Multichoice

Our performance

Our people

• Our employees represent 50 nationalities across the group
• Launched the #weseeyou campaign to drive performance improvement and collaboration through continuous peer recognition
• Achieved 80% employee advocacy for our brands and improvements across the board on employee engagement
• Spent more than R126.5m on skills development

Organisational culture

We promote a culture of open-mindedness and freedom of expression, and encourage authentic conversations that challenge us to take action. During FY2019, we launched the #weseeyou campaign which makes use of key leadership-driven actions to improve agility and collaboration, and to support team members with digital skills development, career paths and cultivating a mature and agile mindset to leverage new technologies, trends and ways of working.

We encourage our teams to move beyond what is expected in both personal performance and team delivery, and we believe in rewarding high-performing behaviours. Our line managers and teams primarily use a mass collaboration platform to share and collect feedback and use data-driven insights from across MultiChoice to transfer practices on effective teaming and leadership styles.

Beyond quarterly and monthly business meetings, we host strategic dialogue platforms for leaders and key influencers to engage and interact. We recently refreshed key leadership behaviour for our next phase of growth and are in the process of embedding these into our people practices. These robust engagements enable our leaders to onboard teams, and to foster a common understanding of our expectations.

Employee engagement

Building a culture of exceptional leadership is a critical enabler for an agile organisation. To reinforce the behaviour of authentic leaders, we have recalibrated our performance system to ensure greater alignment to our strategy, increased focus on the customer experience as well as commercial and financial performance. We conduct a formal engagement survey annually and utilise an ongoing engagement measurement application to determine the effectiveness of our efforts. An independent partner facilitates the survey, providing anonymity for employees to voice their ideas and concerns. The aim of these tools is to better understand the levels of employee connection and advocacy. It also compares our group to international technology and media peer groups. Our score demonstrated an improvement in employee engagement as teams settle into new ways of working and adjust to our new operating model. This improvement is the result of combined efforts to prioritise the people agenda at MultiChoice.

In South Africa, we recorded improved engagement levels, with excellent participation, primarily driven by leadership interventions across our business areas. During FY2019, we recorded a positive improving score of 80% for brand ambassadorship across the enterprise post the business operating model shifts in 2018. Across the Rest of Africa business, we recorded exceptional leadership engagement across all regions, with Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia leading on both engagement and participation scores above 80%. These leadership relationships were demonstrated by exceeding our overall engagement targets and continued improvement in areas of growth and mobility. Irdeto recorded overall engagement of 77% across its operational footprint, which marks a significant improvement from the prior year. We scored highest in issues of wellbeing, management, alignment and involvement. Priorities going forward include ensuring our people are aligned to achieve our vision, improvements to our feedback and recognition programmes, and revisiting our physical workspaces.

Talent management

Our intention is to grow our reputation as an employer of choice. We achieve this by hiring experienced specialists in key areas of our business and by developing a robust internal pool of talent to deliver on our strategy. Our talent management practices are founded on principles of transparency and equal opportunity in our hiring, performance and promotion criteria. We are acutely aware of nurturing an inclusive environment across our African operations to cater for the cultural and language diversity among our employees.

We obtain a holistic view of the health of our talent pool through peer performance, engagement and assessment insights which, in turn, support our talent development, career path selection and succession plan efforts. We actively focus on improving the employee experience journey and use social media engagement and early supportive networks to improve team cohesion. Our collaboration with educational institutions is a critical enabler of talent recruitment, and we also use targeted campaigns to attract experienced candidates. We developed mature sourcing strategies and retention approaches to secure scare skills in the storytelling and digital space.

During FY2019, 87% of employee movements in our Rest of Africa operations were internal promotions. Approximately 86% of employees have career development plans in place, and we provide ongoing support and exposure to opportunities for career management. We also have competitive award programmes in place to drive performance.

From an Irdeto perspective, as a leader in the field of digital security working for some of the largest brands in the world, it is crucial to attract and retain the best talent. Our dedicated talent acquisition team is aligned with our market units, and constantly in pursuit of exceptional talent from across the world. Our strong focus on our employer brand helps us to attract the right individuals, and our employee onboarding, performance management, continued learning and reward programmes ensure we retain the talent that drives our business forward.

Skills development and training

We recognise the importance of facilitating ongoing professional development for our employees and invested more than R126.5m across the group. We expanded our development offering to specific groups such as early talent, specialist experts and fast-track employees by providing training in creative storytelling, customer experience, digital technology, data science and leadership for the modern age. Development is encouraged through consistent dialogues between leaders and teams, including mentoring, rotational programmes, and on-the-job development experiences.

We recorded 29 670 enrolments on our learning platform with the average number of courses taken on, at a high of 3.6 per learner. The majority of these courses are focused on compliance, engineering, technology and product, followed by customer and service operations. Our international platform includes language learning as well as technical and soft-skills training courses, open to all employees. In addition, the online programmes enable employees to build meaningful development plans that meet their career goals and track progress. We continue to innovate new learning solutions in order to support our employees at all levels of the organisation as they strive to achieve their long-term career aspirations.

In South Africa, we spent more than R73m on skills development and R18.8m on formal training, of which 84% related to developing black talent and 45% focused on female contributors, with a focus on specialist and entry-level talent. We have invested over R8.4m in bursaries in the review period. Our learnerships combine vocational learning with practical and workplace experience aligned with the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). A total of 214 learnerships were offered to unemployed people with disabilities as we continue to drive a greater inclusive environment.

Across the Rest of Africa, we invested more than R40m in skills development, uplifting 2 224 employees across our operations. With dedicated in-country professionals and strong regional coordination, we provide exposure to all levels of the business to foster growth, experience and opportunities for succession. All customer-facing employees undergo mandatory customer-experience training and we are expanding investments in internships for jobs that are critical to the organisation. Delivering great experiences starts with our teams, investing time and building skills in our line managers are critical to enable effective people practices.

Our global learning teams continue to keep Irdeto a leader in the age of disruption, enabling 84% of the entire organisation to attend formal key learning interventions in addition to online learning platforms, with an expenditure of R13m in digital, leadership and sales skills. The global learning and development team not only focuses on providing access to learning and development for employees, which will serve them in their current role, but also on skills required by employees to develop new skills for the future. This includes mentoring programmes, technical paths, leadership training, coaching, feedback skills and our internal training platform.

Diversity and inclusion

Employment equity cannot be achieved without robust diversity management. We believe diversity gives us a competitive advantage and aids in decision-making and problem-solving to provide the best solutions for our customers. All employees are treated equally and respectfully, and every effort is made to support them in doing their work effectively. We are committed to inclusive growth and development and to create opportunities that support the continued transformation of our organisation.

Our employees represent 50 nationalities across the group, with the majority from the African continent. Our employee profile comprises 47% women and 53% men, improving on gender diversity from the prior year. We promote an inclusive, bias-free culture and continue to deliver on our commitment for transformation and inclusive growth. Our leadership teams are diverse and proudly representative across top and senior management being women. Future focus areas include growing female inclusion in management and across the organisation with specific focus on SuperSport and investing in developing black ICT skills.

In championing change for our customers, employees and communities, we also actively collaborate with industry groups to address inequity, notably we support Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual (LGB) Tech and Women in Tech, among others, for promoting diversity and inclusion in our recruitment processes.

Safety, health and wellbeing

It is our priority to ensure a safe and healthy working environment for all our employees. We recognise the link between the health and wellbeing of our people, and our business success. When employees feel healthy, respected and cared for, we observe increased productivity, authentic engagement, continued innovation and superior customer satisfaction. To facilitate this, we invest in employee benefit programmes and services that have a meaningful impact.

We take great care to minimise or eliminate injuries in the workplace, and to ensure our consistent compliance with health and safety regulations. Appropriate medical emergency and disaster-recovery plans are in place at all our offices. Given the nature of our business, our health risks are primarily linked to employee lifestyle diseases, including hypertension, diabetes and stress management. Through annual wellness days and ongoing awareness campaigns, we emphasise the importance of a balanced, healthy lifestyle.

In South Africa, our Randburg office has a comprehensive onsite wellness centre accessible to all employees, offering cost- effective, convenient and confidential medical care from an onsite nurse and doctor, as well as a beautician, physiotherapist, dietitian and optometrist. Our Cape Town, Durban and Umhlanga offices also have onsite clinics.

Across the Rest of Africa, through our extensive network of healthcare providers, we offer gym memberships as well as healthcare benefits to proactively improve the wellbeing of our employees. We also host stress management and financial awareness sessions facilitated by industry professionals. At larger campuses, we host monthly sessions focused on specific health initiatives, and run awareness and information campaigns with employees focused on health and wellbeing topics. We also facilitate annual blood pressure monitoring for all employees.

Membership of our retirement fund and medical aid is mandatory to ensure employees plan and save for their retirement. Awareness and education sessions help to prepare for life's eventualities, including retirement, death, disability, dreaded diseases and more. In South Africa, MultiChoice operates a Montessori nursery school for the children of employees and makes an early-childhood-development subsidy available for children from the ages of three months to six years. Other benefits include a unique lifestyle programme with access to a 24-hour virtual assistant that provides a variety of services, including a 24/7 emergency service and free legal and financial advice. We support a mobile workforce, including online collaboration tools and video-conferencing facilities to enable employee connection and improved wellness through greater work-life balance, and reducing the strain caused by excessive travel.