The Group’s human resources function delivers key strategic initiatives and supports driving synergies and efficiencies across the Group in line with the changing social and business environment. We have a different focus every year, which is as follows:
Three strategic pillars underline these focus areas and aim to attract, develop and retain the right talent.
We must employ and invest in people who share our brand purpose, values, and passion to help grow a future-fit business. Our Employee Value Proposition (EVP) aims to attract, develop, and retain talent, enabling us to create a diverse staff complement to deliver on our strategy. We must implement an Employee Value Proposition that nurtures a unique employee experience. Through regional oversight of our people strategies, we can provide a compelling value proposition customised to meet the unique employee needs.
The Group’s people strategies emphasise a people experience that will enable a differentiated customer experience, albeit in varying regional contexts. Woolworths considers the broader African socio-economic and political context in which the organisation exists, and our people live. Country Road Group focuses on business sustainability to ensure the key focus for building a strong business in the region is the right culture and optimised processes.
Woolworths’ people strategy focused on our people experience as we returned to work after the Covid-19 pandemic. The key areas below aim to empower, partner and lead so our people are confident, capable, and connected:
Country Road Group’s people strategy focuses on the key areas below to become a leading, purpose-driven employer of first choice:
APPOINTMENT OF NEW WHL GROUP PEOPLE DIRECTOR
Towards the end of last year, the Group began implementing its new operating model to reduce complexity in our business and provide opportunities for us to work more efficiently and effectively.
Our Group aims to be a leading, purpose-driven, truly connected retailer. We want to emphasise the strategic importance of our greatest resource – our people. We wanted to appoint a senior leader at the WHL Exco level to drive the human resources agenda, which was imperative. Therefore, in May 2022, Roy Bagattini, WHL Group CEO, announced the appointment of Melanie Naidu as the new WHL Group People Director. Reporting directly to Roy, Melanie is accountable for the full scope of human resources across all our geographies. This includes our human resources strategies and the various centres of excellence. She will focus on implementing the integrated people strategy to drive organisational goals with an effective People Team across the Group.
EMERGING FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
While navigating the new ways of working as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, we are focusing on driving streamlined regional strategies for Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The pandemic highlighted the focus on our people, who remained committed and passionate during challenging times. Therefore, the imperative for all regions has been to provide support to our people through initiatives such as wellness offerings. We also adopted ways of working that position us for shared growth as the long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are understood and addressed.
We continued to entrench our purpose and values through continuous employee engagement, building our organisational leadership capability, and investing in employee wellness. Our people are looking for a differentiated experience and there is a direct link between the people experience and the customer experience. The people experience is largely a function of how they experience their leaders.
We continue to focus on building our competitive advantage through our people, focusing on a leading and integrated talent experience, improving our talent processes, and building leadership capability among our senior leaders.
Our strategies are driven through various mechanisms, including the WHL Exco and the Excos of our businesses, the People Leadership Teams, human resources forums, and Town Hall sessions. We have also focused on further entrenching our values, building leadership capabilities that align with our values, and digitising our operations. This will deliver our overall business strategy and facilitate agile communication with our staff.
From a talent-management perspective, our Group talent forums are embedded as part of our Group talent practices, focusing on senior management across the Group to attract, inspire, develop, reward and retain the best talent.
The ethos of our Inclusive Justice Initiative (IJI) is to inspire inclusive growth for our employees and communities. We aim to instil practices and foster a culture that advances dignity, freedom, and equality for everyone – leaving no one behind.
We are committed to addressing and eliminating inequality, marginalisation and discrimination through our policies, practices, and daily practices, entrenching an Inclusive Justice ethos as we do business. IJI focuses on racism, gender equality, gender-based violence, LGBTQIA+ rights, reconciliation, social and community development, fair and responsible pay, economic inclusion, and indigenisation. One of the key themes in our IJI is empowering women and gender equality.
Woolworths’ Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) Programme aims to stimulate the growth of an inclusive South African economy. The heart of our ESD Programme is to unlock market opportunities for small, Black and Black-owned small, medium and micro-enterprises (SMMEs).
Our approach to ESD support acknowledges that every SMME is a unique business with dynamics unique to the lead entrepreneur and/or owner and unique to the industry.
For this reason, we offer tailored support in every way possible. This entails innovative means such as facility sharing, cash flow support or linkages with other enablers such as partnering with established suppliers, financiers or other like-minded partners.
More information on the focus area and our performance thereon can be found in our annual Good Business Journey Report
