Personal protective equipment was procured leveraging our strong relationships with our suppliers and distributed across the South African and African operations.

We are deeply saddened that five Motus people lost their lives to COVID-19 and we extend our condolences to their families and friends.

As a committee, we are grateful to the leadership team and the COVID-19 crisis committee, whose efforts have ensured that the Group played its role to protect its stakeholders, safeguard its sustainability and ensure that it meets the guidelines set by the health authorities in each country in which we operate. Until a vaccine is available for widespread use, the impact of this devastating pandemic will remain with us. We have ensured that our return to physical work environments in all our geographies is taking place in a phased, responsible and ethical manner.

COVID-19 has been our primary focus for the past four months and will continue to require a critical evaluation of stakeholder safety and responsible business operations. Beyond this immediate focus, the SES committee is pleased with the improvement being made in its areas of oversight while acknowledging the negative impact of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis on certain key focus areas, particularly skills development and the rate of delivery of certain CSI projects. Management is developing action plans to address these issues.

Ethical conduct

The strength of our relationships with our people, OEMs, providers of debt and capital, and suppliers rests on our ethical conduct and have long been an asset and sustainable competitive advantage. These long-standing relationships have enabled the Group to negotiate favourable measures to allow the strategic room needed to operate under extremely stressful and harsh economic conditions.

As the board, we have ensured and confirm that the necessary practices and procedures are in place to maintain the highest standards of accountability, transparency and integrity. The Motus code of ethics and policies against bribery and corruption and regarding conflicts of interest, guide our conduct – fostering a workplace that is fair and inclusive – as well as our regulatory compliance. Our code of ethics is based on uncompromising respect for human rights and the health and safety of our people. During the year, we expanded our ethics framework to include a supply chain code of conduct approved by the SES committee. Internal processes and independent reviews measure our compliance with these guidelines, our internal controls and compliance with regulations.

While these frameworks and policies, and the oversight provided by the committee, cannot guarantee the prevention of unethical practices, we are committed to acting responsibly when a matter is brought to our attention.

Empowered people

During the reporting year, we updated our people strategy to ensure we are able to respond effectively to the fast-changing business context driven by digital transformation. Our focus will be on programmes that support the Group’s innovation journey and the mobility of talent with the right skills across the organisation. Key highlights for the year include the establishment of a Talent for Growth Framework and the progress made in the performance development approach, which drives greater alignment between employees and business goals.

An inclusive and collaborative high-performance culture that empowers employees and provides Motus with the benefit of diverse thinking remains key. Our long-term employment equity targets applicable to our South African workforce are measured against annual targets, which are linked to executive performance incentives. Black and female representation within the workforce have been maintained at 73% and 30% respectively, and 39% of our Dealer Principals are black (2019: 40%). Despite our limited ability to recruit during the COVID-19 lockdown, we met our junior management target, marginally missed our targets for top and middle management by 1% and while the senior management target was missed by 4%, black representation in this employment band increased to 40% from 36% in 2019. Our succession plans earmark senior and middle management positions for black professionals and include the appointment of two black divisional CEOs in the short term.

While costs have been cut and we have found even deeper efficiencies, it is with regret that, due to the severe impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the workforce has had to be reduced. Altogether, 1 216 compulsory retrenchments were undertaken at the time of reporting and 1 181 employees had opted for voluntary retrenchments with a further 830 leaving the Group’s employ.

The COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing requirements necessitated the cancellation of face-to-face classroom training, impacting our skills development plans. While vocational training has restarted in a newly developed blended approach (virtual and classroom), most of our leadership development programmes will only resume after January 2021. Despite these restrictions, we increased our annual training spend from R137 million in 2019 to R177 million and created a bursary fund for the dependants of our employees, setting aside R30 000 per beneficiary.

The health and safety of our employees, customers and partners is always top of mind. We have implemented an internal target to conduct an OHS audit in all South African sites annually. This target was not met in 2020 given the COVID-19 restrictions, however, compared to 2019, 97 additional sites were audited (88% of our site footprint), with the sites above our minimum level of compliance increasing from 88% to 91%.

We are saddened to report a fatal accident at one of our parts distribution centres in South Africa on 15 November 2019 and offer our sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues of the deceased. A full independent investigation was undertaken and has reinforced the need for continuous vigilance in enforcing a health and safety culture. We have prioritised our occupational health and safety (OHS) service provider network, the process to identify OHS risks and employee training and awareness as areas for improvement, with benchmarking exercises already started by year-end.

Transformation and community upliftment

The limitations placed on recruitment and training in the early part of the 2020 calendar year resulted in a drop to a Level 5 rating on our 2020 B-BBEE scorecard¹ – discounted to a Level 6 given our procurement constraints. We have however maintained full points on the scorecard for enterprise and supplier development and socio-economic development. The number of suppliers having valid B-BBEE scorecards has improved to over 70%.

Our four key transformation projects focus on developing sustainable working models for black-owned and managed businesses. Pleasingly, we have handed over one mechanical workshop in Alexandra, Gauteng, and an independent parts retail store in KwaMhlanga, Mpumalanga. Three additional mechanical workshops are due to open in the next financial year.

Our long-standing commitment to providing underprivileged schools with libraries and resource centres continues with an investment of R5,6 million to the Imperial and Motus Community Trust during the year. The ‘Road Safety – Powered by Motus’ initiative has now reached over 1,6 million learners (since 2011), delivering road safety education in a fun and interactive way. We also played our part to assist vulnerable households and communities in need during the COVID-19 pandemic. We contributed R4 million to the Solidarity Fund and donated Hyundai and Kia vehicles with Beekman canopies, worth R2,9 million in total, to various organisations involved in food relief efforts. Our CSI spend, delivering community support, was maintained at R28 million.

Environmental stewardship

Our strong commitment to environmental stewardship enabled us to secure a £120 million sustainability-linked loan in January 2020. The three-year facility links preferential interest rates with pre-agreed targets to reduce water and fuel consumption by a set range over three years starting from 2019. While we are on track to meet expectations, more work needs to be done to reduce our water consumption from municipalities. Our focus for next year will be to ensure more timely and accurate reporting on water usage from third parties.

Appreciation

Going forward, the SES committee will direct its focus to improving the Group’s B-BBEE scorecard rating and the implementation of strategies to drive the achievement of our B-BBEE objectives. It will also oversee the implementation of both the updated people strategy and an integrated OHS framework and oversee future COVID-19 impacts and operational requirements. We will also consider the impact of the economic downturn and the resultant reduction of our workforce on our ESE plans for 2021.

Worldwide, the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted organisational vulnerabilities. Sustainable businesses are not only resilient to shocks, but are able to learn and grow, acknowledge their vulnerabilities and work in an integrated manner with the right stakeholders to find fair and balanced strategies that deliver new ways of working in a changing world. It is our investment in our people, supply chain and communities that creates lasting value for stakeholders.

The Motus team’s conduct under pressure, at a time when financial distress could easily cloud judgement and tarnish integrity, has been inspirational to the SES committee. More than proud of our people, we are confident that they have built a corporate reputation and strengthened the foundation of trust on which this company was built and will, in the future, grow. To each member of the Motus family, thank you.

Johnson (JJ) Njeke
Chairman of the SES committee