1.

Legislation

Clover is committed to conducting its business activities lawfully and ethically. Legislation and Regulations continue to grow as the role of regulators continues to expand. Clover takes all the necessary steps to ensure that amendments to legislation are communicated and implemented throughout the business. Other than ongoing training, periodic internal assessments are conducted to establish prevailing levels of knowledge and understanding of current legislation. Clover’s Social and Ethics Committee monitors and takes cognisance of relevant legislation, other legal requirements and prevailing codes of best practice with regard to legislative compliance.

At Clover we have moved away from only compliance as we realised that having a diverse workforce is not compliance or a box that needs to be ticked. In order to support value creation in the long term, we need to promote INCLUSION in all its variations. We need not only embrace the visible diversity such as race, gender, age, physical ability, but also DIVERSITY OF THINKING. To ensure legislative compliance, maximum participation is required from all Cloverites.

2.

Attraction and retention of employees

Achieving our Vision and Mission is largely dependent on Clover’s ability to attract and retain high-calibre individuals. The 21stcentury workforce is global, highly connected, technology-savvy, and demanding. As Clover is expanding its reach across the continent, critical new skills are scarce and their uneven distribution around the world has forced Clover to develop innovative new ways to find people, develop capabilities, and share expertise.

At Clover we also have a multi-generational workforce that is highly diverse, and requires constant engagement. Clover’s engagement and retention mechanisms are directly related to our “Way Better” fabric of doing business.

Our employment brand helps us to attract, source, recruit, and access talent. To drive passion and engagement, we have used the “Baby Boomers” who have extended their working lives to train and mentor our new entrants, the “Millennials”. Clover’s employment brand offers a creative experience in support of long term value creation.

In 2014, Clover for the first time participated as a ‘full participant’ in the Best Company to Work for Survey conducted by Deloitte. We were delighted to be ranked third in the large company category and qualify as one of the best companies to work for.

Below is a series of tables depicting Clover’s entire workforce including the total number of employees, the percentage of permanent staff as well as the number of women making up Clover’s staff complement:

3.

Strategic resourcing

Clover’s dynamic environment requires that we anticipate future competencies in order to execute our strategy. To ensure optimum levels of productivity, regular review of our labour force composition, and the optimisation of resources, is constantly required. To ensure long term value creation, we need a labour force that has:

• business acumen and understands the CORE (Business model);
• collaboration ability to build cross functional teams;
• global cultural agility;
• creativity;
• customer centricity;
• influence and Inspiration; and
• the ability to build creative and effective teams

4.

Alignment of employees

5.

Learning and Development

To secure Clover’s position as one of Southern Africa’s leading fast moving consumer goods companies, the Group proactively engages in the development of employees in all disciplines.

Specific focus has been on Wholesale and Retail Operations Learnerships, Job Technical Training Programmes at our production facilities, the upskilling of sales personnel and management as well as leadership development. Financial assistance for study purposes was further extended, and a number of internships were introduced.

Equipping our employees with the right skills remains a high priority. With this in mind the Company has invested in training and development as follows during the year:

Going forward, it is acknowledged that a range of new skill sets will be required. This will necessitate a renewed focus on fast tracking, coaching and mentoring of young talent and the continuation of competence building training and development initiatives.

Responding to business needs and to maximise our return on skills upliftment, the following formal programmes are in progress or are in the final stages of development for implementation in 2016.

Significant achievements include:

• National Skills Authority Recognition Award (Department of Higher Education and Training) for Creating Work Placement Opportunities for young diploma and graduate students on completion of their In-service or Workplace Experience Training with Clover; and
• first person qualified as Dairyman via the Quality Council for Trade and Occupations Curriculum Based Model.
  
  In preparation for a revolution in learning and development, new online and mobile platforms are being investigated that will anticipate new skills required for long term value creation.

6.

Productivity and continuous improvement

As part of the Clover culture, there is ongoing focus on productivity and continuous improvement initiatives. Through Project Driven, there is renewed focus on team performance, multiskilling, variable pay opportunities and a number of other “Way Better” initiatives. We understand that traditional performance management is outdated, and that individual performance has been challenged with our employees’ ability to work in teams. Clover has developed a “Way Better” team campaign where performance is driven by focussing on quality, cost, speed of execution, staff safety and morale. The successes that have been enjoyed in the Production environment with our “Way Better” campaign are being rolled out across the value chain. A number of automation possibilities are also under investigation to enhance performance.

A process is in place to evaluate the continuous improvement capabilities of each business unit and to bring about improvement where possible. Another focus area has been the bedding down and streamlining of operations following recent merger and acquisition transactions. At Clover we understand that productivity and continuous improvement is not an event or a box that needs to be ticked, it’s about long term value creation.

Employee Wellness

Clover is committed to proving a safe and healthy work and social environment for its employees. This together with individual employee wellness should help enable employees to perform optimally and contribute to the success of the Group.

In an endeavour to ensure that a healthy work environment is provided, Clover has made the following available:

• access to two medical aid schemes, namely Discovery and Umvuzo;
• clinic facilities at certain of the major sites which are manned by trained professionals on a permanent basis;
• annual medicals for management;
• trauma counselling through ICAS;
• a generous leave policy which is aimed at providing employees with adequate rest periods; and
• trauma cover for life threatening diseases.
  In the light of productivity, here are a few tables which depict Clover’s statistics in relation to hours worked:

7.

CHange of the labour landscape

We are pleased to report that a stable labour environment was prevalent throughout the past year. Effort was taken to ensure that managers are properly trained and also that there is ongoing and open communication going forward. There is regular and constructive interaction between Management and the Union at a national and branch level.

Below is a table that shows the percentage of employees that belong to a Trade Union:

8.

Employment Equity

The Company fully supports employment equity in the workplace and various measures are in place to assist in reaching employment equity objectives. These include bursaries, internships and other employee development initiatives. Employment Equity remains a focus area and various measures are in place to contribute towards the achievement of employment equity objectives:

• steps are taken to appoint suitably qualified candidates from the designated groups where vacancies arise;
• various training and development initiatives are aimed at having a positive impact on the Company’s longer term employment equity objectives; and
• in compliance with legislated requirements, the Company has submitted an employment equity report.

Clover subscribes to Employment Equity legislation and relevant Codes of Good Practice which is also encompassed in the Clover Employment Equity policy. There should be no unfair discrimination in respect of inter alia, race, colour, language, religion, gender or political views or on the grounds of disability. Therefore all employees will receive equal opportunities to develop according to their merit and ability.

In line with the requirements of the Employment Equity Act, Clover has drafted its Employment Equity plan. The objectives of the plan are to give effect to the Company’s employment equity policy in so far as it relates to employment equity goals. The Executive Committee is responsible for the implementation and monitoring of Clover’s Employment Equity plan. The Executive Committee, in execution of its duties, will assign specific responsibilities to individuals and managers in general. The responsibility to implement employment equity plans at the different Clover sites is delegated to site managers. All appointments should be conducted in line with Clover’s Employment Equity policy. Clover’s Human Resources department is responsible to monitor these activities and report to the Social and Ethics Committee at least annually on progress towards Employment Equity targets.

Clover has been increasing the number of employees from designated groups as tabled below:

Employment Equity Plan objectives

To improve diversity in the workplace, and especially to address the levels of representation of people from designated groups, Clover is committed to achieving the goals set out below:

Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (“B-BBEE ”)

Clover supports the legislative framework aimed at transforming South Africa’s economy. The Group’s overall business strategy is regularly reviewed in the context of the principles embraced by B-BBEE.

Clover’s last B-BBEE verification was performed based on the June 2014 year end by Middel and Partners, an IRBA approved verification agency. The Group was assessed against the current Agri B-BBEE Sector Codes for the second time and the Group’s overall score improved by 25,44% from June 2013. Based on this verification, Clover was assessed as a Level 4 B-BBEE contributor.

The extent to which the Agri Sector Codes will be modified in accordance with the new amended Generic B-BBEE Codes, which became effective as from 1 May 2015, is uncertain. It is, however, expected that all sector codes be aligned to the amended Generic B-BBEE Codes by 31 October 2015.

Clover’s B-BBEE strategy will then be re-assessed and targets adjusted accordingly once this announcement has been made.

Clover reaches Level 4 B-BBEE status!