4 People

Strategy
People

Success at Vodacom is defined by our people. To deliver on our strategic priorities, we need technical skills to deliver our best network, product development and financial expertise to deliver best value, and great customer-facing employees to deliver best service. We are focused on attracting, retaining and developing the best talent and skills, on driving diversity across the workplace, and on providing a motivating and inclusive workplace.


Our strategic targets

Drive people transformation through diversity, acquiring new skills and growing talent.

Engagement Score of 80.

Our performance in 2016

Engagement Score
  Our Engagement Score is
below our goal of 80. A
clear action plan is in place
to address the identified
improvement areas.

^ These items were the subject of the limited assurance engagement performed by EY.


Success at Vodacom is defined by our people. To deliver on our strategic priorities, we need technical skills to deliver our best network, product development and financial expertise to deliver best value, and great customer-facing employees to deliver best service. We are focused on attracting, retaining and developing the best talent and skills, on driving diversity across the workplace, and on providing a motivating and inclusive workplace.

Driving people transformation

Developing skills

This year, we invested around R103 million (2015: R130 million) in training and developing our employees in addition to our programmes to enhance technical, managerial and commercial skills. We are focusing on developing the capabilities of people working in customer-facing roles to ensure they deliver exceptional customer service. Our sustainability report briefly reviews our various internal skills development programmes.

In addition to developing skills internally, we seek to attract skills from outside our traditional business areas to ensure we have the right talent for our new business ventures. Graduates form an integral pipeline to meet future core needs. We have a dedicated ‘Discover Graduate’ programme aimed at identifying and nurturing the best young talent coming out of universities. In 2015, we hired 75 high calibre graduates in South Africa. Vodacom DRC officially launched the programme in September 2015 with 15 graduates, followed by Vodacom Mozambique and Vodacom Lesotho with 17 and eight graduates respectively. Vodacom Tanzania launched the programme in April 2016, with eight graduates. Our ability to attract talent is assisted by our recent accolades, such as the Sunday Times Top Telecoms Brand, the Top Employer in the telecommunications industry, and the Mail & Guardian’s Top Companies Reputation Index.

Growing talent

Our International Assignee programme remains an important mechanism for growing talent within the organisation. Employees are seconded to other Vodafone operations and we bring Vodafone employees to our operations. Our Performance Dialogue programme forms the basis for nurturing high-potential employees and identifying candidates for succession, which involves monitoring performance against yearly goals, and setting training and development targets. We have simplified the process to ensure efficient and more robust discussions with employees.

Enhancing diversity

Diversity within our organisation helps us serve our customers better by enhancing our pool of experiences, perspectives and ideas. As a company with roots in South Africa, we are committed to delivering on the ideals of Black Economic Empowerment and Employment Equity. We have placed a strong emphasis on encouraging diversity by growing black and female representation at senior management level.

Gender parity remains a particular challenge within the ICT sector and within Vodacom. We have made some progress in reducing this gap by launching various programmes to ensure that women have the necessary support to take up leadership positions. Our Female Leaders programme, undertaken in partnership with the Gordon Institute of Business Science, remains a key initiative to help bridge gender inequality at senior management level. This one-year programme seeks to build a talent pipeline by supporting high-potential black women both within and outside Vodacom. Other initiatives include:

  • Vodacom Women in Red Awards, recognising women who are an inspiration to others;
  • Women’s Network Forum Mentorship programme, mentoring female employees in business through Wits Business School; and
  • HeForShe, a United Nations initiative that encourages people across the world to speak up and act against the inequalities faced by women and girls.

Measuring performance

We make it a priority to listen to our employees to understand their views. Our annual independently conducted People Survey allows employees to express their views about the organisation and our managers. It is used to check if we are creating the right environment for our people to excel and grow, and to identify areas for improvement. Our results are compared to other Vodafone Group companies and with a high-performing peer group.

This year, the overall workforce participation rate (across all operations) was 86%. Our Engagement Score remained strong at 76 points out of 100; we are well on track to achieve our goal of an overall Engagement Score of 80 by the end of the 2018 financial year. A review of the initiatives we are taking to addressing the identified areas for improvement is provided in our sustainability report.


 Our safety performance

  • We are saddened to report that this year, we had four fatalities. The lessons learnt from these incidents have informed a revised event management guideline, using locally-based suppliers, limiting night driving and implementing a revised fleet management solution.
  • The total number of health and safety incidents recorded at Vodacom this year, decreased by 44%, from 193 to 108, 43 of which were employee-related and the remaining 65 contractor-related. South Africa accounted for 67% (2015: 50%) of all incidents, with 20% from the DRC (2015: 37%).
  • Our lost time injury frequency rate was 0.11 below the target of 0.25.