Bidserv

Sustainable Development at Bidserv

Bidserv companies concentrate on building enduring business models characterised by high standards of quality, safety and reliability. With increased awareness and demand for environmental responsibility, Bidserv is adding green qualities to its business offerings as a key differentiator for winning and keeping business. Though investment is required, these qualities add value and improve running cost efficiencies.

Material sustainable development issues

• management of HIV/Aids in the workplace
• employee engagement to avoid strike action
• the negative impacts of chemicals used in cleaning processes at Cleaning Services, Laundry Services, Steiner Group, Bidserv Industrial Products, Green Services, Aviation Services
• the need to conserve the use of energy from fossil fuel sources across the division
• the impact of significant water, coal and electricity consumption at Laundry Services
• the critical importance of a clean safety record on business sustainability at TMS
• safety of bureau de change staff and security of Bidvest Bank assets
• threat from online bookings disintermediation at Bidtravel Services
• business model redundancy due to the current economic climate

Sustainability

As a division we have made remarkable strides in improving our sustainability initiatives. To name a few major accomplishments:

• reduction in water, chemical and coal usage
• conversion from PVC plastic to PET in a wide range of products
• implementation of the “reduce, recycle and reuse” principle
• sharing of sustainability information between companies to foster wider learning
• inclusion of sustainability reporting into board packs

In the current business downturn, customers may be inclined to buy on price rather than quality, a challenge for Bidserv companies that provide quality products and services that are safe and reliable.

Rising to this challenge, Bidserv is positioning its services to anticipate the growing demand for greener products and services, at the same time reaping the benefit of efficiencies in the use of energy, water and other resources.

Awareness of sustainability issues is growing among employees, with many initiatives being driven by line managers as part of their core business function.

Employee engagement

Despite the economic downturn, our staff complement has reduced by 2.2 % only, from 62 700 to 61 304, although the high proportion of unskilled and semi-skilled employees continues to result in a disappointingly high turnover.

Most employees are represented by the National Contract Cleaners Association (NCCA). Our policy is to foster good employee relationships and offer market-related remuneration packages. We often set the industry standard and even help the Department of Labour to enforce minimum wage standards elsewhere in the industry. We play a strong advocacy role, encouraging engagement with the NCCA on issues of common concern. Wage negotiations should be conclude by November 2009, setting salary levels for the next 3 years. In the security guard industry, wage levels were set in 2008, for review only in 2010. No significant strike action affected our businesses or employees.

Employees are pivotal to our approach to sustainability. Well-trained, healthy, motivated employees allow businesses to maintain competitiveness and thus ensure customer satisfaction and retention. Developing and nurturing employees is central to achieving these aims.

HIV/Aids

Bidserv recognises the negative impact that HIV/Aids has on the business and its debilitating effect on the employees concerned – not to mention their families and communities. While individual businesses run awareness and prevention campaigns such as Project Promote in association with the National Department of Health, most employees remain resistant to testing. This makes it difficult to provide further assistance such as counselling and treatment. Despite this challenge, the expenditure on HIV/Aids campaigns, counselling, VCT initiatives (excluding ART) have increased 240% to R516,785.

BBBEE transformation

Transformation of the workforce and supply chain to empower historically disadvantaged black citizens is a business imperative at Bidserv. Our progress in this area is a key factor when tendering for business with major public and private-sector operations.  Accordingly, Bidserv employs a dedicated executive unit focused on the BEE scorecard endorsed by the DTI codes of good practice. We use the Group-wide data collection tool to highlight areas where performance can be improved. BEE ownership of Bidserv have remained at 26,7% and control have increased to 25%, while employment equity figures are better than the Group average. Use of the data collection tool has helped us improve our understanding of procurement spend and the proportion of certified suppliers is going up.

Training

Most of our staff are unskilled general workers, creating a significant training challenge. The division’s total training spend, net of skills recovery, rose by 3% to R55 million from R53 million. Training proceeded according to the service level agreements with ACSA following the award of the ‘super licence’ for airport ground handling services at all ACSA airports.

Safety and security

Some of our operational environments are relatively hazardous. TMS offers cleaning services to the petro-chemical industry, Laundry Services employees work with cleaning chemicals, BidAir employees work with heavy machinery and Bidvest Bank employees and security guards face the risk of robbery and assault. Bidserv is alive to the risks faced by its people and the risk to its service contracts.

We maintain strong focus on training and stepped up safety awareness through a safety week in November 2008. Safety weeks are run every year to highlight risks and teach employees safe work practices and mindsets. As a result of interventions like this, our national Recordable Case rate is currently at 0.2. In some regions, we have clocked up over a million injury-free work hours. Among teams topping the million-mark were those working at Camden power station. In our Sasolburg region, we have gone three years without incident. Following the fatality at Sasol Secunda, we had achieved 361 days without injury by the end of July 2009. 

Every significant incident is investigated. These processes help us improve our prevention and response training. Bidserv companies continue to invest heavily in training to educate employees in the procedures and protocols that help prevent incidents occurring. Suppliers of chemicals also conduct regular on-site health and safety training. All chemicals used in Laundry Services are now biodegradable and non-carcinogenic.

In addition to fulfilling OHASA requirements, some businesses contract outside experts to double-check health and safety procedures. Processes are constantly being reviewed or automated to keep the handling of chemicals to a minimum. At Bidvest Bank, security staff and state-of-the-art security measures protect staff and assets.