Telkom focused on implementing a culture framework to support and embed the post-restructuring changes and reinforce business stability. We continued to implement our people strategy, focusing on employee experience, collaboration, innovation and performance.
Telkom seeks to understand and shape its culture and align it with the OneTelkom mindset and vision. We do this through active engagement, including employee surveys and a leadership conference. We strive to cultivate a cohesive and purpose-driven work environment through initiatives such as co-creating shared values and using cascaded scorecards to assess performance management. This approach inspires a high-performance culture, fosters employee engagement and morale, and drives overall business success.
Our commitment to a culture of continuous learning and advancement is exemplified by our Learning4Growth initiative. Integrated within our talent framework, Learning4Growth aims to equip employees with skills and knowledge for personal growth and organisational success. Nurturing internal talent pools enables Telkom to strengthen our succession bench and leadership pipeline. By providing equitable access to online learning resources aligned with talent frameworks and future business imperatives, we prepare our workforce for succeeding in a dynamic business environment.
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External moderate assurance on selected sustainability indicators. Please refer to the FY2024 Independent Assurance Report available online. |
Enabling a positive business experience through our employees and customers is key to our people strategy. The strategy is grounded in a business-led, HR-enabled, agile approach, and is implemented through business-unit-specific employee and customer strategies, values and behaviours.
We build our people strategy on five pillars underpinned by culture and captured in our employee experience touchpoints:
| Our strategic ambition | Developments |
| We are advancing our impact through purpose-led and sustainable initiatives in education, entrepreneur development and the environment. We advance our people by putting them first, winning together in an inclusive environment, and focusing on continuous improvement, versatility, openness and trustworthiness. |
53% of Group employees participated in the FY2024 employee engagement survey, representing a 9% increase in participation. The survey assesses employees’ work environment, the drive towards a high-performance culture, our values, employee wellbeing, development and growth, reward and recognition, employee engagement, and Telkom’s reputation. While Telkom’s work environment remained within the “good” range, there was a slight decline in the score. Telkom’s products and services dropped from the “great” to the “good” range. The difference in ratings can be attributed to the S189 process that concluded in May 2023 and the lack of bonuses and salary increments due to Telkom’s financial position. Relevant highlights from the survey include:
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The workforce optimisation process we concluded in FY2023 resulted in a 16% reduction in our permanent headcount. Despite that, our diversity profile continues to reflect steady improvement, particularly in Black and female representation. Overall, female representation increased by 1% to 33% and Black representation increased by just under 3%.
Our voluntary turnover percentage showed a healthy increase from 4% in FY2023 to 5.71% in FY2024. While retention of critical skills is important, turnover creates opportunities to hire new skills and younger and more diverse talent. Moving forward, Telkom remains dedicated to furthering our diversity and inclusion efforts, ensuring our workforce reflects the diversity of the South African population.
| 1 | Voluntary turnover includes voluntary exits such as resignations, retirements, dismissal or death in service, and excludes company-initiated losses such as retrenchments and inter-company transfers. |
Over the past five financial years, our workforce profile has undergone a significant transformation, reflecting the Group’s strategic initiatives and changing market dynamics. Previously dominated by traditional telecommunications roles, the workforce has progressively diversified to encompass a broader skill set, including expertise in digital technologies, data analytics, and customer experience.
This evolution was driven by Telkom’s strategic focus on digital transformation. Our aim was to enhance operational efficiency, innovate customer solutions, and expand into new markets. As a result, we attracted top talent from diverse backgrounds, fostering a culture of innovation and agility.
The transformation of Telkom’s workforce profile underscores our commitment to remaining at the forefront of the telecommunications industry, poised for sustained growth and relevance in the South African landscape in the digital age.
A high-performance culture is founded on accountability, creativity and collaboration. It is the outcome of having several key factors in place. These include performance management, effective communication and collaboration, autonomy and accountability, strong leadership capabilities, training and development, and a customer-centric strategy.
The change framework comprises seven pillars, namely engage, recognise, incentivise, build capability, succession planning, values and behaviours, and assess. Following the restructuring concluded in May 2023, various interventions are being deployed throughout the year to support the evolution towards a high-performance culture. The objective of the framework is to refocus and stabilise the business, retain talent, manage employee sentiment (morale), and drive performance to enable business achievement.
We identified five shared values at our OneTelkom leadership conference: collaboration, customer centricity, accountability, agility, and simplicity. These shared values will underpin various initiatives to drive the OneTelkom mindset and vision in FY2025.
We also focused on strengthening our leadership capabilities through coaching programmes. The aim was to build personal mastery and equip leaders with coaching skills to build high-performance teams. This was implemented in a phased approach with senior leadership and will continue into FY2025.
The internal Group recognition system and site were not implemented post the pilot phase due to the need to realign the reward and recognition framework to the OneTelkom mindset. The framework will be implemented in FY2025.
Our talent acquisition efforts are focused on attracting, retaining and developing a diverse pool of high-calibre professionals to support the Group’s strategic objectives. Despite challenges posed by the global talent landscape, we made significant strides in enhancing our workforce diversity in terms of race, gender, disability and capability.
Going forward, we will focus on increased leveraging of technology. This will include tools that simplify recruitment processes and enhance the candidate experience, and data analytics for streamlining candidate attraction and sourcing.
We will also focus on strategic marketing of our employee value proposition. Highlighting the unique environment, benefits and opportunities we offer, and effectively communicating our organisational culture and career growth prospects, will help attract top-tier candidates aligned with our vision and values.
Finally, we plan to increase the number of quality hires by reintroducing an employee referral scheme. This will enhance employee engagement, incentivising employees to participate in our talent acquisition efforts.
In our dynamic business landscape, talent and succession planning have become indispensable components of our business strategy. Mitigating vacancy risk helps maintain business continuity. Integrating talent succession plans in the leadership development framework ensures we are proactive in investing in high-potential talent.
In FY2024, we reviewed our succession pipelines and evaluated the risks informing our mitigation action plans. This included a deep dive review of our high-potential talent across management levels, conducting profiling and personal development action plans for each key talent employee.
A thorough review of our executive levels was conducted during the fourth quarter. This informed our strategic talent plans for the coming year, with a focus on addressing our bench strength at executive level. Although we have limited immediate to short-term successors due to internal placements in recent years, we have a broader longer-term succession pipeline. Our mitigation plan includes a targeted buy strategy for a few key roles, while fast-tracking the development of identified talent.
Our continued investment in leadership and talent development programmes has had a positive impact on retention of key talent while helping to build the internal pipeline. We mainly focused on middle and junior management over the last three years. In the fourth quarter of FY2024, we kick-started new executive leadership programmes – a Strategic Leadership Executive Master of Business Administration, with eight delegates, and our FLDP Pinnacle programme for executive and senior executive female leaders, with 15 delegates.
Targeted learning interventions that support our talent framework and future business needs are outlined in our learning framework.
Through our Learning4Growth focus, we are equipping employees with skills and knowledge to thrive in their roles and contribute to the success of the business. We provide employees with access to an extensive array of online learning content and dedicated programmes. Our future-focused business skills programmes (innovation and design thinking, and digital skills) are designed to reskill and upskill our internal workforce.
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Diversity of participants at year-end: 92% Black (FY2023: 93%) 43% female (FY2023: 49%) |
Diversity of participants at year-end: 100% Black 51.5% female 51% differently abled (FY2023: 42%) |
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| Employed programmes | Unemployed programmes | |||||
|
Management programmes |
Female
leadership programmes |
Future
business skills programmes |
Part-time bursaries |
Graduate internships |
Disability learnerships |
Bursaries |
| Strategic Leadership Development Programme 8 |
FLDP
Pinnacle 15 |
Innovation
and design thinking 33 |
125 new bursars |
Elevate 88 |
138 | 23 |
| Managers of Managers Programme 61 completed 29 current |
FLDP
Transcend 22 |
Digital
skills 89 completed 93 current |
CoE 20 Current |
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| Foundational Management Programme 65 completed 70 current |
FLDP Ascend 52 |
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| Total employees | ||||||
| Current: 107 Completed: 94 |
Current: 89 | Current: 126 Completed: 89 |
New: 125 | Current: 108 | Current: 138 | Current: 23 |
| FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | ||
| Telkom1 | 801 | 441 | ||
| BCX | 50 | 45 | 65 | |
| Gyro | 12 | 22 | 2 | |
| Openserve | 0 | 54 | 46 | |
| Telkom Consumer | 46 | |||
| Corporate Centre | 10 | |||
| Group | 131 | 145 | 168 | |
| 1 | Telkom includes Telkom Consumer, Corporate Centre and Openserve in FY2021 and FY2022. |
| 2 | Gyro includes learnership stipends. |
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External moderate assurance on selected sustainability indicators. Please refer to the FY2024 Independent Assurance Report available online. |
The Telkom Foundation manages a bursary programme for learners from its academic support programme, focused on mathematics and science support. The programme provided comprehensive financial and wellness support and mentorship to 37 students at universities across the country. The majority were in the science, accounting and engineering fields. The students achieved an 86% pass rate with 58 distinctions.
The programme onboarded an additional 15 students in the 2024 academic year and continues to monitor and support the students to ensure their success.
There was no industrial action and no section 189 processes during FY2024. The FY2023 S189 process concluded during May 2024.
We endorse and embrace the right to freedom of association. Telkom has a collective recognition agreement with the Alliance of the CWU and the SACU.
Based on the agreement, there are established engagement forums where the Alliance and Company engage and consult on various issues impacting employees within the recognised bargaining unit level.
The final wage settlement offer for FY2024 was only signed by one Alliance partner (SACU). In the absence of CWU’s signature, the Company implemented the final wage offer unilaterally.
The restructuring of the Group, which commenced in FY2023, was concluded within Telkom Consumer and the three legal entities, Gyro, BCX and Openserve, in May 2023. The Group headcount was reduced by 1 731 employees.
Owing to the Swiftnet transaction the Board has taken the decision to divisionalise Gyro. The process is underway and is envisaged to be completed during FY2025.
| FY2023 | FY2024 | |
| Telkom Company1 | 25 | 25 |
| Openserve | 57 | 57 |
| BCX | – | – |
| Gyro | 28 | 29 |
| 1 | Telkom Company includes Telkom Consumer and Corporate Centre. |
Telkom’s occupational health and safety vision is to provide a safe working environment and foster a culture where every employee, service provider, contractor and supplier believes that zero incidents are achievable. Accordingly, considerable effort goes into managing health and safety risks. Several risk-based initiatives were pursued to ensure ongoing improvement of our safety performance and compliance with statutory requirements.
The focus for FY2024 was on deploying interventions targeting the root causes of key safety incidents. The root causes (motion, gravity, and motor vehicle accidents) were identified through analysis of the incidents. The interventions sought to raise awareness of individual safety responsibility and the importance of risk identification and assessment in preventing incidents.
As part of our employee engagement, face-to-face “safety starts with me” campaigns were rolled out across six regions. This involved several sessions held in collaboration with our internal business partners and employee health, wellness and safety service provider. The sessions covered ergonomics, mindfulness, injury on duty, emerging risks, and sharing of lessons learnt.
Telkom has recorded zero fatalities for five consecutive years. Year-on-year improvements in safety performance are shown in the table below:
| FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | ||
| Telkom1,2 | ||||
| Total recordable injury frequency rate | 0.79 | 0.61 | 0.50 |
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| Lost-time injury frequency rate | 0.70 | 0.51 | 0.39 |
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| Fatal injury frequency rate | - | - | - | |
| BCX1 | ||||
| Total recordable injury frequency rate | 0.13 | 0.29 | N/A | |
| Lost-time injury frequency rate | 0.07 | 0.27 | N/A | |
| Corporate Centre | - | - | N/A |
| 1 | Permanent employees only. |
| 2 | FY2024 figures include BCX. |
The vision underlying the wellness strategy is to foster a diverse, inclusive and thriving culture where the holistic wellness of employees takes precedence. Ten strategic wellbeing goals are outlined for the next three years, encompassing areas such as mental health, physical fitness, cultivating a healthy culture, and enhancing financial literacy.
The wellness day partners compiled an overview of the Group’s health based on measurements and trends observed during wellness days. The main health risk factors among employees include physical inactivity, with 55% of employees not getting enough exercise. An unhealthy diet is prevalent, with 88% of employees not practising good eating habits. Additionally, 6% are smokers. These statistics will help us develop targeted interventions to improve the overall wellbeing of the Group’s employees.
The wellness pulse survey conducted in October 2023 evaluated the success of the regional wellness days, knowledge and use of the employee wellness partner, and topical issues for continued awareness raising. 90.8% of wellness attendees indicated a positive impact on their overall wellbeing. The top three wellness topics were physical fitness and exercise, stress management techniques, and healthy nutrition and eating habits. 61% of employees are familiar with the wellness partner. We need to educate the 39% of employees who are unfamiliar, and the 48% who are unaware of the available services, to improve usage of the service.
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External moderate assurance on selected sustainability indicators. Please refer to the FY2024 Independent Assurance Report available online. |
Our key focus areas will be to support our culture transformation, engage and enable our employees, and develop our capabilities. The broad areas of focus will include:
