Leveraging a diverse and change resilient culture
We want to create a change resilient and adaptive culture that leverages our collective and diverse intelligence to drive deeper engagement, promote innovation, support business growth and improve productivity while ensuring the wellbeing of our employees.
To be truly inclusive, we must empower our people to make meaningful contributions, and treat all our employees fairly with equal access to opportunities, information and resources. We are working to embed DEI into the bedrock of our culture, business processes and talent management.
Our key focus areas
- Improve employee experience.
- Build an environment conducive to collaborative working.
- Leverage differences to drive deeper engagement and better business outcomes.
- Correcting the align-self-center low representation of women in leadership roles in the automotive industry.
- Attracting people living with disabilities and advancing their careers.
- Driving consistent communication and equal access to information.
What we are doing
Employee engagement
All interactions, including disciplinary actions and negotiations on terms of employment, are managed with utmost responsibility and in a fair, open and respectful manner. Various mechanisms are used to engage with employees, including employee engagement surveys and engagement initiatives within the individual businesses. For example, Mercedes Benz in the UK provides all employees with an application (app) on their phone so that they can share information about their activities. In South Africa, a toolkit helps our HR personnel and business leaders to provide emotional support, communicate effectively, and embed our values and desired culture. In the UK, informal groups help address issues raised in employee engagement surveys.
Diversity, equity and inclusion
Our people policies convey the behaviours we expect of our managers and employees to provide a working environment where everyone can perform to their full potential. We ensure that our employment policies and practices do not unintentionally create potential for discrimination or unconscious bias behaviour. Policies are in place to accommodate the needs of people living with disabilities and to guard against harassment in the workplace.
In South Africa, our Employment Equity Plan supports social justice norms and labour legislation that drive the advancement of designated groups (Africans, Coloured, Indians, women and people living with disabilities). Our performance is reported in the transformation report on 
transforming our workforce.
Our diversity training programmes in South Africa and the UK raise awareness on the value of diversity, empower managers to lead diverse teams and educate employees on how to work in diverse teams.
In South Africa, we have development programmes and learnerships that target women and people living with disabilities, and in the UK, our apprenticeships target women and people of colour. The Women in Leadership Programme (a partnership with the Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa) is a seven-month programme which develops women to effectively lead in a male-dominated environment. Participants gain insight from female industry and Motus leaders who share their career experiences, and are assigned a coach to help them work on their personal development areas which are identified using 360-degree surveys.
How we measure our performance
Our engagement surveys are undertaken at business segment and regional level to gain insight on employee concerns. Surveys are similar as they are required to cover key human capital-related issues. In South Africa, a departure survey administered by an external partner gathers insights on the reasons why individuals choose to leave our employ. Survey results are reported to the Social, Ethics and Sustainability (SES) Committee and are used to implement practical improvements.
Governance of social impact: governance approaches.
2022 performance and key objectives
Group
Employee engagement
- We have decided that better insight on employee concerns is gained through individual business segment and regional employee engagement surveys negating the need for the diagnostic tool mentioned in last year's report.
- In all operations good relationships and open communication exist between management and employees.
Diversity, equity and inclusion
- Overall female representation grew by 7%, with the largest percentage increase being in Australia.
- Women in top management positions led gender equity programmes launched in South Africa and the UK.
- We are integrating gender perspectives to promote equity and guard against discrimination into the preparation, design, implementation and monitoring of policies and spending programmes in South Africa and the UK.
Women representation
(2021: 31%)
(2021: 27%)
(2021: 28%)
South Africa
Employee engagement
- 78% of Kia's employees completed its culture and engagement survey, indicating a highly engaged workforce. Key areas noted for improvement were non-monetary reward and recognition, communication, career planning, wellness and teambuilding. In response, Kia will launch the following initiatives in 2023; an initiative to gather employees' suggestions on reward and recognition, the launch of an employee communication platform, the establishment of a social committee, wellness training for managers, the launch of a financial coaching programme and career planning workshops.
- Retail and Rental is implementing interventions to address the issues raised by employees in last year's engagement survey, with particular attention paid to gender-related issues.
- Mobility Solutions' employee engagement survey was answered by 424 (65%) out of 650 participants. Pleasingly, the survey shows that our employees understand Mobility Solutions' purpose and strategic objectives. 98% of respondents agreed that they understood what is expected of them at work, and that they felt their job was important. Areas for improvement include reward and recognition.
- We are investigating a free-to-use mobile phone communication tool to support two-way communication between employees and Motus. A solution has already been implemented in Mobility Solutions.
- Upgrade and optimisation projects are underway to enhance Microsoft Teams to meet employees' online collaboration needs.
Diversity, equity and inclusion
Held an externally facilitated workshop for the executives in South Africa to reimagine a purposeful DEI vision that engenders a better sense of belonging for employees. The workshop interrogated the collective understanding of DEI and the benefits of pursuing this culture. Similar sessions were held with the senior management teams of our business segments as well as with other key personnel. We were pleased to find that there was a common understanding of the value that DEI creates. It has since been agreed that the DEI framework and tone will be set at a Group level, with business segments to manage the implementation. We mentioned in last year's report that we would investigate the feasibility of virtual diversity training, and have since decided that this approach would not provide real, deep and meaningful dialogue on the issue.
- We have included the increase of women representation at executive and management level in South Africa
as a target in our new sustainability-linked facility ( see environment report).
- Our anti-harassment policy was updated to align to South Africa's new Code of Good Practice on the Prevention and Elimination of Harassment in the Workplace, which came into effect in March 2022. The Code provides context to various forms of harassment in the workplace. Our policy provides guidance on how to eliminate and prevent harassment and includes employee training and awareness on what constitutes harassment.
- The EmpowerHer Affinity Group was launched to encourage women's networking beyond the Women in Leadership Programme and assist their journeys to success and empowerment. Three female Group executives opened the first EmpowerHer meeting.
- A gender comparison study in May 2022, showed that 58% of our male employees and 55% of our female employees in South Africa have received training from Motus.
- Kerry Cassel the CEO of Mobility Solutions and the Head of Innovation and Technology for the Group was one of 50 finalists in the Africa.com Definitive List of Women CEOs running big businesses in Africa. HR Director at Kia, Pamentha Kadathlal, was awarded an Excellence Award at the Motoring Women of the Year Awards Powered by MFC, a division of Nedbank. In addition, six women colleagues were placed as runners-up in the finance and insurance, customer service, sales, long service, top achiever and excellence categories. Group Chief People Officer, Michele Seroke and HR Director at Hyundai, Khanya Magudulela, were nominated for South Africa's leading Chief Human Resources Officer Awards.
Women representation (South Africa)
Women representation at management level (%)
(2021: 18 in the second cohort)
Hires and promotions (South Africa)
Exits (South Africa)
Disability (South Africa)
Regions
- Our commercial vehicles division in the UK implemented a new people strategy to drive employee engagement, inclusion, recognition and wellness. Initiatives include a Women in Motus working group to address barriers facing women in the automotive industry and the integration of DEI topics in the 'Motus People' annual calendar (Black History, Pride, International Women's Day etc.), among others.
- The Employee Engagement Programme in the UK reached the entire workforce, with 2 866 employees participating. We achieved an overall score of 3,8 out of five (a typical UK company scores between 3,3 and 3,6), with high scores of four or higher in nine divisions. Following the review of the survey outputs, action plans were developed to drive improvements.
- In Australia, we partnered with the Ford Motor Company's DEI project to understand employee and customer experiences, and identify barriers and opportunities to drive a more diverse and inclusive workplace. Out of 249 survey invitations, 184 (74%) responses were received. The results were benchmarked against a national mean and discussed with each dealership. Generally, employees feel we have well-communicated and accessible policies that support a diverse and fair workplace, processes that enable the reporting of discrimination and bias, and that they are provided with a safe and supportive workplace. Opportunity exists to improve access to training, to use performance reviews to enhance employee experience and careers, and to find ways to celebrate diversity in the dealerships and local communities.
- An awareness campaign on modern-day slavery was rolled out to all our dealerships in Australia.
Objectives
- South Africa: introduce KPIs for female representation and the representation of people living with disabilities as part of employment equity in the performance criteria of business segment CEOs in 2023.
- South Africa: introduce employee experience and communication platforms to enhance employee engagement and give employees better access to information. Work has already started to scope an employee communication and engagement tool.
- South Africa: identify metrics beyond employment equity to measure our DEI performance and deliver more DEI interventions to change attitudes and increase the skillsets needed to work within a diverse work environment.
- Australia: host focus groups, including at dealerships, to discuss the diversity survey results and adapt current policies, where necessary, to drive DEI. Progress will be communicated to all employees, and lessons learnt will be shared with the Group.
Innovation and collaboration
Innovation is highly valued by our people. The Motus Xponential (mx) platform – a digital innovation management platform – is central to our innovation strategy. It serves to deepen our innovative culture, enable cross-functional collaboration on innovative ideas and share innovation knowledge (keynote and thought leadership events, articles, practical innovation workshops, training and showcasing of innovative solutions). Business challenges are published on the platform, giving all our employees the opportunity to share their ideas or generate solutions to the challenges (a bottom-up approach). The mx community then votes and the popular ideas go into design. Viable concepts that pass adjudication by Motus executives receive sponsorship to mature into implementable projects.
We also partner with institutes like the Henley Business School South Africa to grow our internal innovation capability. The initiative is part of the Future Leaders Programme ( see our talent management framework) and is used to develop ideas to solve business challenges identified by executive committees across the Group. Collaborative design-thinking frameworks are used to find solutions (a top-down approach).
2022 highlights
- An online innovation audit was conducted to benchmark the perception and status of innovation within the Group. Participants rated our strategy, identified key disruptions in the automotive industry and made recommendations on how Motus could improve. 82% of respondents (over 640 employees) agreed that Motus is an innovative company.
- Webinars held on the mx platform included discussions on the power of digital engagement, looking at problems from a new perspective, how to create and manage change, the interplay between innovation exploration and innovation exploitation, and easy innovation. A webinar on the future of automotive globally and in Africa was delivered by PwC.
mx platform
garnering 103 votes and 61 comments from
platform members
(2021: 7 challenges and 57 ideas)
(discovery, validation and scale)
(2021: 12)
¹ Membership is impacted by the natural attrition of employees.
Key areas of focus for the mx platform are:
- Measuring participation and tracking which employees are highly engaged in innovation.
- Consolidating and co-creating internal innovation efforts across the Group.
- Establishing an online learning portal focusing on innovation.
Determining our Innovation and digitisation review.
Case study
In 2022, we launched the CEO Challenge to drive engagement on the mx platform. Open to all employees in the Group, including our employees in the UK, the challenge aims to discover and recognise employees who are doing things in a different way. The challenges focus on efficiency, best practices and business improvement. Success stories are shortlisted and tested to determine whether they can be scaled across the relevant business segment to create value. The goal of the initiative was to encourage employees to share their stories and spark participation from employees who had not yet engaged with the mx platform.
Over 200 submissions were received. In Motus Autoworx, six employees were selected to go through to the second round for their implemented solutions to optimise efficiency and set new standards for best practice. In the Kia challenge, three teams received approval to test their brand concepts in the market, and in Mitsubishi's sales challenge, the concepts of two teams are being tested and developed further. The Mobility Solutions challenge resulted in a debtors system that now takes 20 minutes to do 40 hours of invoice and statement work, a tool to access summarised data on the status of our innovation concepts in less than 10 minutes and a communication mechanism for M-Sure to deliver ongoing awareness of its sales team and products.
Doing things
differently
#InnovatorsRecognition
The mx platform achieved third place in the 2022 JTBD (Jobs-To-Be-Done) Summit Europe – Europe's biggest customer-centric innovation event.