Our performance
Governance review
Other
We will digitise the organisation and ensure the right skills and culture by:
The rapid rate of change across the ICT sector requires significant organisational agility.
We are simplifying our existing systems to strengthen our competitive position, and we are empowering our people to develop and deliver innovative products and services through more collaborative structures.
During the year, we designed and delivered operating model changes across the business, with a particular focus on our consumer value chain. We have instituted a commercial regional ‘county’ model that divides the country into more manageable units, allowing us to gather improved on-the-ground knowledge and to react more rapidly to changing competitive dynamics.
This year, payroll as a percentage of service revenue remained unchanged at 8%, illustrating discipline in growing the business and maintaining a balanced people cost.
This year, we invested R277 million in employee training and development, and an additional R24.8 million in leadership development programmes. One of our key investments in leadership development this year was to enrol five of our Managing Executives across the Vodacom Group in the Harvard Senior Executive programme.
We have various other initiatives in place aimed at growing talent and personal development within the organisation. Our International Assignee programme, for example, provides staff with a developmental opportunity through a short-term international assignment in a different Vodafone market.
In addition to developing skills internally, we are attracting skills from outside our traditional business areas to ensure we have the right talent for our new business ventures. We are placing a particular focus on accessing new digital skills in areas such as big data analytics, IT security and customer value management (CVM). Through our ‘Discover Graduate’ programme we are identifying and nurturing the best young talent coming out of universities across all our markets. This year, we recruited 70 graduates in South Africa and 58 across our International operations; 55% of the South African recruits are female, and 69% are black Africans, the highest proportion since the programme’s inception. 58 of the 70 graduates in South Africa are in strategic business areas such as digital marketing and big data.
We strive to create a culture of recognition that motivates employees to deliver performance that is above-and-beyond what is expected. We strive for fair and consistent assessment of all our employees. We believe in performance differentiation between our people and in rewarding our top performers accordingly. We are reviewing our performance management approach and will be seeking to promote more regular feedback, remove performancerating labels and provide a better framework for assistance in managing poor performance.
To meet our ambition of being the world’s best telco at delivering an unmatched customer experience, we have placed a strong emphasis this year on the Winning the Vodacom Way programme. We have successfully completed workshops with our Managing Executives and are rolling out the programme to our executive heads of department. This year, we introduced Vodacom CA Cafés across all our operations, with the aim of promoting open conversation and collaboration, generating new ideas, and enhancing our customer experience excellence programme. Through our ‘Conversations in Leadership’ initiative, Vodacom executives have been engaging with global thought leaders with the goal of stimulating innovation.
Our annual People Survey, conducted by independent consultants, tracks how engaged, well managed and ‘included’ our employees feel. We compare our scores with a high-performing peer group and other Vodafone Group companies to assess whether we are creating the right environment for our people to excel and grow.
This year, Vodacom continued to show positive trends on most dimensions within the survey. Our Engagement Index improved by three points to 79^, while the overall workforce participation rate (across all operations) increased by two points to 88%. Areas identified as requiring more focus include empowering our employees through simpler internal processes, and improving cross-team collaboration.
We encourage greater levels of diversity within our organisation. This is important not only to address historic imbalances, but also helps us to serve our customers more effectively 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 Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) and employment equity. In our South African operation, black representation in the workforce is 73%, with 55% at senior management level and 58% in the Executive Committee. Women represent 47% of the workforce, with 30% at senior management level. Our BEE scorecard performance in the employment equity element maintained a positive trend, until the revised Codes came into effect late in the financial year. The revisions are stricter on the economically active population (EAP) statistics, and on the recalculation on black females aligned to EAP for all levels. (Further details on our BEE performance are provided in our Sustainability report.)
We have various initiatives aimed at promoting gender diversity and supporting women in progressing their careers at Vodacom. These include female leadership development programmes undertaken in partnership with the Gordon Institute of Business Science and the North West University, a women’s network forum mentorship programme with Wits Business School, and our involvement in the United Nations HeForShe initiative. As a result of all these initiatives, Vodacom was recognised as a champion in promoting gender diversity in South Africa at the Annual Gender Mainstreaming Awards.
In addition to driving gender diversity, we have initiatives protecting the rights and interests of people with disabilities, and we have established a network for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual and inter-sexed (LGBTI) employees. To achieve a truly inclusive working environment, we have implemented the rollout of unconscious bias training across all markets. Our Vodacom Group EXCO attended the course, providing them with an opportunity for personal reflection and action planning to eliminate any practices reflecting unconscious bias.
We are saddened to report one workplace-related fatality this year: in Mozambique, on 20 January 2017, a young boy, Nelson Harrisse, was fatally injured in a traffic accident involving a Vodacom contractor.
Road-related accidents remain the highest causal factor of safety incidents (59%) followed by collapsing structures (12%), and slips, trips and falls (11%). South Africa accounted for 69% of safety incidents (2016: 67%), with 22% from the DRC (2016: 20%).
Our lost-time injury frequency rate was 0.05 (2016: 0.11), once again less than our target of 0.25 to encourage improved road safety, we have revised our occupational driving standard, which also applies to all suppliers. In South Africa, our award winning Road Guardian programme has contributed to a reduction in the number and seriousness of vehicle incidents.
