Social responsibility (People)

Skills development—both internal and external—is a key aspect of our approach to social responsibility, given that operating successfully in a technical environment like ours depends on having a strong skills base. Our skills development strategy is aligned with the South African government’s focus on integrated workplace learning and skills development, and aims to develop a pool of the scarce and critical skills needed to enhance our own sustainability and that of our industry.

Currently, we are involved in a number of internal skills development initiatives, all of which have a strong bias towards uplifting the previously disadvantaged. These include bursaries, a graduates-in-training programme, apprenticeships (directed by a sector education and training authority and presented by an accredited training provider) and learnerships. In FY2018, the average number of training hours per employee in Sappi Southern Africa was 39, with average training spend per employee amounting to approximately US$700.

Our approach to safety is based on the principles of our global initiative, Project Zero - zero fatalities and zero injuries. Our safety approach comprises four behaviour based steps:

• A behavioural observation and feedback process - observation of employees and the documentation of safe and unsafe behaviours. Employees are then given positive feedback on safe and unsafe behaviours and provided with suggestions on correcting unsafe behaviour
• A formal review of observation data - following the step outlined above, data is analysed to determine an employee's or department's improvement in safe behaviours and the data is shared with employees
• Improvement goals - these are established to increase the effectiveness of the feedback and the success of the behaviour-based safety process, and
• Reinforcement - improvement and goal attainment are recognised and reinforced.

Our safety performance is reported on annually in our sustainability reports.