Corporate governance continued

Corporate social responsibility

The Group is keenly aware of the broader society in which it operates and believes that a sustainable business can only be built upon a foundation of partnership that enriches society as a whole. Italtile continues to invest both in South Africa and neighbouring countries in education, training and skills transfer through the Italtile training academy which has provided tiling, technical and business skills to many previously unemployed individuals.

Italtile also makes significant donations every year to children’s Aids hospices and environmental organisations.

The Group continues to support the Sparrow Ministries, a non-profit organisation which provides care and comfort to adults and children who have been infected or affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Located in Roodepoort, it is both a Hospice for the terminally ill and a Children’s Home for those vulnerable children who have become homeless due to the death of one or both of their parents. Sparrow currently cares for over 225 children and 80 adults.

The Group also made ad hoc contributions to deserving causes during 2009 including, among others:

• Support for the Soweto Sports Day by sourcing sponsorship for 22 schools;
• Monthly financial aid to the Fiat Soweto Sports Grounds;
• Donations of new basins to Little Eden to enhance the facilities at its new chapel; and
• Annual donations to the World Wildlife Foundation and the SA Guide Dogs’ Association.

In addition, a number of CTM stores also make ongoing corporate social investments including:

• CTM Nelspruit made monthly donations of 50m² of odd tiles for a period of eight months to the Maqamela Primary School during the financial year;
• CTM Port Elizabeth is an ongoing sponsor of the Port Elizabeth Children’s Home, Boys Town and the Animal Anti-Cruelty Society; and
• CTM Potchefstroom donated tiles, sanitaryware and taps to a homeless blind lady in her 80s, in co-operation with the Mayor’s Officer to help in providing her with a roof over her head.

Occupational health and safety

Occupational health and safety remains a priority. The Group’s health and safety complies with the Occupational Health and Safety Act 1970 and other relevant legislation, regulations and codes of practice for South Africa. The Group aims to prevent and minimise work-related and health impairments by ensuring that all employees are supplied with adequate training and supervision for the role they undertake.

Compliance is reviewed by an independent third party on a quarterly basis. No serious accidents have been reported during the year.

Environmental management

The nature of the Group’s business is such that it has very little negative impact on its environment. Italtile takes great care in harmonising buildings with the surrounding environment in order to provide staff, customers and the community with a pleasing, safe and clean environment.

Human capital development

Key strategic themes have been identified and are continuously strived for:

• to match the demographics of the organisation with the diverse markets in which the Group operates;
• a representative task team drives the Group’s employment equity plan and ensures that milestones are met;
• Italtile employs a number of mechanisms to promote worker participation in the operational decision-making process;
• a profit incentive scheme in terms of which all members of staff share in trading profits has been in operation since 1990;
• it is a stated objective of the Group to have all trading operations either in an outright franchise or in partnership with Italtile to cultivate the level of entrepreneurship within the Group; and
• to continuously enhance effectiveness of training in order to improve the foundation of skills within the organisation.

Human resources

In support of Italtile’s commitment to empowering its people and training them to ensure only the highest quality customer interactions, a dedicated human resources manager was appointed during the year.

The formalised focus on human resources will enable the Group to deliver on its objective to be the preferred employer in the tile and sanitaryware retail market. These disciplines will include more stringent human resource practices and standards as well as more intensive screening of new staff.

High on the agenda is a strategy to strengthen the channels of employee communication across the Group to ensure its people’s understanding of policies and procedures as well as accelerating activities which give employees a sense of belonging to a family which extends beyond the store of their employ.

These programmes, which started at the end of 2009, are set to deliver benefits in 2010 in the form of an improved culture and loyalty, to support growth through increased knowledge of salespeople on the shop floor.

Training and development

The Group manages its training and development initiatives in-house and has, over the years, heightened its Group focus to improve business and management skills as training was identified as a competitive advantage for the Group. All training is developed in-house to ensure relevance to CTM’s culture and strategy and 34 training modules are available throughout the country. The courses are tailored into three tiers aimed at the Beginners; Intermediate and Advanced levels. Training courses include focused business, technical, management and corporate governance programmes as well as an induction course for all new employees.

Minimum training competencies have been mapped for all job titles to support consistent standards across the Group. The benefits of these training initiatives are starting to pay off. For example, attendance at the selling course yielded an improvement in sales of about 30% in the three subsequent months.