in turn, aims to incentivise employees to meet long-term growth and sustainability plans, and increase financial performance in the company.
Our short-term incentive (STI) scorecard includes both financial and non-financial elements, with remuneration incentives indirectly linked to sustainability performance via weighted measures for achieving strategic sustainability-related objectives, including safety, quality, efficiency, and carbon emissions. The incentives are applicable across the group, from senior executives to employees who operate our plants. We continue to enhance our remuneration strategy and improve alignment with our strategic key performance indicators and shareholder interests.
More information on our remuneration strategy and structures is provided in our IR available at www.tigerbrands.com.
Performance
In 2023, the STIs for quality and safety each accounted for 10% of an individual's variable performance reward, with carbon emissions reduction accounting for 5%. Our internal recognition platform, Tiger Stripes, ensures that employees and teams receive regular recognition from their peers for outstanding contributions or jobs well done. Nominations of recognition culminate in our annual Tiger Stripes awards ceremony, with key 2023 highlights including:
We strive to foster meaningful collaboration with key stakeholders, such as trade unions and employees, guided by our employee relations engagement framework. Through ongoing engagements, town halls, and site partnership forums, we ensure the stability of employee relations across all sites. Our CEO and executives actively engage on strategic issues, including with trade union partners. As a founding principle, we adhere to International Labour Organization (ILO) core conventions and relevant labour laws in the countries where we operate. In 2023, we focused on fostering employee engagement, improving engagement methods, enhancing communication skills, strengthening line-manager ownership of the engagement framework, advancing our collective bargaining strategies, and resolving outstanding legacy issues.
Currently, we have put in place measures that have strengthened our management processes and outlined performance metrics that enable us to track the execution of action plans. In 2023, we maintained a high level of interaction, placed an emphasis on line manager capability and implemented targeted interventions to improve employee engagement and wellbeing. We have made notable progress, especially in enhancing employee engagement within our manufacturing operations, and are gradually seeing an improvement in the partnership between our employees and line managers on the shop floor.
Performance
We uphold the freedom of association, with 51% of our workforce being unionised. Our collective bargaining environment has stabilised as a result of a focused shift toward standardising processes and moving from single to multi-year wage agreements. In 2023, wage negotiations were conducted for five of our sites, with three of the five being settled as two-year agreements, and the remaining two sites settled as one-year agreements. As we look forward to a year potentially marked by tensions surrounding the national elections, our focus will remain on strengthening workplace relationships, continuing to partner with the union leadership, leveraging the impact of the two-year agreements signed in 2022, and kicking off the next wage negotiation cycle across most of our sites.