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SOCIAL PRACTICES

As with previous years, the Group has aligned its approach to transformation with those of the B-BBEE codes. Consequently, the Group’s focus has been predominantly around the training and development of staff, socio-economic development and enterprise development.

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

The Blue Label Academy, the Group’s internal e-learning training academy, which aims at providing training and development to all staff regardless of where they are located in South Africa, underwent a facelift and a restructure. The front-end was upgraded and given a new look and feel.

Previously, staff were limited to a maximum of two out of a total of 450 possible courses, in terms of the licence arrangements purchased by the Group. This year, the Group purchased one access code per employee, but limited the number of choices to the most popular 100 courses. Staff are still required to complete their selection of courses on-line, at their own pace and in their own time. Based on their selection, staff are able to register for business skills and technical courses, which have to be duly approved by their line manager and included in their performance assessment.

In addition to the e-learning initiative, relevant staff have the opportunity of registering and completing formal classroom-based training. The total spend within the Group on training for the financial year was R5.4 million (2013: R3.9 million). The increase in spend can again be attributed to a focus on developing technological competencies.

LEARNERSHIPS

The Group continues its partnership with Bytes People Solutions in providing various learnership programmes, as detailed below. The Group has also partnered with Full Circle and Spectrium to provide learnerships within the financial services sector of our business.

Velociti, with the assistance of People Solutions, was awarded 212 learnerships from the KZN branch of the Services SETA in August 2013. These learnerships include 140 Contact Centre support NQF Level 2, 50 Contact Centre Operations NQF Level 4, 10 Project Management Level 4 and 12 Business Administration NQF Level 4 learners.

Excluding Velociti, the total number of learners currently employed across the Group is 28 (2013: 31). The number of learners has decreased due to the Group’s decision to focus on procuring fewer learners of a higher calibre. Consequently, the spend on learnerships has increased.

Each learner is mentored and assisted through their learnership to ensure it is completed successfully for the learner to obtain the relevant qualification. Of the 28 learners, three are disabled (2013: eight learners), the balance having been formally employed. Currently 60% (2013: 64%) of the learners are female, following concerted efforts to attract more females to the learnership programme.

Blue Label Group learnership profile:

SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

In total, R5.1 million was spent in respect of socio-economic development for the financial year. This is allocated to various beneficiaries focusing specifically on HIV/Aids, the youth and education, and, where possible, to projects in which staff are actively involved. Our flagship project is the development of a club house for the Protea Glen Boys and Girls Club of South Africa, in partnership with Boys and Girls Club of SA and Tupperware SA. Construction of the club has commenced and will offer aftercare facilities to 200 school-going children from the surrounding community. They will be offered a meal, academic supervision and various extramural activities, such as technology, sport, drama, music and art. The club aims at enhancing the current education system, while grounding children in a holistic and value-based educational philosophy, ultimately for their own protection and development.

Enterprise development

TPC continues to provide financial assistance and strategic support to ZOK. This is aimed at empowering budding entrepreneurs from previously disadvantaged communities by equipping them with a fully functional container equipped as a retail solution provider.

The Group was instrumental in establishing parkrun SA, assisting it financially, strategically and operationally. Parkrun SA is a 51% black-owned business, and has the aim of establishing venues throughout South Africa where people, irrespective of race, gender, income bracket or fitness level, can run a 5 kilometre time trial once a week, free of charge. Since inception in November 2011, parkrun SA has been highly successful, now with over 100 000 registered runners, and is operating from over 30 venues across the country. Discovery Vitality and Adidas have recently signed on as major sponsors.

Preferential procurement

The Group continues to source goods and services from B-BBEE-compliant suppliers.

In November 2011, Blue Label partnered with Bruce and Gill Fordyce to form parkrun SA, a franchise of the global running sensation, parkrun, founded in the United Kingdom in 2004. The philosophy of parkrun is simple: “no-one should ever have to pay to go running in their community regularly, safely and for fun”. It is aimed at beginners to Olympians and everyone in between. Earlier this year, parkrun founder, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, was recognised in the Queen’s Honours List with the Award of Commander of the British Empire. This is a not just a huge honour for Paul, but also recognition for parkrun worldwide, which now supports over 1 million registrations. The success in South Africa has been nothing short of phenomenal. With the objective that cost should not be a barrier to taking regular exercise, we started with 11 runners at Delta Park in 2012. In 2014, we can now boast over 100 000 registered runners participating at over 30 parkrun venues across South Africa. Blue Label is proud to be associated with parkrun SA and plans to lend continuing support, both financially and operationally, in making this worthy cause an even greater success.