HUMAN CAPITAL
Overview
The Group aims to attract and retain talented and passionate people for our businesses and support them in their skills and knowledge development.
Our businesses create a working environment which values our employees as partners in fulfilling the Group’s mission, founded on mutual trust, respect and dedication to performance, quality, and respect for each other
Principles
The Group is led by a highly motivated executive, management and support teams that help the Group achieve its corporate strategy and goals. To achieve this, the Group focuses on creating working conditions that inspire our employees to achieve set targets. Our businesses are strongly committed to labour and social standards that attract and retain excellent people and leaders whom we continue to develop through long life learning and support.
The Group provides employment opportunities through various forms that include short-term contracts, casual positions, fixed-term contracts and full time or permanent positions. These opportunities are managed through adherence to local and international labour regulations and legislations. Our employees are free to be members of a trade union of their choice. In 2022, the Group employed a total of 10 629 staff of which 47% were in permanent employment and 53% as contract staff.
Employee Gender Ratios
The Group places much emphasis on employing women within its businesses increasing women represented to 21% of total workforce in 2022 from 19% in 2021.
Long Service Awards
The Group’s philosophy of creating a working environment that values its employees as partners is reflected in the number of staff who have crossed the milestone of working for one of the businesses for 10 years or more during 2022.
432 members of staff reached the milestone of working for one of the businesses for more than 10 years. Commendably, seven members of staff crossed the amazing milestone of working for a business for more than 40 years (National Foods, Irvine’s, Colcom and Natpak) while two members of staff at Colcom crossed the 45 years milestone. 13% of the awards were presented to women.
Occupational Health & Safety
The Group considers health and safety in our work place critical to all our businesses. Any incidences are treated seriously and receive the necessary attention.
Regular audits are conducted to ensure safety measures are in place at all times and appropriate training conducted to ensure that all employees are aware of health and safety issues. The Group’s policy is to ensure incidences are kept as low as possible.
The Group sustained a total of 507 injuries during the reporting year, resulting in 1 762 days lost to injury (LTI) and approximating 14 096 working hours. The businesses continue to give reinforcement training on the standard operating procedures (SOPs) specifically aimed at reducing the number of injuries sustained in the workplace. During the year, the various businesses provided their staff with safety training, which included the following topics:
- Occupational Health & Safety, e.g. ISO 45000
- Emergency preparedness and response
- Incident reporting and basic emergency procedures
- Fire prevention and firefighting procedure
- First aid
- Spills response
- Chemical usage safety
- High voltage switch
- Occupational health risk assessment
- Lifting techniques
- Machine operating
- In-house driver
- Laboratory testing
- Waste management
The Group’s commitment to health, safety and welfare for all of its employees requires all businesses to ensure that they adopt and apply best practice at all times. During the year, the following training was provided by Providence Human Capital’s Research, Training & Development department on employee wellness and training selected staff as First Aiders:
- COVID-19 awareness
- First aid training
- Breast cancer awareness
- Mental health care
- Nurse aid
Healthcare for employees and their dependents
The Group looks after the health and welfare of its employees by providing primary healthcare for all either through onsite medical facilities or through cooperation with Providence Health who provide a corporate wellness program for the Group’s employees and their dependents.
Five of the businesses in the Group have clinics or medical facilities on site, while the other businesses obtain healthcare support for the employees and their dependents through Providence Health Clinics in various cities and towns throughout Zimbabwe.
During 2022 the various medical facilities reported a total of 32 988 visits from employees and 11 516 visits from dependents, highlighting the value of these medical facilities for staff and their families. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a further lockdown at the start of the financial year that resulted in some of the clinics offering virtual consultations only. These numbers have not been included in this year’s numbers of treatments given.
On the farms, however, the clinics at Irvine’s and Triple C Pigs (Colcom Group) saw an increase of 49% in the number of clinic visits, as the pandemic heightened the requests for medical attention.
The table below presents the number of visits recorded at the various onsite medical facilities as well as at the Providence Health Clinics throughout Zimbabwe during 2022.
COVID-19 Support
In 2022 Providence Health continued to provide the Group with invaluable support to be able to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic with the principal aim of keeping all employees, their dependents and customers safe.
Providence Health received a licence to administer COVID-19 vaccinations at Providence Health’s clinics and were instrumental in the COVID-19 vaccination and booster campaign for both employees and dependents.
The Group recognised its COVID-19 Champions from Providence Health who played a significant role during the pandemic including putting their lives at risk to save and service the Group’s employees and their dependents.
Human development and training in the workplace
Empowerment through learning is part of the Group’s philosophy of empowering employees by providing opportunities to attend relevant training courses and programmes to advance their knowledge and skills.
Training and Development benefits our business value chain by ensuring that our operations maintain the highest standards and skills. Our life learning and development opportunities are available through internal and external training activities in an equitable manner.
On the job training was conducted on the following subjects:
- Quality control management system training
- Product quality control training
- Supply chain management training
- Food safety management system training
- Food safety management system, e.g. FSSC 22000
(Food Safety Management) - Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) in
Food Safety Awareness - SHEQ
- SADMA Milling Course
- ACCA
- Annual account & cycle planning
- Tax
- Pastel software
- Computer software, e.g. Microsoft Excel
- Workplace relationships
- Workplace performance
- Communication
- Customer care
- Handling customer complaints
- Project management
- Supervisory and management
- Time management
- Business appreciation
- Sales management
- Retirement counselling
