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.
The Group employed a total of 10 806 staff in F2023 of which 46% were in permanent employment and 54% as contract staff.
Employee Gender Ratios
The Group places much emphasis on employing women within its businesses and had a slight increase in the number women employed in the Group, increasing from 21% in F2022 to 22% in F2023.
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 F2023.
528 members of staff reached the milestone of working for one of the businesses for 10 years or more. Two members of staff crossed the incredible milestone of working for a business for 40 years (Irvine’s and Colcom) and of the 528 awards presented, 26% were awarded 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 408 injuries during the reporting year, of which 188 were lost time injuries (LTIs) resulting in 1 486 days lost due to injury. Comparing F2023 with F2022, there was a drop of 20% in the total number of injuries recorded and a 16% drop in the number of last days incurred due to injury.
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 continued to provide 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 driving skills
- 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:
- First aid training
- Breast cancer awareness
- Mental health care
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.
In F2023 a new clinic run by Providence Health was opened in Ruwa on Prodairy’s premises which looks after the employees of the three Progroup businesses – Probottlers, Probrands and Prodairy.
The various Providence Health medical facilities reported a total of 28 943 visits from employees and 8 771 visits from dependents and the local community in F2023, highlighting the value and accessibility of these medical facilities for staff and their families.
In addition to the Providence Health run onsite clinics listed below, Irvine’s runs two clinics separately which have recorded over 10 000 visits annually over the past three years. As shown in the table below, 7 829 clinic visits were recorded from employees and 2 750 from their dependents in F2023.
Providence Health opened up eight further clinics during F2023, providing access to medical care throughout Zimbabwe. The new clinics were opened at Chegutu, Beitbridge, Chinhoyi, Chiredzi, Gwanda, Hwange, Victoria Falls and Zvishavane, now covering all corners of the country.
The table below presents the number of visits recorded at the various onsite medical facilities.
The table below presents the number of visits recorded at the Providence Heath Clinics located in towns and cities throughout Zimbabwe.
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
- Product quality control
- Supply chain management
- Food safety management system, e.g. FSSC 22000 (Food Safety Management)
- Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) in Food Safety Awareness
- Safety, Health, Environment and Quality (SHEQ)
- Southern African Grain Milling Academy (SAGMA) Milling Course
- Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (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
Professional Development
National Foods and Innscor Africa Limited are accredited training centres for the Chartered Accountants Training Outside Public Practice (TOPP), certified by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe (ICAZ). TOPP is the financial management training route that offers prospective Chartered Accountants (CAs) an alternative to the conventional TIPP (Training Inside Public Practice) to qualifying as CAs.
In F2023, a total of 55 students (34 men and 21 women) across the Group attended this training. The highest proportion of students were from National Foods (5 men and 9 women) of which seven (4 men and 3 women) sat for their Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) examination in December 2022 and are now qualified Chartered Accountants.
