Pioneer Foods ups its BBBEE rating

She adds that labour market trends show an increase in the number of PDI individuals employed in technical, senior management and professional positions including an increase in the number of PDI students being enrolled at universities.

Talent management strategy

There is an internal integrated talent management strategy aimed at developing a broad-based talent pool to address current and future organisational needs and requirements. This includes:

• A career grid with simplified, level based and job-family orientated key performance areas and competencies, enabling career development across the various operations of the company
  
• Talent pools identified based on potential and performance results
  
• Learning academies to develop a pipeline of scarce skills and leadership talent. Programmes include bursary scheme, graduate programme, leadership development and a structured mentorship program to enable skills transfers and career development
  
• Total reward value proposition to enable effective talent management and sustainable organisational performance, which includes a combination of competitive remuneration, performance-based pay and short-term incentives
  
• A mentorship program to provide employees with the opportunity to realise both their professional and personal development as well as enable the organisation to build capability.

Khumalo adds that the company plans to add to its skills developments in 2011 by adding 10 apprenticeships, 30 learnerships, 22 graduate internships and 100 leadership development candidates.

"This is largely aimed at providing a pipeline of scarce skills to meet current and future business needs. Most learnerships and leadership development programme focus on internal workforce with respect to technical skills and leadership capacity and pipeline. The momentum for these initiatives is increasing and more will be done in the next two to three years," she concludes.