corporate review

Human Resources

The Group’s current phase of strong growth, spurred by an increasing globalisation programme, is bringing many new opportunities and challenges to the Group Human Resources team. Group Human Resources and human resources practitioners in all Sasol businesses continued to progress significantly in line with the mandate to develop and maintain a strong, competent and productive base of human capital.

Increasingly, human capital is being harnessed to strengthen the Group’s pursuit of its five primary growth drivers and, therein, to unlock new value for shareholders and all other Sasol stakeholders. This is especially significant against the backdrop of:

Sasol is in the process of developing a set of Group-wide values through a comprehensive consultative process with employees. Five draft values are being considered and emphasise the importance of business and operational excellence, customer focus, continuous improvement, integrity and winning with people. These values support the Group’s vision, culture and its major strategic growth drivers.

Quest for wider world-class skills base  The core of Sasol’s people has for decades boasted many world-class scientists, engineers, technologists and other functional specialists. The drive in more recent years, however, has been towards stimulating all employees to expand on current skills and knowledge in order to keep track of world trends and to focus on benchmarking and improving of own performance.

Such challenges have intensified in recent years as a result of disappearing trade, communication and other barriers in a world economy that is becoming more open and competitive. The pace at which business transactions are conducted has accelerated over the last decade.

Sasol’s formation of strategically considered joint ventures and acquisition of key new businesses – including the former Condea operations, as well as Schümann Sasol, Merisol, Sasol DHB and Sasol Southwest Energy– have greatly emphasised the importance of maintaining and developing a strong foundation of highly skilled and superbly motivated people to serve a growing global network of customer-centric businesses that support the Group’s growth objectives.

Skills enrichment initiatives progress  In the case of Sasol, a complementary effort has been intensified to improve succession planning and to ensure that the Group can identify and develop its future leaders. There is a structured drive to ensure that people can continue to be developed to support aggressive and focused growth.

Sasol spent about R115 million on various skills development, training and associated competency-driven initiatives (excluding the Condea operations acquired with effect from March 2001). This includes in-house technical training, the further funding of self-learning centres and the stronger commitment to a continuing undergraduate bursary programme.

In South Africa, Sasol is sponsoring bursaries for 450 undergraduate students for the 2001 academic year at a total investment of R18 million. Most of the students are studying sciences, engineering and related technological and human sciences disciplines at various universities and technikons around the country.

A state-of-the-art, senior executive development programme to provide top leadership with skills for managing mergers and acquisitions, among other critical leadership issues, has been implemented with the assistance of the Group’s learning alliance partner, the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS).

Fifty percent of current bursaries have been allocated to people from designated groups in keeping with Sasol’s commitment to promoting workplace diversity and progressing employment equity. Under South Africa’s Employment Equity Act, designated groups cover black people (Africans, Coloureds and Indians), women and people with disabilities.

Diversity management advances  The Group has progressed satisfactorily in its employment equity undertakings. Despite the magnitude of the task, Sasol remains on track to have more than 40% of all Group leadership and professional positions held by people from designated groups.

Integral to the drive to maximise diversity, employment equity, intellectual capital and leadership development, the Group’s new Accelerated Leadership Development Programme gained significant impetus during the year. This initiative is being undertaken to fast-track the development of high-potential senior black employees to fill executive managerial positions with distinction.

Industrial relations in the South African operations remained stable and constructive throughout the year. The Group maintains constructive and open dialogue with trade unions and other recognised employee representative bodies. Group morale and productivity remain high.

Helping to manage the HIV/Aids pandemic  Sasol continues to engage constructively in concerted workplace and community initiatives aimed at countering the HIV/Aids pandemic. In the light of the latest actuarial surveys conducted in South Africa, Sasol has established a more definitive understanding of the pandemic’s potential impact on business operations.

The maintenance of a continuing employee HIV/Aids information and awareness programme in the workplace is at the core of the Group’s comprehensive strategy to combat the impact of the pandemic.