Blue Label Telecoms Integrated Annual Report 2019

68 Blue Label integrated annual report 2019 Human capital continued SKILLS DEVELOPMENT Skills development remains a focus area within the organisation for employees, learners and talent within our broader value chain. In the last year, capability building for our BLT employees has been a key focus to enable us to future-proof ourselves and remain relevant in the marketplace. Training budgets for the development of technology employees has increased significantly to enable us to develop new skills and capabilities required for us to convert to new technology stacks in support of our digitisation and innovation strategy. In addition to our business transformation capability-building initiatives we have implemented learnerships across the organisation to support our growth initiatives. Blue Label Telecoms has a significant number of subsidiaries and newly acquired businesses. Over the last year the human capital team has begun to standardise the job evaluation and grading system for the Group. We are transitioning some organisations from Patterson to a standardised Hay job evaluation methodology. The human capital team, together with the Remco and Social, Ethics and Transformation Committee, are working closely with leadership to re-evaluate roles and align grades across the Group. This exercise will be completed at the end of Q2 in FY20. The process has enabled us to: u u understand our current landscape; u u evaluate current practices across subsidiaries, especially newly acquired subsidiaries; u u review, standardise and align our job evaluation methodology and grading as per plan; u u benchmark our practices against the market for key businesses, capabilities and roles supported by The Korn Ferry Hay Group and Deloitte; u u evaluate equal pay for equal work and assess what steps must be taken to address gaps identified; u u revise our remuneration philosophy and policy to address shareholder concerns and bring us closer to best practice; and u u revise our performance management system to support performance-based remuneration. The Group offers several employee benefits, including group life insurance (inclusive of a life policy, severe illness, disability and a funeral cover) and medical aid through Discovery Health and a provident fund through Destiny Retirement Fund. The costs of medical aid and the provident fund are included in the total cost to company of employees, while the cost of the group life benefit is borne by the respective company. Further benefits outside of fixed remuneration will be rolled out to employees to increase our competitiveness within the marketplace and to enable us to retain talent within an increasingly competitive landscape. Together with our Remuneration Committee we have revisited our Total reward philosophy. A key enabler to the successful implementation and leveraging of the revised policy has been the standardisation and implementation of a single grading approach across the group. TOTAL REWARD #myremuneration #myhappiness it r e uneration Com itte (Remco) w hav revisited our total eward philosophy. A key enabler to the successful impl mentatio and leveraging of the r vised policy has been the stan ardisatio and i f a single grading ap roach across the Group. Unemployed learners 30 200 Employed learners 0 26 Disabled learners 20 85 Learners 90 226 Learnership programmes implemented 12 9 FY19 skills development FY18 skills development Total spend on formal bursaries R2 988 603 Total number of disabled bursary recipients Total number of employee bursaries Total number of non- employee bursaries Blue Label bursary scheme Total number of bursary recipients 111 40 59 52