Sustainable development

A team of women drivers await trucks during a shift change in South Africa

Our commitment to promoting workforce diversity has the following focus areas: extending opportunities for women at all levels across the Group, achieving our transformation targets in South Africa, and providing appropriate opportunities for disabled employees.

Women in mining

The overall proportion of women throughout the Group had increased to 15% by the end of 2011 (2010: 14%).
At management level, women accounted for 22%
(2010: 21%).

To drive further improvement in the representation of women in management and the workforce as a whole, each of our businesses has drafted individual action plans. These plans include clear internal stretch targets to be achieved by December 2012 and December 2014 (for the percentage representation of women in the workforce as a whole, and women in management), as well as a description of the measures that will be taken.

Developing targeted recruitment and training campaigns, building capacity and understanding in local recruitment firms, and ensuring active engagement of line managers early in the recruitment process to ensure their buy-in are some of the activities that we have undertaken. Our efforts in attracting, developing and retaining women have been recognised through various fora.

The company, for example, was identified as South Africa’s ‘Top National Engendered Company’, both overall and in the resource sector. By openly sharing its activities to empower and increase participation of women in the workplace, our Platinum business has encouraged other companies to promote the empowerment and employment of women.

Other commonly implemented initiatives to promote women in mining include flexible work hours, child-care facilities and development, training and mentorship programmes focused on women.

Transformation

In our South African operations we continued to make good progress in promoting transformation in the workforce. At year end, 51% of our managers were ‘historically disadvantaged South Africans’ (2010: 46%). We believe we are now well placed to achieve the enhanced targets for 2014 set out in the revised Mining Charter and are putting in place appropriate systems for compliance and reporting to achieve this objective.