Imperial Group gains Top Employer certification

"We're thrilled that our parent has been recognised as one of South Africa's top employers under the Automotive Retail pillar this year," she said. "As a team and a company, we at Europcar are proud to be part of the achievement of this prestigious accolade.

"We're delighted that the principles along which Europcar operates have been carefully judged and shown to shine when matched against best practice nationally and internationally."

She sees these as driving vital national values, such as empowerment and transformation, evidenced when Europcar became the first home-grown car-rental company to be awarded Proudly South African status.

"This is more than a national emblem for us - we're really committed to these goals," Nathan-Jones said. "Attaining our Level Two BBBEE rating was a highlight for us. Today, more than 50% of our management team are women and, in addition, 60% of our executive team are women, all experienced leaders in their business areas."

Europcar has strong roots in the Imperial Group, where it originated as Imperial Car Rental 34 years ago, before being rebranded as Europcar in 2007. It has operated exclusively as Europcar since 2009, now holding an ISO9001 (2008) accreditation. In conjunction with this, Europcar sees its sustainability business imperative as benefiting staff and customers, as well as the South African environment and the country's population as a whole.

Critically assessed

Top Employers Certification is awarded only after corporates' human resources environments have been critically assessed. The Imperial Group has been particularly commended for its decentralised management structure, which actively encourages entrepreneurship and innovation and for fostering industry-specific best practice.

Corporates must also be able to demonstrate that they are leaders in ongoing, optimal staff development. Europcar's focus in this area includes assisting previously disadvantaged individuals who failed matric to obtain a comparable, marketable qualification through the Further Learning Competency (FLC) programme. A further 50 previously disadvantaged individuals are participating in learnership and graduate programmes, such as the MDP in business administration and generic management.

"We opened the Europcar Learning Centre in August last year as part of our commitment to growing the future of our employees in the true spirit of our corporate 'Moving Forward' ethos," said Nathan-Jones. "To date, we have offered four days of training per individual staff member per year but, our goal is to increase this to 5.5 days each."