Our social pillar includes a focus on Woolworths people initiatives, social conditions in our supply base, product labelling and health and safety.
The Woolworths people strategy is to enable sustainable growth and profitability through people.
This includes:
- building a successful and delivery-orientated merchant community;
- attracting, developing and retaining passionate, committed, talented and high performing retailers; and
- driving employment equity and skills development.
employee engagement
The annual people survey measures the views of our people and focuses on strategy execution, structures for delivery, talent creation, business disciplines, stakeholder value, recognition and reward and change leadership.
The people survey results show:
- an increase of over 7% in the overall people survey score from 54.1% in 2008 to 61.4% in 2009;
- significant improvement in communication;
- great improvement in performance management;
- great improvement in change leadership;
- continued work required on leadership congruence – consistency in interpretation of strategy;
- continued work required on clarifying accountabilities and collaboration between areas;
- increased focus needed on engaging different stakeholder groups; and
- increased clarity and education required on recognition and reward systems.
diversity management
A new diversity management approach was piloted and will be rolled out. The feedback from the pilot participants has been good. This work will go a long way in shifting individuals to be the change they would like to see in Woolworths, whilst identifying, naming and addressing diversity and transformation barriers in the business.
Let’s Talk!
Let’s Talk!, as an employee engagement methodology, is being rolled out aggressively across the business. The intent of the rollout is to drive sales, profitability, productivity, knowledge and customer service through focused and disciplined communication and engagement.
employment proposition
Woolworths offers a compelling employment proposition. Significant opportunities exist for training and development in a modern, exciting and vibrant retail environment.
Prospective and current employees are attracted and retained by the value-based culture which forms the bedrock of the business. The Woolworths focus over the last few years has been to invest in infrastructure to support growth, focus on attracting and retaining top retail talent, the introduction of our BEE employee share ownership scheme, the selling team employment proposition, the shift to total cost of employment and re-energising Woolworths values. We are focusing on ensuring that experienced sale staff can serve our customers.
This includes:
- conversion of part timers to flexible 40 hours;
- provide sufficient hours of work to ensure a meaningful wage;
- structure stores to facilitate career progression; and
- a store and regional manager gain share scheme to reward performance in selling teams.
Woolworths merchant academy which develops the skills required to execute the strategy and building technical, functional and leadership skills. Our successful retail academy, run in partnership with the Cape Town Graduate School of Business, will be complemented by a new growth academy for junior management. The learning centre at Adderley Street in Cape Town has also come on stream to accelerate the development of retail skills by providing focused and accredited courses required for modern retail. Another will open in Gauteng in the coming year.
Woolworths employee relations strategy remains focused on developing and maintaining sound one-on-one relationships with all staff, which we firmly believe is in the best interests of our people. Industry norms are reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that Woolworths remuneration remains competitive and market-related.
union recognition
The South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu) embarked on a protected national strike during September 2008. The union demanded organisational rights such as the right to organise its members and implement stop order facilities from Woolworths. Woolworths employee salary increases are competitive in the retail sector and all employees have contracts with benefits which guarantee minimum hours of work every week.
Woolworths and Saccawu agreed to a verification process which was part of the strike settlement agreement. A verification process was concluded which showed that the membership has increased to 30.29% after the strike, from less than 15% in November 2007. This is sufficient for Woolworths to grant organisational rights to the union.
The organisational rights provide for:
- union subscriptions to be deducted from the salaries of workers who are union members. (i.e. stop order facilities); and
- union access to company premises to recruit members and hold meetings.
The union does not have the right to negotiate employee contracts, wages or any aspect of the Woolworths employment proposition. This requires 50% plus one member for full recognition of the union.
Corporate Social Investment
Since Woolworths humble beginnings in 1931, caring for people has been at the hear t of the Woolworths way of doing business. In 2003, our corporate social investment (CSI) strategy was formalised in line with global best practice with the formation of the Woolworths Trust. This legal entity is managed by a board of trustees who oversee our activities in line with our CSI policy. The Woolworths CSI strategy is aligned both to our core business strategy and to the stated national development priorities of the South African government.
A key focus of all the trust’s activities is to build capacity in our communities – to encourage and support our beneficiaries in becoming self-reliant. In particular we are committed to contributing to education by addressing food security and nutrition and the needs of orphans and vulnerable children.
surplus food and clothing donations
Woolworths is committed to using its surplus products to help ease the burden of poverty in South Africa. Each year, Woolworths gives away millions of rands’ worth of its clothes and surplus food to underprivileged South Africans. The surplus food is past its “Sell-By” date but before its “Best Before” and “Use By” dates. Most surplus food and some surplus clothing is distributed by Woolworths to local charities.
The Woolworths Trust has four defined focus areas:
- food security in schools
Through our major sponsorship of the Woolworths Trust EduPlant programme we assist South African schools in developing permaculture food gardens. In 2009, 5 000 educators benefited from participating in the Woolworths Trust EduPlant programme, co-ordinated by Food & Trees for Africa. This is the Trust’s flagship food security and educational initiative and provides sustainable food security through food gardens to school communities. The project currently receives in excess of R3m a year from the Woolworths Trust.
Through the Woolworths Trust EduPlant programme, schools develop food gardens using permaculture techniques. In harmony with nature, EduPlant schools grow vegetables, fruit, herbs and medicinal plants. These schools provide food for hungry school children and the communities around them.
Through their participation in Woolworths Trust EduPlant programme, thousands of schools across the country have become champions of community development; promoting food security, improved nutrition and self-reliance.
In 2009 the Woolworths Trust, together with Food & Trees for Africa, have formed partnerships with new corporate funders and in 2010 an EduPlant programme will be launched which will reach into more school communities and enable more learners and their communities to benefit from the development of food gardens.
- improving education
Through MySchool and Making the Difference through Design and Making the Difference through Nutrition, Woolworths contributes to the improvement of education in South African schools. We have contributed more than R75m to date to MySchool on behalf of our customers. In 2009 alone we contributed R25.8m to the MySchool programme (2008: R24.5m) through 608 000 active MySchool supporters. The contributions have supported more than 10 000 schools, many in impoverished areas around the country.
The project also includes MyVillage and MyPlanet, which support selected charities and environmental organisations.
A total of 1 900 schools are benefiting from Woolworths Making the Difference through Nutrition or Design school initiatives. In 2008 Woolworths extended the Making the Difference programme to include education on the environment and sustainable development.
- orphaned and vulnerable children
The Woolworths Trust is committed to playing a role in the national effort to support orphaned and vulnerable children in South Africa. We believe in strengthening families, communities and school communities so that they are better able to care for them.
The Woolworths Trust partners with Heartbeat to promote and enable community care for orphaned and vulnerable children. 3 000 orphaned and vulnerable children are able to stay in their own communities as a result of Heartbeat.
- staff giving
Woolworths stores are encouraged to support social development projects, schools and charities in their local communities. The Woolworths Trust matches the funds raised by stores with contributions of up to R4 000 per store per year. In addition, stores have their own community giving programmes distributing surplus food and clothes to local charities.
Through Working Wonders, an employee recognition programme for community work, Woolworths also encourages and supports employees who are involved in meeting social challenges in their communities.