Sustainable Development at Bidvest Industrial and Commercial

The broad range of manufacturing and distribution businesses making up Bidvest Industrial and Commercial Products face a variety of sustainable business challenges, from skills shortages and HIV/Aids affecting the workplace, to volatile or declining commodity prices, exchange rates and demand. The company’s decentralised management style aims to empower individual business units to find the best solutions for their unique circumstances and then multiply these benefits across the division.

Material sustainable development issues

• Skills shortages
• Managing the impact of HIV/Aids in the workplace
• Instability of rand, interest rates and commodity prices
• Opportunities to look for replacements to traditional energy sources in South Africa

Economic performance

Transformation

We are working to improve not only our own BEE score, but also the scores of all businesses in our entire value chain. In order to facilitate this, we utilise an electronic procurement tool that undertakes a BBBEE status-check and helps suppliers improve their empowerment credentials.

Training and development

Skills development and our transformation towards employment equity are closely linked issues. Employment equity plans (submitted to the Department of Labour) show a genuine commitment and progress towards employment equity, despite the dire skills shortage of experienced management material existing in South Africa. Unfortunately our staff complement fell from 7428 to 6849 following the rationalisation of manufacturing facilities, closure of various underperforming operations and through natural staff attrition (some operations imposed a moratorium on new staff hires).

Whilst these factors have impacted negatively on our employment equity score, the division’s investment in training has risen, ensuring that we reached the required 3% target for the first time. Companies across the division are responding to the need for management training, in particular to develop high potential managers in the under-40 age bracket. Bidvest Industrial and Commercial Products launched a management development programme (MDP) in conjunction with Henley Management College which saw 19 candidates from Voltex graduating. In May 2010, a new group comprising candidates from Voltex, Kolok, CN Business furniture, Buffalo, Berzacks and Afcom commenced their studies. A total of 367 black employees participated in Learnerships or Category B,C or D programmes.

Enterprise development

As part of our commitment to enterprise development, we partner with new entrants to the sub-contracting sector, helping them build a track record while instituting basic business disciplines, such as cash flow management and access to banking. Kolok has established a township business hub that comprises 22 previously disadvantaged micro business owners in Bophelong who are reselling computer consumables. Whilst we agree to certain credit terms where appropriate, we rigorously manage our exposure to the increasing risk of customer insolvency.

Corporate Social Investment

While CSI spend is down 18.6%, measured against the reduction in profit after tax of 25%, we have more than maintained our commitment to the dti CoGP. Operating in alignment with Bidvest, Bidvest Industrial and Commercial Products concentrates its CSI activities in the education and training sectors. Each company within the division selects its own flagship projects and ensures their success through selecting strong partners and monitoring the projects’ progress through to completion, or to hand-over to the communities concerned.

Aside from these flagship projects, Bidvest Industrial and Commercial Products companies are involved in a variety of community based projects, many of them involving the supply of stationery and electrification of various schools.

Labour practices decent work

Employee engagement and representation

While the division consists of a number of autonomous, independent operating entities, divisional management engages with and supports each operating entity formally through individual monthly or quarterly board meetings, audit and risk meetings, health and safety meetings and informally on a continuous basis as and when issues arise. Company employees are free to engage with their direct management structures or to escalate any issue to the divisional level or even to a Bidvest Group level.

Dealing with retrenchments during economic contraction

A total of 318 employees were retrenched due to operational restructuring. Wherever possible, retrenchments are a last resort implemented only after all other courses of action are pursued to preserve employment whilst delivering acceptable returns. In the event of branch closures or functional changes within business units requiring staff reductions, we seek first to redeploy staff to other areas. In an economic contraction, we prefer to impose a moratorium on new engagements and this, together with normal staff attrition, usually goes some way to achieve a desirable outcome without engaging in retrenchments. In the event that retrenchments are deemed necessary, the appropriate procedures are followed to ensure that the correct levels of engagement and communication are adhered to and employees are treated fairly and with dignity.   

Health and safety

All companies within the division comply with OHASA and health and safety officers are present at every site. In addition, Bidvest Industrial and Commercial Products is considering a risk strategy which will formalise the identification and management of risks across the business. Considering the variety of operating environments, each company has authority and responsibility for the management of specific health and safety issues. Key indicators of performance against these issues are collated and reported to a health and safety committees at branch, company and division level. LTIFR has reduced by 49.7% due to improved housekeeping and attention to Health and Safety matters.

HIV/Aids

Bidvest Industrial and Commercial Products is concerned about the ongoing prevalence of HIV/Aids within the workplace. It is acknowledged that the condition is both damaging to the company as well as being debilitating to those affected. At this point, the management of HIV/Aids is devolved to the individual business units, with the result that, while some programmes show promise, the overall response could achieve more if benefits of scale could be leveraged. Attempts so far to engage with an organisation to consolidate our efforts in this regard have proved fruitless, however we continue to direct attention in this direction.