Tiger Brands

Our people

Highlights

Challenge

The importance of our people is evident throughout our strategy – from being part of our vision (recognised as a great place to work) to the first pillar of our mission (unleash the power of our people) and our values (we value our people and treat them with dignity).

The role of the human resources (HR) function is to ensure that Tiger Brands has appropriate people in the right roles who are fully engaged to act on our strategy and deliver high quality to our customers every day.

We focus on the acquisition, management and development of our employees and deliver the reward and recognition models that enhance individual and business performance.

We partner with the leaders of our businesses to create and execute the function or business area's specific people agenda and to support them in becoming engaging and inspiring role models for our employees.

We shape organisational effectiveness and employee engagement across all levels, aiming to sustain strong relationships with bargaining councils/unions and improve employee health and wellness across the company.

We champion the organisational values and behaviours that we believe will deliver our strategy and contribute to our purpose to nourish and nurture more lives every day.

We administer employee information in the most efficient way and provide business leadership with people-related reports and analytics to ensure decision-making based on facts.

Our operating model and, in turn, the HR function are fundamental enablers to unleashing the power of our people now and in the future. Accordingly, the HR function has been completely transformed and now comprises three core areas:

• The HR business partner network: strategic HR partners in each business area who lead all related activities and are accountable for executing the HR agenda in a way that is relevant and practical to that business
• The HR shared service centre executes all transactional activities that can be delivered remotely, creating efficiency and consistency in how we transact on people-related activities across the group
• The centres of excellence (CoE) analyse the business and design tools, processes and solutions that are benchmarked and relevant to respond to challenges or opportunities encountered by our businesses, with the sole intent of driving the Tiger Brands people strategy.

We are committed to ensuring we are able to attract and retain the best talent - people who are engaged and committed to sustainably delivering impressive business performance and ensuring Tiger Brands is recognised internally and externally as a great place to work.

Our metrics: how we measure our success

To achieve our strategic objectives, we must track and monitor our performance, summarised below:

Metric	Why?
Top employer rating	Ensuring we position ourselves as a desirable employer to attract and retain the best talent
% of employee pulse score	Ensuring our employees are engaged and the environment is conducive to delivering exceptional performance
BBBEE level (management/skills development/employment equity)	Ensuring processes are in place to meet agreed target levels for a diverse workforce while removing all forms of discrimination and providing employment opportunities for disadvantaged individuals
Attrition	Ensuring that we retain our best people and reducing business continuity risk related to high turnover
Time to fill positions	Ensuring our company has the critical skills and sufficient capacity available when needed
Promotions vs external hires	Ensuring we provide growth and development opportunities for our employees while allowing sufficient external talent inflow to facilitate innovation and growth
Overall performance rating improvement	Ensuring organisational practices, HR activities and leadership guide our people to improved individual performance that will strengthen our business
HR effectiveness	Ensuring HR activities address corporate priorities and lead to the desired results

Workforce

Workforce profile

	African	Indian	Coloured	White	Disabled	Permanent	Temporary	Total	Outside of South Africa		Total staff
									Permanent	Temporary
2017	8 485	701	1 083	780	37	11 049	5 246	16 295	1 426	364	18 085
2016	8 437	720	1 120	831	72	11 109	3 689	14 798	2 012	4 664	21 474
2015	7 648	698	1 189	844	53	10 379	4 222	14 601	3 841	2 149	20 591
2014	6 536	726	1 153	838	69	9 253	4 537	13 790	3 673	1 671	19 134
2013	6 178	739	1 192	881	68	8 990	1 500	10 490	3 770	788	15 048

Our businesses use seasonal and casual workers for expected increases in production, such as processing ripe crops. We also encounter unanticipated spikes in demand from large orders or other less predictable events. To meet these customer requirements, we hire temporary staff. In 2017, our temporary workforce represented 31% of our staff complement (2016: 39%).

While no formal commitment to local hiring is in place, in practice the vast majority of our workers are drawn from areas around our operations.

Key indicators	2017		2016		2015
Employee headcount*	18 085		21 474		20 591
Female employees	3 532		3 910		3 696
Learnership participants	417		324		264
Skills development (Rm)	56,7		66,8		57,3
Total training as % of payroll	2,08		2,05		1,00
Overall staff turnover rate	9,1		7,1		7,9
Retention rate of key talent (target 80%)	91%		91%		87%

* Includes international operations but excludes seasonal and casual workers.

Labour relations

To ensure a constructive, safe and fair working environment for all our people, we work closely with employee bargaining units to ensure everyone has a voice in matters that affect them daily.

Regrettably, during the year we recorded protracted labour disruptions at two units (beverages, and snacks and treats). Although this affected results for the year through lost production, our focus is on restoring these relationships and addressing the issues raised where possible, supported by clear and timely communication.

Our employees have full freedom of association, with over 55% belonging to unions (including three major industry unions). Site management and shop stewards meet monthly.

At each site, unions are represented on forums that monitor employment equity, skills development and other issues requiring management's attention.

Clear communication between staff and management helps ensure disputes are resolved and grievances dealt with appropriately by all parties. Our disciplinary code is a guideline for all managers and employees to:

• Create a fair and equitable structure for dealing with misconduct
• Encourage timely corrective action if an employee's behaviour or conduct is unsatisfactory or unacceptable.

Tiger Brands complies with South African legislation covering Labour Relations Act and basic conditions of employment, the International Labour Organisation conventions, and relevant regulations in operating areas in Africa. In 2017, there were no instances of non-compliance with labour standards.

Talent management

We are building talent sustainably by concentrating on internal appointments and promotions while increasing our investment in training and development to build capability and strengthen the talent pipeline. Regular talent reviews ensure high-potential individuals are identified, development plans are agreed, and progress against agreed targets is tracked. These employees are commensurately rewarded.

Key initiatives include a focused management trainee and leadership development programme. In FY17, seven graduates joined Tiger Brands as trainees in various disciplines.

Our aim is to deliver qualified talent to the business ahead of demand, preferably by finding the right people with the right capabilities within the group.

Leadership development

Our aim is to have leaders with the right capabilities to inspire people to deliver exceptional performance.

To ensure we have leaders who can drive our strategy, we introduced a new leadership competency model two years ago aimed at developing great leaders who are committed to creating a great place to work while leading our people through challenges. The new operating model will require a significant change in behaviour that will, in turn, require high levels of collaboration, influencing both the capability and ability to lead through ambiguity.

Leaders are assessed against this framework to ensure we set the correct parameters for development programmes. Four flagship leadership programmes were launched in 2016 and, in total, 14 flagship programmes were run in 2016 and 2017, attended by 227 leaders. We are confident the benefit of these programmes and other initiatives will soon be evident.

High-performance and engaging culture

This pillar of our strategy aims for high performance through careful performance management, paired with strong reward and recognition structures. We believe this will drive an engaged and committed workforce and contribute to our success. Similar to our leadership development initiatives, it is too early to comment on measurable outcomes.

Developing skills and capability

Developing the full potential of all employees is a prerequisite to creating a competitive advantage. Our people have the opportunity to continually develop themselves through workplace qualifications and shorter, function-specific programmes. Related objectives and targets are detailed in our statutory workplace skills plan and annual training report.

In 2017, we invested R56,7 million (2016: R66,8 million) or 2,08% of total payroll on in-house training in South Africa, through the Tiger Brands Academy, as well as learnerships.

Tiger Brands Academy

This internal facility has separate academies for the disciplines of supply chain, leadership, finance, customer, human resources and marketing. It also offers learnerships in manufacturing, logistics, supply chain and management.

To ensure we develop the right strategic skills, we recently revised the course content of two key disciplines:

• Supply chain: In 2016, the required skills were profiled and harmonised across the group and new learning plans and development programmes rolled out.
  
  

  Following the success of the manufacturing excellence programme for unit managers in 2016, a similar programme for production managers was launched and 41 production managers will complete this 12-month programme in early 2018.

  In 2016 we launched programmes for employees to be certified in planning and procurement. To date, six employees have been certified and 75 enrolled.

• Shopfloor development project: The first learnerships were completed in 2017 and 41 learners graduated (33 with an NQF 3 certificate in food and beverage packaging and eight with an NQF 3 certificate in stores and warehousing). Another seven sites launched formal learnerships in 2017, with these learners due to complete in 2018. Three sites completed assessments in 2017, and will launch learnerships in early FY18. At other targeted sites, assessments are under way before implementing the next phase of learning plans.

• Customer: After the final year of our School of Mastery programme in 2016, 27 learners were awarded national qualifications in FY17.

Workplace experience project

Unemployment is a significant challenge in South Africa, particularly among the country's youth. Tiger Brands creates opportunities by providing workplace experience for selected candidates in food technology, engineering, marketing, production and operations. These students become a feeder pool for the graduate programme and other entry-level appointments: 469 people have completed the programme since 2008 and 125 have been employed by the business.

External programmes

We provide bursaries for the children of qualifying black employees. In 2017, we spent R4,7 million on bursaries for 198 students (2016: R3,5 million and 291 respectively). A total of 343 students have graduated from tertiary institutions since 2007 with the trust's support, and 264 graduated in 2016.

We provided bursaries for seven (2016: seven) engineering students. After graduating, they are incorporated into our talent pool. This year, our first graduates join Tiger Brands in the management trainee programme.

Organisational development and effectiveness

Tiger Brands is striving to create an organisational environment that enables performance, motivating employees to contribute to the group's success. The key focus over the year has been on designing the new operating model and the organisational structure required to execute the model. Understanding that successfully implementing both the model and organisational structure means new ways of working, a carefully considered change-management programme is helping our people adjust.