We meaningfully engage with our employees to understand their material needs and concerns and maintain our employee value proposition as an employer of choice. Engaged employees are more productive, which enhances safety at our operations and supports the sustainability of our business.
Finalist in the DEI category at the World Sustainability Awards, a runner up in the social responsibility category at the ESG Investing Awards and winning an award for DEI in the workplace at the Top Empowerment Awards
Recognised as a top employer in South Africa for 2023 by the Top Employers Institute
Progressed the DEI strategy, with a strong drive around women in mining, inclusivity and workplace harassment
Maintained stable relationships with stakeholders
Developed and adopted a "family code of conduct" endorsed by our CEO. The code highlights expected behaviours and standards for all Exxaro employees aligned to our values
To ensure our employees are engaged to maintain our employee value proposition, remain an employer of choice and enhance our sustainability
KPIs:
 |
Exxaro's DEI strategy supports the objectives of our Social Impact strategy. |
 |
Empower people to create impact |
Employees
To encourage engagement through honesty boxes for employees to anonymously submit feedback, aligned to our family code of conduct
Collaboration between Minerals Council, MQA and DMRE
To improve skills development and ensure the appropriate allocation of investments
Women in Mining Leadership Forum
To increase the representation and development of women in the mining industry
Future focus
We will continue to work towards achieving the objectives of our performance achievement framework, including:
Additionally, we plan to launch a new DEI e-learning programme to provide a comprehensive training opportunity for employees as part of our DEI journey.
Our approach to meaningful engagement with our employees centres on maintaining a representative workforce, with respect for the needs of our host communities, and is defined in our DEI strategy. Additionally, we are guided by our employee relations strategy in managing employees' needs and expectations, and our new persons with disabilities policy in ensuring persons with disabilities have equal access to employment, training, skills development opportunities and career pathing.
Employee engagement is supported by the embedding of our values and culture, effective communication and a commitment to constant improvement. Our established engagement structures facilitate communication and keep employees updated on key organisational changes, health, wellness, safety, and operational and financial performance. Insights from employee engagement initiatives also inform improvements to our processes and workplaces. Our performance achievement system, policy and approach, updated in 2022, further enhances performance principles and delivery.
Exxaro's DEI strategy is grounded in our purpose, values, vision, culture and strategic objectives. Our DEI strategy:
This enables us to play a leading role in our industry in complying with the goals and objectives of South African legislation.
Ongoing communication
Courageous and accountable leadership
As part of our commitment to fostering a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace, we have comprehensive policies and practices that promote DEI across the business, including:
We are focused on creating an enabling environment for HDPs while prioritising the implementation of our policy review and wage gap closure. We track our progress against metrics aligned to our strategic dashboard:
Targets
| Strategic measures | |
| Progress economically active population targets by 2026 | 60% to 70% |
| Percentage representation of African women per occupation level (junior to top management) by 2026 | 36% |
| Percentage women at management and specialist levels by 2025 | 50% |
| Inclusive culture | |
| Culture and engagement survey (culture, DEI and leadership) every two years | Top three survey initiatives Pulse survey every eight months Benchmark |
| Gender equity | |
| Review and enable policies and processes to support DEI | End 2023 |
Our culture themes highlight our commitment to our strategic goals, purpose and vision – extending beyond our internal environment to external interactions and stakeholder partnerships.
| Responsible | Ownership | Diverse | Open and connected | Adaptable |
| Make Exxaro a positive place to be: Acting ethically, with accountability and against misconduct, while treating others with dignity, fosters a safe and healthy work environment. | Success lies with each of us: Contributing to performance and innovation every day, building together, we can drive Exxaro to new heights. | Our potential is in our differences: Harnessing our unique individual skills, opinions and contributions enables us to achieve exceptional outcomes. | Working together will bring out the best in us all: Achieving organisational excellence in an open and evolving ecosystem requires collaboration and teamwork. | We cannot move forward by standing still: Succeeding in the ever-changing world around us requires agility as well as willingness to learn and improve. |
The SERC is accountable for and oversees employee engagement. The chief people and performance officer is responsible for implementing engagement initiatives. The CEO and the chief people and performance officer monitor DEI for the board. Culture is a leadership responsibility from executive level to employees. BU managers and teams drive culture at operations.
Cennergi's employment equity committee guides and monitors transformation and skills development and oversees implementation of the employment equity plan. The committee is also responsible for reviewing the recruitment process, following up on deviations in employment equity performance and ensuring the availability of technical skills to achieve transformation goals. Government's IPP office tracks Cennergi's employment opportunities in equity categories under the Renewable Energy IPP Procurement Programme (REIPPPP). These include employment secured for South African citizens and local communities.
20 665
employees
(2022: 19 242)
6 797 (33%) permanent
employees
(2022: 6 745, 35%)
13 868 (67%)
contractors*
(2022: 12 497, 64.9%)
| * | Contractor total does not include Cennergi sub-contractors. |
178 employees
(2022: 103)
35 (20%) permanent employees
(2022: 20%)
143 (80%) contractors
(2022: 80%)
Wind turbines are operated and maintained under contract by Nordex at Amakhala Emoyeni and by Vestas South Africa at Tsitsikamma. These contractors use sub-contractors for maintenance activities, employing 47 people at Amakhala Emoyeni and 29 at Tsitsikamma. The 68MW LSP is being constructed under contract by Elsewedy and Edison, employing 67 people.
We conducted a culture and engagement survey at our corporate centre and BUs to track the efficacy and progress of culture integration. The survey was aimed at establishing a baseline of progress against the DEI strategy, leadership effectiveness and integration of key culture themes.
The survey had a 57.6% participation rate (up from 33.6% in 2020). While Exxaro achieved admirable ratings for vision and strategy, work environment, and sexual orientation and inclusion, the survey also highlighted areas requiring improvement. These include creating a psychologically safe environment, addressing harassment in the workplace and employee skills development.
Feedback sessions were held with all BUs and department heads. Honesty boxes were included as part of these sessions to get honest feedback from employees. Action plans to implement improvement suggestions from the survey are in progress and will continue into 2024.
| Area of assessment | Score out of 5 | Action required |
| Sexual orientation and inclusion | 4.08 | Maintain |
| Vision and strategy | 4.07 | Maintain |
| Work environment | 4.07 | Maintain |
| Values and culture themes | 3.97 | Enhance |
| Gender and race inclusion | 3.84 | Enhance |
| Religion and inclusion | 3.83 | Enhance |
| Policies, systems and procedures | 3.82 | Enhance |
| Diversity and inclusion | 3.76 | Enhance |
| Leadership | 3.67 | Proactive intervention |
| Communication and trust | 3.64 | Proactive intervention |
| Disability and inclusion | 3.58 | Proactive intervention |
| Employee engagement | 3.44 | Proactive intervention |
| Career development, training and advancement | 3.33 | Proactive intervention |
| Aggregate | 3.78 | Enhance |
We plan to complete a follow-up survey in 2025 to assess the progress made against the improvement areas identified in the 2023 survey. This will indicate the effectiveness of our response and highlight areas needing further improvement.
Our approach to organised labour relations is shaped by collaboration and constructive engagement. Our relationships with trade unions are based on trust and integrity.
Our policies and procedures comply with best labour relations practices and relevant legislation. We manage individual and collective employee concerns with due respect.
We progressed in the long-term review process of our employee relations strategy and actively engaged with stakeholders at BUs. This supports our aim of proactively maintaining a healthy workplace through established engagement structures and dispute resolution mechanisms.
We continued providing skills workshops and training for employee relations managers and line managers to ensure that all parties are committed to building solid relationships.
We also advanced our employee relations capacity building processes by compiling a matrix of our goals and engaged with trade unions to understand their capacity building goals. In addition, we conducted a capacity building process with our shop stewards for wage negotiations in 2024.
We maintain positive relations with employees in bargaining units by engaging with their representative trade unions through formal mechanisms.
Wage negotiation processes are conducted at employer level. These engagements determine negotiated conditions of employment and foster labour stability.
| Number of employees | |
| AMCU | 467 |
|---|---|
| FAWU | 32 |
| NUMSA | 56 |
| NUM | 4 543 |
| Solidarity | 278 |
| Total | 5 376 |
In 2023, 5 376 employees (79%) (2022: 5 276) were represented by affiliated unions recognised by Exxaro (NUM, Solidarity, AMCU, FAWU and NUMSA).
The wage agreements signed in 2021 will expire in June 2024. We are planning to hold wage negotiations with organised labour at the beginning of May 2024, with a view to potentially signing another three-year wage deal at the end of the process.
GreenShare, our employee share ownership plan (ESOP), pays dividends to participants during their employment. It is open to employees not participating in a management share scheme.
When dividends are declared, participants in service receive a cash payment equal to 560 Exxaro shares minus dividend tax. Participants do not have capital appreciation rights.
| Number
of active beneficiaries |
Number of units |
Payment before tax (R) |
Payment after tax (R) |
|
| March 2023 | 6 344 | 3 552 640 | 40 357 990 | 32 286 392 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 2023 | 6 351 | 3 556 560 | 40 651 481 | 32 521 185 |
In 2023, each GreenShare beneficiary received a cash payment of R10 209.92.
This policy provides guidance and awareness, and regulates the prevention and management of sexual and racial harassment in the workplace.
Exxaro has a zero tolerance approach to any form of harassment in the workplace. We reviewed the workplace harassment policy in 2022 to ensure that harassment and discrimination are not barriers to inclusion, and to align the policy with the codes of good practice on prevention and elimination of harassment in the workplace. We also conducted workplace harassment training during the year.
Our interventions to prevent workplace harassment as a response to the sexual harassment cases reported in 2022 yielded positive results, with zero sexual harassment cases reported this year.
Exxaro was certified as a level 2 BEE contributor, retaining our empowerment level and status as one of South Africa's largest and foremost black-empowered and diversified mining companies. Our ambition remains to be a level 1 contributor.
Our policies and skills development allow us to meet our transformation objectives in support of the national imperative for a non-racial and transformed society. Appropriate affirmative action measures and human resource development programmes support our transformation processes and cultural engagements.
We measure our transformation profile against national economically active population statistics.
| Employment equity | Black male employees | All female employees | Historically disadvantaged people1 | Mining Charter III targets (%) | ||||
| Management category | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % |
Historically disadvantaged people |
Women |
| Top management | 1 | 25 | 1 | 25 | 2 | 50 | 50 | 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Senior management | 32 | 42.67 | 23 | 30.67 | 55 | 73.33 | 60 | 25 |
| Middle management | 244 | 38.167 | 290 | 45.31 | 534 | 83.44 | 60 | 25 |
| Junior management | 1 152 | 48.28 | 812 | 34.03 | 1 964 | 82.31 | 70 | 30 |
| People with disabilities | Performance: 1.69% (target: 1.5%) | |||||||
1 Includes white female employees.
We have achieved our employment equity targets over the past five years, aligned with the Mining Charter III, except for our target for women in senior management. Our employment equity plans for the next five years, aligned with our DEI strategy, will address this challenge.
Cennergi's employment equity plan, which will be reviewed in 2024, aligns with legislation and the DEL Codes of Good Practice. Equity categories, with contractual commitments, encompass employment secured for South African citizens and local communities. Hiring commitments for Amakhala Emoyeni are 97% South African citizens (77% black and 64% from local communities), 80% South African citizens for Tsitsikamma community windfarm (50% black and 20% from local communities) and 80% South African citizens for the LSP (60% black and 40% from local communities).
IPPs are required to provide proof of meeting job creation obligations quarterly to the DMRE, per an implementation agreement with the DMRE. Penalties and rewards are incurred or achieved based on quarterly performance, and underperformance could result in the DMRE terminating contracts. In this way, the DMRE ensures bidders are genuinely dedicated to enterprise development objectives. Cennergi consistently meets job creation targets and did not incur contract termination points or penalties from the DMRE in 2023.
The turnover rate for the year was 4.5% due to abscondment, death, incapacity, dismissal, resignation and retirement (2022: 4.4%).
We had 6 797 permanent employees in 2023 (2022: 6 745) with 83.81% in bargaining units (2022: 82.37%) and 16.19% in the management and specialist category (2022: 17.62%).
Refer to the databook for more detail.
Turnover by ethnicity (%)
Turnover by gender (%)
Turnover by age group (%)
Turnover by category (%)
Reasons for termination (%)
Guided by our values, we are committed to equal opportunity, irrespective of race, religion, gender, health status, sexual orientation or nationality. We believe that our diversity and differences strengthen our potential.
We embrace the diversity of our strengths and individual skills to enable exceptional outcomes and promote a culture of inclusivity. Accordingly, we continue to invest in upskilling and training managers and supervisors to appropriately apply necessary disciplinary measures.
Zero cases of alleged discrimination or grievances were filed (2022: zero).
We presented the Exxaro anti-racism charter to the executive committee and it was approved for adoption in November 2023.
We discuss our approach to child and forced labour, working hours, minimum wage and labour standards under respecting and upholding human rights.
To ensure our business sustainability and in compliance with the Mining Charter III, we will not support hostel residents after 2025. Our housing strategy therefore encourages employees to become home owners. Additionally, bargaining unit employees receive a housing or living-out allowance.
Since 2017, 1 379 permanent employees have received mortgage repayment subsidies for first-time home buyers. Capital assistance of R125 000 significantly reduces employees' mortgages and improves affordability.
Our converted hostels (single-quarter accommodation or family units) are currently not fully utilised, with 42 employees living in these facilities. The lower utilisation rate could be due to employees taking up home ownership opportunities or using the living out allowance option to seek other suitable accommodation.
We paid a housing allowance to 2 213 employees (2022: 2 272) and a living-out allowance to 3 271 employees (2022: 3 594).
CASE STUDY:
Disability inclusion at Exxaro
We actively live our Exxaro values by driving our DEI strategy, a core pillar of which is people with disabilities. Disability inclusion is essential to upholding human rights and creating meaningful impact for all.
People with disabilities represent at least 1.7% of our workforce and this is expected to increase to 2% by 2027. Our vision is to transform our internal and external communities by driving awareness and reducing stigma, improving accessibility, and employing and developing people with disabilities.
In the past three years, we have:
We will continue to monitor our plans and report on progress in quarterly review meetings.
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