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17
BLUE LABEL INTEGRATED ANNUAL REPORT 2016
Understanding material matters
continued
Management recognises the importance assigned to
IT in its corporate governance systems.
The Group’s Business Continuity and Disaster
Recovery Plan provides guidance for emergency and
crisis management, business unit recovery and
technology disaster recovery. The latter includes the
restoration of IT facilities. The plan describes the IT
framework and procedures to be activated in the
event of a disaster.
The major goals of the plan are to:
•
minimise interruptions and limit damage to
normal operations;
•
minimise the economic impact of the interruption;
•
establish alternative means of operation in
advance;
•
train personnel on emergency procedures;
•
provide for rapid restoration of service, ensuring
availability/continuity of critical business
operations; and
•
communicate appropriately to relevant
stakeholders.
The Group has developed
proprietary technology supporting
the roll out of its bouquet of
products and services. The Group’s
infrastructure connects into some of
South Africa’s major banks, public
and private utility companies and
telecommunication operators. In
addition, the Group switches both
debit and credit cards, electronic
funds transfer transactions and
e-token products on behalf of the
country’s leading retailers and
petroleum companies. The effective
and continuous operation of this
infrastructure is critical to the
Group’s service delivery.
Disaster recovery
and continuity of
business
Risk
Context
Mitigating factors
Ethical leadership and business conduct
Good corporate governance is
essentially about effective and
responsible leadership. It is
characterised by the ethical values of
responsibility, accountability, fairness
and transparency. The typical aspects
of corporate governance, such as the
role and responsibilities of the Board
and Directors individually, internal
audit, risk management and
stakeholder engagement rest on a
foundation of ethical values.
Blue Label’s ethical standards are
encapsulated in its ethics statement,
which provides a template for ethical
reasoning as a guide to all employees
in their dealings with both internal
and external stakeholders. The ethics
statement is applicable to employees
across the Group, as well as to
customers, business partners,
suppliers and other stakeholders.
Each is requested to uphold the
ethical reasoning of the statement,
thereby enabling us to live our values.
The purpose of the ethics statement
is to:
•
emphasise the Group’s commitment
to ethics and compliance with laws
and regulations;
•
set out basic standards of ethical
and legal behaviour;
•
provide reporting mechanisms for
known or suspected ethical or legal
violations; and
•
help prevent and detect
wrongdoing.
Blue Label reiterates its stance on the
following matters:
•
fraudulent, corrupt or illegal
practices are not tolerated. Bribes or
any other illicit payments including
facilitations will neither be paid
nor received;
•
the Group does not participate in
any illegal anti-competitive activity.
Employees cannot authorise or
participate in any illegal conduct or
action that purports to restrict
competition; and
•
the Group is non-political.
Employees are expected to
demonstrate ethical business
practices. All new staff members
undergo an induction programme
that includes training on the above
code of business conduct, including
the function of the ethics hotline,
such as what should be reported and
how to report unethical behaviour via
this channel. The ethics hotline is
outsourced to KPMG Ethics Line, a
division of KPMG, and has been
certified by EthicsSA as fulfilling the
External Whistleblowing Hotline
Service Provider Standard EO1.1.1.
This standard is a best practice set
of guidelines or norms for the
professional and ethical conduct of
external whistleblowing hotline
service providers operating their own
centres or facilities.
A number of incidents were reported
during the year. All incidents were
human resource-related and were
resolved by the Group Head of
Human Resources and the relevant
line managers, in terms of the Group’s
various policies and procedures.