Transforming our People

Our transformation framework supports national strategic priorities, promotes access to aviation and augments the sector. In the year under review, we achieved and, in many cases, exceeded our transformation targets relating to management control, employment equity and skills development.

Management control

In FY2019/20, we improved representation of black women at executive Board level, with the appointment of a permanent CEO, Mpumi Z Mpofu, effective from 1 February 2020. Subsequent to appointments in FY2019/20, we appointed a black CFO, Siphamandla Mthethwa, effective 1 May 2020. These appointments have strengthened and brought stability to our existing executive team and in the tactical operations and strategic decision-making at the most senior level of the Group.

Employment equity

We continue to deliver tangible employment equity outcomes across all management and employee levels, through various company-wide initiatives ranging from our comprehensive Employment Equity Plan to our concerted focus on attracting and retaining key talent within specific demographic groups. Extensive management and monitoring of our employment equity paid off and we met our objectives as set out in year three of our Employment Equity Plan.

Black employee representation

We remain committed to developing a workforce that is representative of the demographics of the economically active population of South Africa. At the end of FY2019/20, black South African employees represented 94.1% (FY2018/19: 93.3%) of our total workforce profile, of which black males represented 51.2% (FY2018/19: 50.9%) and black females 42.9% (FY2018/19: 42.9%). In line with the Employment Equity Act, the term ‘black people’ is defined as a generic term that means African, Coloured and Indian.

Gender representation

Total female representation in the workforce stand at 45.5% of 3 343 employees (FY2018/19: 45.9% of 3 110), which is 0.2% above the national economically active population for females of 45.3%.

Persons with disabilities

The advancement of previously disadvantaged groups including persons with disabilities remains a key focus area in transforming our people. In the year under review, persons with disabilities representation has steadily increased from 2.4% (FY2018/19) to 2.5% of our total workforce, of which 2.2% were black persons with disabilities and 1.1% were black female persons with disabilities. Similarly, black female employees representation remained the same at 42.9% (FY2018/19: 42.9%).

We continue to create awareness about the importance of including persons with disabilities in line with our persons with disabilities employment strategy. A dedicated task team for persons with disabilities exists and focuses on initiatives related to accessibility, inclusion and reasonable accommodation of persons with disabilities and continued annual declaration campaigns and sensitisation initiatives around disability matters.

As part of our objective to continuously create an inclusive and accessible work environment for employees with disabilities, a successful exercise was undertaken company-wide among persons with disabilities to determine reasonable accommodation requirements. Recommendations were made and some measures have been taken to address the findings including the alignment of our disclosure and reasonable accommodation policy and procedures. These measures will ensure managers are better informed and equipped to support staff members with disabilities.

Persons with disability network support group sessions are held quarterly to deliberate on issues affecting the company’s persons with disabilities, review statistics and celebrate successes. It also serves as a platform to explore best practice strategies and solutions. To strengthen the sustainability of inclusion and representation of persons with disabilities, we continue to engage disability sector organisations with the objective of concluding a memorandum of understanding to leverage from and advise business on disability initiatives and best practice.

Persons with disabilities
in FY2018/19

2.4%

Persons with disabilities
in FY2019/20

2.5%

Gender demographics of our people in FY2019/20

Female 45.5%

Male 54.5%

Youth employees in FY2019/20

38.6%

Racial demographics of our people
in FY2019/20

Black female
42.9%

Black male
51.2%

Non-black
5.9%

Black youth in senior management
positions in FY2019/20

3.6%

Black youth in technical
positions in FY2019/20

5%

Skills development – youth empowerment

Ensuring the sustainability and future availability of critical skills in the ever-evolving aviation industry is a key component in ensuring the achievement of our strategic goals. As such, youth development is essential to ensure a sustainable skills pipeline. Developing our youth is also a key driver of transformation, not only for us as a company, but for broader society. In the year under review, youth employees represented 38.6% of our employees (FY2018/19: 42.1%). Black youth in senior management positions and above reached 3.6% (FY2018/19: 1.7%) while black youth in technical positions reached 5% (FY2018/19: 4.8%).

The development and increased representation of youth across all occupational levels is contributed to initiatives that raised awareness of the available career opportunities in aviation, providing bursary support to those studying towards qualifications that align with the national critical and scarce skills, as well as providing meaningful work experience for first-time job seekers.

This year, 207 youths engaged in various young talent development initiatives through trainee programmes, internships, learnerships and apprenticeships, 17 of whom have been absorbed into permanent positions.

TRANSFORMING OUR SUPPLIER BASE

In FY2019/20, we developed and adopted an economic transformation strategy, as illustrated below by our transformation runway. The overarching strategy highlights key initiatives relating to our seven sector strategies, which we intend to embark on to achieve Vision 2025. Our seven sector strategies are detailed on the opposite page.

Seven sector strategies

Our seven sector strategies relate to preferential procurement and enterprise development. In the advertising, car rental and retail sectors, we engage in commercial activities, which generate non-aeronautical revenue. While engaging with suppliers and service providers in these sectors, we contribute to their transformation through enterprise development. Although ground handling could be considered a commercial engagement, we do not generate any revenue from this sector. We contribute to the transformation of this sector by setting transformational requirements in ground-handling contracts and by providing enterprise development opportunities.

In the construction, information communication and technology (ICT) and property sectors, we engage in the procurement of goods and services. Through preferential procurement, we are also able to support the transformation of our supplier base.

Seven sector focus areas

Our seven sector transformation strategies focus on inclusive growth within four areas as illustrated. Within these focus areas, we continuously monitor and report on the indicators set out below.

Number of new black-owned service providers introduced into the industry
Percentage of procurement goods/services issued and completed with black-owned partnership requirement

Percentage of qualifying small enterprises and exempt micro enterprises supported in contract funding through direct spend
Number of black-owned service providers supported with funding through leveraging of funding network (e.g. DFI)

Number of black professionals and/or SMMEs provided with training and up-skilling opportunities

Percentage of sector spend channelled towards SMMEs and black-owned service providers
Percentage of sector revenue
(where applicable) provided by
black-owned and SMME vendors

Preferential procurement

Construction

We have adopted contract participation goals as a mechanism to measure and improve our transformation performance. All major contracts have a set target of 51% ownership in terms of one of the following: prequalification of B-BBEE threshold of level 2; subcontracting prequalification to support ESD of 30% to black-owned suppliers, of which 15% (50% of 30%) must be black women-owned, youth-owned, disabilities-owned or military veterans; SMMEs using the National Contractor Development Programme; targeted local enterprises; or targeted local labour with an investment in training of a percentage of the contract value.

Projects have largely complied with the approved transformation requirements during the tender stage and in awarding contracts. We also offer support to businesses with flexible forms of construction guarantees and a reduced payment period. In addition to using transformed suppliers, our goal is to localise the supply chain of projects to support the national objectives of job creation and industry growth.

IT

In the year under review, our B-BBEE spend on IT reached 62% of our total spend of R640 million. The increase is attributed to the increase in capital expenditure in the reporting period. Furthermore, the share of our total IT spend spent on black female-owned businesses reached R12 million, 2% of our total IT spend. We primarily support the transformation of the ICT sector by creating an enabling environment to accelerate the growth and entry of SMMEs in the sector, through a required 40% SMME participation on all open bids.

In order to ensure SMMEs in the ICT industry have sufficient capacity to make use of these opportunities, we also assist in skilling, re-skilling and up-skilling them in cloud computing, e-commerce, software development and airport-specific applications. By leveraging funding opportunities from development finance institutions, government incentives and other funding mechanisms by the private sector, we further support the development of ICT SMMEs through access to funding.

Property

We engaged with our industry partners on an ongoing basis to enhance their understanding of how our transformation journey can contribute to our business. During FY2019/20, we connected with advocacy organisations such as the South African Property Owners Association, South African Institute of Black Property Practitioners and Woman in Property Network. There was a considerable expression of interest and appreciation for our transformation journey and initiatives.

We established a four-pillar model which will underpin transformation implementation. The pillars include:

Capacity building through providing training and support in areas such as entrepreneurial training and enhancement of management skills, among others
Transformation of sector through creating a procurement process that will favour emerging black property practitioners and encourage new entrants to the sector
Access to funding by offering payment terms structured in a manner favourable to emerging black property practitioners
Access to market and expansion, in which black property developers are identified and given opportunities to develop their businesses.

Commercial

Supporting black entrepreneurs remains a key part of our empowerment strategy and is measured through the black business share of commercial revenue. In the year under review, cancelled tenders relating to litigation has slowed our ability to make progress on this indicator, which reached 55.4% in FY2020/19 (FY2018/19: 54%).

During the year, defaulters of payment on rental agreements in our commercial space were given an opportunity to renegotiate rentals under our reduced rentals initiative. This initiative has contributed to our transformation imperative by maintaining contracts in line with our transformational objective. Along with the reduced rentals, tenants are given financial management training, which will educate them on the financial practices needed to avoid defaulting in future, among other skills. By supporting SMMEs in difficult times and providing further training, we are able to create winning long-term partnerships within our value chain.

Enterprise and supplier development

SMMEs are key to stimulating job creation in our economy. Through enterprise supplier development we provide financial and non-financial support to SMMEs to increase economic participation, ultimately stimulating job creation. Including SMMEs in our supplier base supports their growth while advancing our transformational imperative. SMMEs, supported by the Company, are able to grow to scalable businesses with the potential to become part of our supplier development programme and, ultimately, to become preferred procurement partners.

Key enterprise and supplier development projects

In FY2019/20, we embarked on several key enterprise and supplier development projects which are either close to finalisation or are being implemented.

Corporate Canteen – Café Zing

The Corporate Canteen has been completed and oursupplier, Café Zing, commenced operation in July 2019. The Company contributes to CafО Zing as an enterprise development beneficiary through the waiver of rental and utility fees. The food and beverages on offer are subsidised, providing financial support to employees and encouraging the use of this facility.

Cape Town International Airport – J9 Wine

We entered into an enterprise development agreement with J9 Wines, which has been allocated an operational space at the airport. In the year under review, we sponsored J9 Wine’s trip to Hong Kong, where it participated in an international wine show. J9 Wine had the opportunity to showcase its product lines and gain exposure to potential partnership opportunities.

O.R. Tambo International Airport
– Mobile cart operators

Through our enterprise and supplier development programme, we support SMME development by providing carts to several mobile cart operators. A selection committee vetted three potential operators, who will benefit from various business development initiatives, including reduced rentals, which also form part of their agreements.

King Shaka International Airport
– Ilembe Business Chamber collaboration

A memorandum of understanding was concluded with the Ilembe Business Chamber, creating various enterprise development initiatives. In the year under review, we held an enterprise development initiative competition where SMMEs were given the opportunity to showcase their skills within their area of expertise. We will assist the winning SMME initiative to better position their business for success through various business development initiatives.

King Shaka International Airport
– Mobile cart operators

Through the selection committee held for the mobile cart operators, a supplier was identified, vetted and engagements held to finalise the enterprise development agreement.

Port Elizabeth International Airport
– Supply chain management community education

A supply chain management team visited various wards within Port Elizabeth as part of a campaign to educate the community on our procurement process and how they can actively participate. Through this process, a list of potential suppliers was generated that will be used to drive regionalisation in Port Elizabeth.