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How our activities added value for our stakeholders

Value created for our employees

Employees Employees
Delivering value to our employees
7 100(1)
people permanently employed (FY22: 7 204)
ZAR7.7bn
In remuneration and benefits (FY22: ZAR7.1bn)
1 466(1)
contractors and temporary employees (FY22: 1 640)
8.2(2)
out of 10 on employee engagement (FY22: 8.2/10)
ZAR205m(3)
spent on skills development, of which 30%(4) of bursary spend was allocated to STEM female talent (FY22: ZAR213m, 62%)
14%
employee turnover (FY22: 12%)(5)

Our employees are vital to creating ongoing connection and relevance as Africa's leading video entertainment and consumer services business. Developing and supporting them through every phase of their journey is a key priority for our business as our success is dependent on their growth and wellbeing. We believe in providing and enabling an environment where they can engage, innovate, learn, develop and realise their potential.

Over the last financial year we have proudly delivered a direct value of ZAR7.7bn in benefits and remuneration to our employees. We strive to create a safe, inclusive and diverse culture and environment where people receive competitive incentives and holistic benefits, and are inspired through challenging opportunities, learning and development programmes, engagement platforms and recognition.

(1) The combined number of permanently employed staff, contractors and temporary employees was largely impacted by vacancy freezes in our South African business given a deteriorating macro and consumer environment and growth in our Rest of Africa business.
(2) The employee engagement score declined marginally and can be attributed to escalating stress levels caused by increased workloads as a result of several large-scale projects during the year, as well as a loss of scarce technology, data and digital skills in a globally competitive space.
(3) The Learning and Development budget was decreased in FY23 as a result of macroeconomic pressures.
(4) Only a third of external bursary applicants were female.
(5) Employee turnover in FY23 was higher due to the increased demand for technology, data and digital related skills across the globe.

 

MultiChoice is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. We believe that to be the best in our field, our company must reflect, celebrate and elevate the diversity of our people.

Diversity, equity and inclusion

We strive to make diversity, equity and inclusion part of who we are by etching it into the core fabric of our workforce and culture, where it can be seen in the content we create and the partners we work with, and always reflect the customers and communities we serve. We actively promote an inclusive and diverse culture where all our people can find a place of belonging, and we deliver on our commitment to transformation through our integrated policies and talent programmes.

We proudly represent 94 nationalities across our teams, with the majority being of African origin.

In continuing to balance our gender representation, woman compose 47% (FY22: 48%) and men 53% (FY22: 52%) of our talent across the business, while woman compose 42% (FY22: 40%) of our management representation across operations.

As a company, we have committed significant resources and time to ensuring that we not only comply with the legal requirements of the Employment Equity Act, but that our Employment Equity (EE) initiatives also contribute to a culture of inclusion, diversity, and transformation. The EE consultative forums continue to operate with the purpose of facilitating discussion and consultation regarding our workforce statistics and workforce representation targets as well as allowing employees to express perceptions and/or potential concerns that may pose obstacles to employment equity within our South Africa operation. Our EE Forum members are passionate and committed to assist the company in achieving its EE goals and objectives. The EE initiatives are aligned and integrated with building and sustaining a talent pool of diverse employees that is aligned to our business' current and future operational requirements.

In addition to driving employment equity, our leadership teams have invested in our Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) implementation programme which is overseen by a strong executive committee and integrated with our Women's Forum. These platforms work in parallel to ensure our ongoing support for gender equality and representation across the business, as well as an equal level of inclusion for our diverse workforce.

Our notable transformation interventions include:

The Women in Technology Academy continues to benefit our female staff in our broadcast engineering and media operations. In these highly specialised fields, we strive to ensure that women are enabled with the appropriate tools to craft their career plans and have exposure to key project opportunities. The programme integrates targeted mentorship, technology strategy-led round-table discussions, technology project stretch assignments and upskilling through digital elearning paths.

The Technology Head of Department and Executive Associate Programme curates a space for high performing and high potential women within our technology business units to gain exposure to executive leadership projects and environments. These women are paired with a head of department (HOD) and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for a period of 11 months to gain experience in navigating various strategic projects and receive 1-on-1 mentorship.

The Advancing Women Mentorship Programme is a special initiative within the digital space that offers women in the business an opportunity to engage in masterclasses with subject matter experts, networking sessions, expert classes with key facilitators and a digital learning path, as well as a chance to be mentored by one of the executives within our business. The key focus is on enhancing their technological and management skills, connecting them with female and male role models in the industry and exposing them to broader aspects of the digital initiatives throughout the organisation.

The Ally Programme was launched this year as an executive project and mentorship programme aimed at facilitating sponsorship for women at an executive level. The programme aims to have male employees advocate for female peers to have a seat at the same table, advocating for women within the business in general and providing them with experience in critical roles.

The True Icons initiative was a group-enabled campaign to celebrate diversity and inclusion from the months of June through to September 2022. In June and July, we showcased the voices of the youth and the LGBTQIA+ community both within our organisation and within our communities. August saw the lens shifting to empowerment of women and allied movements, while September celebrated heritage month with a keener focus on the importance of African storytelling.

Women in Sales is a mentorship programme aimed at accelerating the development and growth of female talent in the sales function across the Rest of Africa business.

Developing our employees

Employee learning and development is critical to the performance and success of our people and we create learning and development solutions that are specifically targeted to the needs of our employees in our business context. Our offerings aim to skill, upskill and reskill our workforce and can take the form of coaching, mentoring, practical on the job training, formal qualifications, accredited courses and training, and customised learning programmes for leadership, technical or skills‑based development.

Spend on learning and development was limited to mandatory and critical courses and initiatives across all regions due to pressures experienced in the macroeconomic environment. In FY23, we invested ZAR205m in employee development, of which 51% was allocated to female talent (FY22: ZAR213m, 45%). Within the professional growth dimension, 30% (FY22: 62%) of bursary spend has been allocated to women (ZAR13m) in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, which decreased significantly from FY22 as we saw a decline in the amount of female participants. We also enabled 1 319 employees to attend formal training (FY22: 2 527).

We aim to stay at the forefront of new developments in the learning landscape while keeping our strategy of moving towards a platform business front of mind. As a result, we are increasingly looking at opportunities and candidates in the STEM disciplines to incorporate and onboard into the MultiChoice environment.

The group continues to invest in bursaries for top talent in the STEM fields to create a pool for the organisation to draw from while contributing to alleviating the STEM skills shortage across our markets. We invested ZAR42m (FY22: ZAR59m) in bursaries granted to employees, employee dependents and 170 external students in FY23 (FY22: 165).

Production and media remain a critical part of our video entertainment business, and our Media and Production Graduate Programme focuses on granting our bursars in media and film production technologies an opportunity to gain practical experience in this industry.

 

 

Employee learning and development is critical to the performance and success of our people.

Our graduate programmes remain the key pipeline for early career development and specialist skills. Two key programmes in this area have been the Digital Graduate Programme and the MCG Technology Graduate Programme. The Digital Graduate Programme's objective is to attract the brightest graduates from the actuarial and computer science fields, offering them the opportunity to train and gain experience in our Data Science, Behavioural Science and Design divisions. The MCG Tech Graduate Programme seeks to grant our graduated bursars an opportunity to gain skills and expert coaching in our Engineering, Software Development, IT and Consumer Insights divisions.

The Customer Group in our Rest of Africa business, prioritised the development of a highly efficient Direct Sales Force (DSF) in all our African markets. We created a comprehensive DSF upskilling curriculum to ensure uniformity in how we sell and interact with our customers. Part of the curriculum includes product knowledge as this is naturally a key requirement in the selling process which can be taken for granted by business insiders.

In addition, the Customer Group implemented an 18-month graduate programme at the start of FY22, hosting 11 graduates who all successfully graduated in October 2022. These graduates were given exposure to practical work experience in all areas of the Customer Group and received support through a work readiness programme in partnership with Henley.

In pursuit of understanding our customers and their purchasing decisions better, we partnered with Henley to upskill select individuals in human behaviour and consumer psychology through the Behavioural Science Programme. Our first cohort was launched in August and consisted of 30 employees from our Group Digital division. A number of encouraging solutions have been presented to the business and are being incorporated into our customer experience journeys.

MultiChoice continues to leverage a network of coaches

MultiChoice has expanded the in-house Coaching Platform, launched in FY22 across all areas of the business. This in-house platform enables accredited coaches with the necessary tools and skills to develop and empower high performing individuals identified through our internal evaluation processes.


We have embedded coaching and mentoring into our learning interventions. This critical capability is a core differentiator in accelerating our people's performance by aligning the goals of individuals with their growth paths and desired business outcomes. Our continuous effort to invest in our people by providing coaching opportunities for growth and development was recognised by the Africa Board for Coaching, Consulting and Coaching Psychology and MultiChoice was awarded the prize for the Coaching Anchored Organisation of the year 2022.

The Ignite Programme is a dynamic solution designed for critical talent across our business. The programme, developed in-house and launched with global partners, offers a break-through learning experience that incorporates personalised development through assessment, industry relevant learning and targeted experiential exposure. The programme aims to enable our current high potential employees to progress rapidly, whether through horizontal career specialisation or a vertical growth path.

In addition to our rich learning and development interventions, we continue to invest in digital learning through the MultiChoice Academy e-learning platform. The platform hosts an ever-expanding library of curated courses developed by leading partners such as Harvard and Udemy and also features international content libraries. This year, the academy had 119 386 course registrations (FY22: 320 903), 58 568 course completions (FY22: 247 423) and recorded 196 052 hours of learning (FY22: 52 656). The change between FY23 and FY22 is due to the relocation of content for products, customer care and installer training onto partner platforms due to access and customisation.

Creating the leaders of tomorrow

The development of leaders is vital in growing our business and enabling our vision of enriching lives. We continuously review our leadership-focused learning and development solutions to ensure that they suit the needs of the business, adequately support succession pipelines, enable delivery on our strategy and drive innovative thinking. We incorporate relevant leadership aspects such as systemic thinking, new leadership intelligence, digital transformation, emotional intelligence, commercial acumen and agility into our offerings to elevate our programmes and create transformational leaders.

This year our business leaders worked with Henley, GIBS, Insead and other leadership institutions through customised management and leadership development programmes. We have impacted 160 of our full-time staff with qualifications on National Qualifications Framework levels 5, 6, 7 and 8 across all divisions of MultiChoice.

MultiChoice, in partnership with the Henley Africa Business School, has curated a top industry leadership development programme which we offer at various levels of leadership. The programme learning materials specifically cater for our dynamic industry, organisational and project-based challenges.

In furthering leadership intelligence, MultiChoice has invested in the Leader as Coach programme, an accredited coaching programme to upskill our senior leaders with the necessary skills to lead their teams in a more approachable and engaging coaching style.

To support the learning journey of our emerging leaders, we have redesigned our Management 101 programme to include a series of self-paced e-learning modules which incorporate real life, scenario-based business simulations. The process is rounded off with a short face-to-face consolidation session to bring the learning together and ensure a seamless transfer of the knowledge and skills learned back into the workplace.

SuperSport launched an Industry Leaders Programme in partnership with GIBS and the University of San Francisco that is wholly customised to meet the needs of executive leaders in the sports industry. This learning journey accommodates the nuances of leading and managing organisations in a highly politicised industry with multiple stakeholders, characterised by unique and complex business and funding models, and high levels of disruption and competition. A total of 18 hand-picked leaders from respective sport bodies were selected to be part of the programme and explored a number of strategic challenges set by SuperSport. The aim of this intervention is to deepen partnerships with sport bodies and enhance the sustainability of the sports industry in South Africa.

We have developed a number of new leadership solutions to enhance the capabilities of select employees within our talent pipeline, to prepare them to assume senior leadership positions in the next two to five years. An example is the SuperSport Next Generation Leadership Programme, introduced by the CEO of SuperSport. The programme kicked off with psychometric assessments, a leadership footprint lab and an immersive experience of learning, looking at new markets and ways to do business differently. As we prepare these delegates to become transformational leaders they will be stretched to think innovatively and creatively to lead the business into the future.

Engaging our employees

MultiChoice is committed to driving employee engagement as it is critical to driving customer experience, business objectives and employee ambassadorship in the market. Continuous engagement metrics are included in our leaders' key performance metrics and they are expected to drive initiatives to keep employee engagement and morale high. This year we saw a high rating of 'Relationship with managers' with an overall group score of 8.3 (out of 10).

Additionally, we ensure that our employees have appropriate platforms and support through continuous engagement and collaboration. We drive employee engagement and wellness campaigns through our Thrive Tribe engagement platform to ensure a holistic view on employee matters.

We commit to respecting freedom of association and collective bargaining in line with local legislative requirements and staff representation levels. We take pride in our internal employee representative body, the Workplace Forum (WPF), which operates in South Africa, as well as in similar bodies across our other regional operations, such as Irdeto, which enables internal representatives to bargain on employees' behalf and champion their interests.

Recognising our talent

MultiChoice is committed to recognising employees for their efforts through ongoing performance appraisals and continuous talent engagements which form the basis of personal development plans and career growth initiatives.

We encourage our employees to recognise their peers, managers, direct reports and specific teams for the value they add to our organisation and how they live the MultiChoice behaviours, through our groupwide employee recognition programme, #WeSeeYou. This year, we registered 23 152 individual digital recognitions (FY22: 20 405) and paid 1 155 individual spot awards (FY22: 1 324), 971 team awards (FY22: 538) and 245 employee of the month awards (FY22: 210). These recognitions culminate in yearly awards of employees who are recognised at the highest level of the organisation. We recognise employee loyalty and commitment through our long-service awards on an annual basis.

MultiChoice is committed to recognising employees for their efforts through ongoing performance appraisals and continuous talent engagements.

MultiChoice is serious about the wellness and safety of our employees and takes a proactive and preventative approach to employees' health through our various employee benefits and online wellbeing programmes.

Caring for our employees' health and wellbeing

MultiChoice is serious about the wellness and safety of our employees and takes a proactive and preventative approach to employees' health through our various employee benefits and online wellbeing programmes. Our wellness programme looks at every major aspect of an employee's life, including preventative health testing, financial advice, family support, psychological counselling and other wellness related advice and support.

The ICAS Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) encompasses core counselling and advisory services and is highly valued by our staff as we have seen increased utilisation and commendable feedback.

Dooble is our lifestyle benefits offering contactless concierge services which has saved employees millions of rands and the business over 3 700 productive hours throughout the year.

Issues raised by employees
1
The retention of critical and scarce technology talent is a key priority for MultiChoice as the shortage of technology talent in Africa persists. The burden of key talent losses may overburden existing staff, increasing the internal demand for these skills and capacity gaps.
How these were addressed
The group continues to manage and deploy its critical and scarce skills identification, retention and support plan targeted at ensuring continuity and coverage in the event of talent losses.
Issues raised by employees
2
As the organisation continues to modernise its platforms, we need to ensure continuity in operations, develop and recruit the necessary skills and transition employees to new and upgraded platforms in a seamless manner.
How these were addressed
We ensure that all modernisation programmes have the necessary change, communication and training support to assist employees with skills to operate the new and upgraded platforms and enhance their work.
Key focus areas going forward
  • We are dedicated to retaining, developing, attracting and supporting key talent as we drive our business into the future. We will nurture equal opportunities, ensure fair representation for all our employees and propel diversity that mirrors the communities we serve.
  • We will continue to drive transformational leadership capabilities through value adding development initiatives, succession pipelining for critical roles and effective knowledge transfer of scarce skills across the group.
  • We believe in our purpose of enriching lives and commit to seeking ways to improve the performance of, and benefits and support to our employees.