Our people

Our ability to provide excellent and high-quality healthcare would not be possible without every one of our employees – who are the essence of our business. We continue investing in them, ensuring that we create sustainable partnerships which, in turn, translate to quality care for our patients. We cohesively strive towards a common goal – to create the best patient experience and most positive patient outcomes. And who leads us on that front? Our people.

Overview

Life Healthcare directly employs 17 274 people (2020: 17 220) across its southern African and International operations. However, in addition to this we rely on South African agency nursing employees, consulting doctors and specialists, temporary personnel and within our international business many self-employed clinical and non-clinical employees, as we show below:

Group workforce	2021	2020	2019
Southern Africa1	14 972	15 060	15 385
International1, 2	2 302	2 160	2 040
Total employees	17 274	17 220	17 425
Chg yoy, %	0.3	(1.2)
Southern Africa – temporary personnel	1 081	862	991
International – self-employed personnel	1 180	841	969
Total workforce	19 535	18 923	19 385
Chg yoy, %	3.2	(2.4)
1 Permanent employees 2Including LMI employees

Recruitment and retention

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented us with a number of significant challenges over the year, particularly as the majority of our employees are front-line healthcare workers.

We have needed to manage reduced staffing availability through COVID-19-related illness and isolation. Across the Group c.2 900 employees (2020: c.2 700) have had a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 in 2021, while we have sadly lost 48 nurses and 7 doctors from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. We extend our sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of our employees.

We have needed to utilise more agency and temporary employees to manage the reduced availability of employees during the various COVID-19 waves.

As an international healthcare provider, we compete for a global pool of talent with other healthcare providers (public and private). This was already a small and well sought-after pool of talent, prior to COVID-19. With increased pressure on healthcare systems around the world, along with sick or isolating employees, demand for healthcare workers has increased worldwide. As a consequence, we have seen significant employee turnover during the year, particularly within clinical employees.

Overall employee turnover by geographic segment	2021	2020	2019
Southern Africa	11.9%	10.8%	10.5%
International	14.8%	11.8%	n/a

These high turnover numbers present a significant sustainability problem for the Group. In order to both attract and retain talent within our organisation, we have embarked on a number of interventions including the following initiatives within South Africa, which have yielded a positive impact on our workforce:

Initiative			Notes
We brought forward southern African salary increases for clinical employees and all junior and middle management categories. These increases, which usually take place in January, were brought forward to September 2021.			New initiative in 2021 Once-off
We have offered to pay for employees' annual professional registration fees			New initiative in 2021 Ongoing
We have made an application to the FSCA to introduce a flexible retirement fund contribution arrangement with employees (while the proportion paid by the Group will remain the same)			New initiative in 2021 Ongoing
Employee Share Plan – Life Healthcare shares to the value of R20 million have been purchased for permanent employees with at least one year's service as at 1 July 2021			Ongoing initiative (see Remuneration report)

 

Remuneration philosophy

Life Healthcare's remuneration philosophy is to make certain that employees are rewarded fairly and appropriately for their contribution to value creation for the Group. Our remuneration philosophy informs our reward framework and guides policy. In a continually evolving context, we continually review our remuneration policies to ensure our approach remains relevant, fair and responsible.

Our remuneration framework and policies, which are a key component of our broader employee value proposition, aim to:

• attract, motivate, reward and retain our people;
• promote the achievement of strategic objectives within the Group's values and risk appetite;
• promote diversity in our workforce to align with the communities we serve;
• promote an ethical culture and responsible corporate citizenship; and
• provide a balanced remuneration mix within the Group's financial constraints

In addition to the retention initiatives mentioned above, our Employee Value Proposition needs to encompass all relevant touchpoints for employees and as such is not purely focused on reward.

Transformation, diversity and inclusion

Diversity and inclusion will be a key driver of our transformation journey and will remain, we believe, integral to maintaining a workforce that reflects our commitment to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, gender, age, disability, political belief or activity, religion, or sexual preference, and reflects the demographics of the countries in which we operate. As a Group, we will continue to support transformational strategies, with racial and gender parity remaining a key focus. With a diverse, inclusive and motivated workforce we can continue Making life better, together.

We have made significant progress in terms of transformation, diversity and inclusion across the Group.

Women in Life

Gender diversity and inclusion is imperative to deliver on our vision of being a diversified, people-centred organisation and through our Women in Life programme, we continue to celebrate and empower the senior women leadership in Life Healthcare. This is an exciting journey for us and gaining momentum. This programme provides us with an additional platform to accelerate our diversity journey, and through precise Women in Life initiatives, we continue to focus on harnessing the power of a diversified workforce for Making life better.

Training

Life Healthcare provides opportunities for employee training across all categories of employees, whether through our seven owned nursing colleges, or through external learning centres.