Our People

Our employees are key stakeholders as articulated in one of our objectives: “Using and growing our skills and understanding of our operating environment by attracting and retaining the best people in a work environment that is conducive to productivity and performance.”

We continuously strive to be an employer of choice by offering a thriving, challenging and nurturing environment where we treat all our employees with dignity and respect. We drive and foster a culture of performance, offering development and growth opportunities with the aim of attracting, developing and retaining engaged talent and teams in a diverse and inclusive environment. We care for and nurture our employees by providing robust education and awareness on key life issues to foster a healthy and sustainable workforce. Our total rewards remain competitive and market related.

Employee statistics
Number of employees	700
Weighted average net property income per employee	R7 697 854
Average tenure of employees	5.0 years
Annualised attrition rate	11.6%
Average age of employees	42 years
Minimum CTC – lowest level of employee	R89 521 pa
Direct investment in employee training	R4,7m
Total cost of employee training	R6,5m
Number of employees trained	427
Average hours of training per employee	6 hours
Total number of sick days	1 718 days
Weighted average number of sick days per employee	2.9 days
Number of physical injuries	3
Days lost to incidents	8 days
Serious occupational injuries	Nil

STAFF PROFILE

At 30 June 2015, Growthpoint had 700 staff members with an annualised attrition rate of 11.6%.

EMPLOYEE GENDER PROFILE		EMPLOYEE AGE PROFILE		EMPLOYEE TENURE
SELF REVIEWS		MANAGER REVIEWS		RACIAL COMPOSITION

DRIVING A CULTURE OF PERFORMANCE

Performance management at Growthpoint is central to managing and developing our employees. The staff performance cycle of 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2015 was the first time we used the Aspiration Software system to coordinate performance reviews. It was a resounding success. We are proud to have achieved an outstanding 99% of self-reviews and 98% of manager-reviews.

The areas of development identified in our performance review process become a key input into the training and development plans of each employee. Also, the results of the performance reviews are a key input for our annual compensation review process. This ensures a clear link between performance and rewards.

DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES

Employee development and growth is extremely important to Growthpoint and remains a shared responsibility between each employee and their manager. We encourage our employees to take full ownership of their development and growth. Our performance management process also provides for identifying training and development needs. This feeds into our training and development budget process. In FY15 we trained 427 employees at a total direct financial investment of R4,7 million.

As we hire new talent, we recognise that their seamless onboarding and integration into the company is important to position them for success. It builds engagement and longevity with the company. We therefore recently introduced a first-day onboarding programme to welcome and help the new employees to feel enabled in their new environment from day one. The onboarding programme introduces the new employee to key cultural issues, a benefits overview and our self-management processes and tools. Besides the onboarding, our well-established induction programme continues to run twice a year, giving employees a structured business overview and insight into our approach to leadership.

We are in the final stages of completing our young talent development plan which comprises our internship and graduate programmes. We have started creating a presence at universities to ensure that Growthpoint is first choice for young talent aspiring to build careers with a leading property company in the country. Growthpoint attended the Wits University School of Construction Economics and Management Studies Student Council Career day, which is a good foundational base. We will continue to build on this in FY16 with other universities.

Growthpoint also contributes to uplifting skills development in the country by offering an on-the-job training and mentorship programme for unemployed learners. In addition, we launched adult basic education and training for our employees.

The ongoing development of our leaders is central to the successful leadership and management of our employees. We introduced executive coaching for our senior managers, and team development initiatives for our executive team. We will work on a development framework to guide our leadership development efforts in the future.

Growthpoint provides study assistance for employees pursuing formal education to better their skills and career growth opportunities.

To improve our performance and ensure the on-going development of our people, Growthpoint ensures its employees’ level of knowledge, education and skills is continually strengthened. This has resulted in several agreed learning interventions being planned for the new financial year, under the following model:

ESSENTIAL EMPLOYEE TRAINING

Learning in this category relates to mandatory training interventions that ensure our employees comply with regulatory requirements such as Occupational Health and Safety, Estate Agency Affairs Board, Green Building and professional compliance standards. This includes accreditations in Property Valuations Quantity Surveying, SAICA and Credit Management.

OTHER TRAINING

We believe in retaining employees who have proven commitment and determination to succeed. As a result, employees identified to have potential and capabilities to reach greater results can access opportunities in this category to enhance job skills. This learning takes place through reputable and accredited recognised academic institutions of learning. It includes, for example, handyman training, learnerships, and university or college bursaries.

WORK-BASED LEARNING

The company has planned various work-based learning activities that will extend our employees’ workplace knowledge, skills and abilities. The training anticipated in this category occurs because of an introduction or change in a system or process that will impact on an employee’s speed and effectiveness of service delivery.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION PLAN

Diversity and inclusion is central to attracting, developing and retaining key talent. It supports a sustainable business that represents the demographics it serves. We are developing our diversity and inclusion plan to articulate key initiatives that will help us attract, develop and retain diverse talent.

Part of the diversity and inclusion plan will focus on advancing people with disabilities within our company. A disability and disclosure policy together with an awareness campaign and workshops will be launched to encourage employees to disclose their disabilities. We are committed to non-discrimination practices.

Furthermore, we do not prohibit employees from freedom of association.

EDUCATION AND AWARENESS

Growthpoint provides an ongoing programme of education and awareness for its people. This benefits individual employees, our teams and our business. It also has positive knock-on effects beyond our company, to our industry and South African society in general.

RETIREMENT

We want our employees to have a thorough understanding of our competitive retirement benefits so they are well prepared for retirement and life’s eventualities which may include death, disability, dreaded diseases and the like.

We are creating awareness and education by asking employees to attend various workshops targeted at savings, retirement, preparing for death and other unforeseen circumstances. Working in partnership with our pension and provident fund service provider, we identified several sessions, which we presented.

EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAMME

Our well-established Employee Assistance Programme helps employees respond adequately to challenges they may face in their lives. In turn, it benefits us with effective and productive teams and individuals.

Our Employee Assistance Programme gives our people access to a wide variety of psychosocial professionals who can provide expert advice and help with challenges and difficulties. These could deal with emotional, personal, family, relationship, substance abuse, financial, lifestyle diseases, violence or bereavement challenges.

Besides providing access to counselling services for our employees and their immediate family members, we regularly run education and awareness sessions on psychosocial issues. In FY15, we ran well-attended workshops.

LIFESTYLE DISEASE MANAGEMENT

One of the biggest threats to a sustainable business is the health and wellness of its workforce. With this in mind, we believe in consistently educating and creating awareness about lifestyle-based diseases.

Our Vitality-wellness days target our Vitality members to improve their Vitality status with regular health and assessment tests, as well as living a healthy and balanced lifestyle characterised by healthy eating, exercise, rest and mindfulness. The Vitality Health Check identifies employees’ risk for chronic diseases of lifestyle by testing their blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol and weight.

In addition we run wellness days to provide awareness and education sessions for our employees. In the coming year they will have the opportunity to attend:

•	Health and wellness days in all our regions, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban
•	Strategies to achieving weight loss and maintenance
•	Living with HIV/Aids — a personal account.

Based on the most recent voluntary testing our HIV/Aids prevalence rate remains at below 4% for those employees who participated in the testing. We continue to provide education and awareness in this regard.

TOTAL REWARDS

We are producing a total rewards statement for all our staff. Total reward statements represent the remuneration and financial reward elements of the employee value proposition. It encapsulates all remuneration, incentive and benefit value offered to employees.

It is a short, clear document that shows all elements of reward that each employee is entitled to, the value thereof and the expected date of payment. It illustrates the time-based value of the total reward package taking all elements of reward into consideration.

THE BENEFIT OF TOTAL REWARD STATEMENTS

•	Inform staff members of the total value of their remuneration and benefits is an effective way to remind staff of the total investment the company makes in them
•	Highlight the full range of benefits offered to staff
•	Emphasise that compensation includes a wide range of benefits and perks
•	Illustrate the time-value of short-term incentives deferred and long-term incentives
•	Are effective tools in annual remuneration reviews to remind staff what the current and proposed package includes
•	Improves morale and is an effective retention tool
•	Improves the marketability of packages offered in the recruitment process
•	Employees respond positively when their remuneration and benefits are laid out in ‘black and white’.