The ‘PPC Strength Guaranteed’ applies to every facet of the business, particularly to the development of its leaders from within. A significant investment has been made, with initiatives ranging from leadership principles training, to emotional intelligence profiling and coaching. Mentoring and coaching programmes have been implemented across all levels of the company, and a total of 138 managers from middle management upwards have benefited in 2007.

As a globally competitive company, the excellent skills levels passed on to its people not only make PPC more competitive and enrich lives, they enable the business to play a part in building the nation.

The entire PPC team is focused on creating value for all stakeholders, and 549 PPC staff are currently on learnerships or skills programmes with 89% of learners (486 people) being EE employees.

Skills development is a passion and commitment that is reflected through the Kambuku philosophy and approach to people empowerment. In this financial year, PPC spent almost 4% of payroll on skills development. This is an increase of 24% in Learning for Growth investment. Of this, 74% was spent on EE employees at a total cost of R10,7 million.

In order for PPC to be most effective at focusing on life-long learning for its employees, the company is also developing the capability of its learning specialists to enable them to facilitate organisation learning at a globally competitive level. Six of PPC’s top perform development practitioners recently co a year long education, training and development practitioner’s (ETDP) pilot learnership.

• BEE/transformation committee reporting at board level operationalised
• BBBEE transaction in final stages
• 48% increase in preferential procurement
• Transformation structure, processes and systems re-aligned
• Significant progress towards the 40% previously disadvantaged individuals in management target
• 8,7% increase of women in management
• Local community projects in line with the social and labour plans bear fruit

PPC prides itself on its long-standing track record of good corporate governance that espouses principles of building sustainable communities, building solid business partnerships and supporting South African legislation over many years.

PPC subscribes to the initiative of driving transformation in a meaningful and sustainable manner; and remains committed to these principles and to the objectives of BBBEE as set out in the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) BBBEE scorecard.

The company also subscribes to the successful alignment and achievement of both the Mining Charter scorecard of the Department of Minerals and Energy and the DTI scorecard on BBBEE guidelines.

PPC is committed to the transformation of its business in order to more than double the value of the company to all stakeholders by 2010.

PPC’s BEE strategy encompasses its transformation goals and philosophy and is characterised by the following principles:

• Creating a shareholder base with a significant level of broad-based black ownership;
• Achieving a meaningful level of black directors and management;
• Achieving an employee complement that reflects the diversity of South Africa;
• Developing and empowering employees through skills development programmes;
• Developing and empowering previously disadvantaged communities in South Africa through social development programmes;
• A procurement policy that recognises BEE; and
• Developing and empowering small and medium enterprises through enterprise development programmes.

The transformation initiative within PPC aims to achieve the objectives expressed in what is called the transformation wheel. During 2007 this transformation model was adopted as the blueprint of the PPC transformation journey.

To execute transformation with excellence PPC will focus on five clear strategic BBBEE goals and align the focus of every initiative to these goals.

PPC is firmly committed to black economic empowerment in South Africa and recognises that meaningful participation by black people in the mainstream economy is essential to sustaining the country’s successful economic and democratic structures.

The company is committed to realigning its shareholding to include broad-based groupings of black shareholders, including employees, their families and communities.

PPC implemented measures including skills development, mentorship, employment equity and recruitment to create a pool of black leaders for the future as follows:

• 100% of learners participating in engineering learnerships and artisan training were black;
• 11 unemployed black learners are participating in learnerships;
• 74% of learners participating in the academy bridging programme were black;
• 64% of learners participating in the Sales & Marketing Academy were black;
• 65% of learners participating in the Operations Academy programme are black;
• 75% of participants on skills development initiatives were black; and
• 68% of recruitment opportunities were filled by black candidates.