SUSTAINABILITY 
Human capital
Our people are an integral part of our business and ensuring we have the right skills, at the right time, in the right places is a key part of our human capital strategy. It is in fact the first of our three business strategic pillars: to "Maximise the potential from our current assets through people and innovation".
Our human capital strategy comprises six pillars including Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging; new ways of working; organisational effectiveness; learning and development; talent management; and performance and reward. These are all are underpinned by a strong focus on data analytics.
Our approaches cover all aspect of the employee lifecycle – from recruitment, onboarding, development and retention. We aspire to have modern and advanced approaches and constantly strive to improve our employee experience in working for Gold Fields.
Gold Fields’ is committed to abiding by local legislation in the countries in which we operate but will also ensure that our employment practices are based on the principles of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). We seek to ensure that we offer fair employment practices, use advanced metrics to ensure that we have inclusive practices and strive to create and foster a supportive and understanding environment in which all individuals realise their maximum potential within the organisation. Culture is the foundation that enables us to deliver against our People Strategy.
At Gold Fields we track a range of employment data including age, gender, nationality, diversity indicators that relevant to the countries in which we operate, in-country and host community employment of our employees and new hires as part of our strategy to attract and retain a diverse range of qualified employees. This ensures, that we not only have the best talent but also helps to ensure that we implement inclusive recruitment practices.
In addition, we track a host of culture metrics as part of the "Gold Fields Way" (our culture programme). These measure our progress in making Gold Fields a great place to work, ensuring that meet our culture aspiration to be “One inclusive team – caring, connected and courageous – delivering great impact together”. This culture aspiration drives all we do, and forms the foundation of our four priority focus areas: building One Team, creating a Respectful Workplace, constantly looking for new ways of Working Smarter Together, and Unlocking Potential in our people. These culture priorities are measured annually and used as key indicators of employee satisfaction in the management of our human capital.
The reward and benefits provided to employees are governed by the local legislation and our ambition to be an Employer of Choice. These benefits include: health care, life insurance, disability cover, maternity leave, parental leave, annual leave, sick leave, study leave, retirement provision and other benefits that employees may opt to select.
Our human capital management approach ensures that we:
The impact of the above is measured in employee culture surveys, voluntary turnover rates, and a series of talent metrics including succession cover, internal hire rates and others. This data is overlaid with the diversity metrics of our talent and is an excellent indicator of well we are performing in meeting our human capital targets.
Gold Fields has a number of Human Capital Management policies in place. These include:
Our approach to human capital includes, but is not limited to:
Gold Fields ensures consistent and fair human capital processes through periodic reviews of our human capital policies, systematising our processes to remove any potential biases, and monitoring and tracking trends in our data to highlight any areas of concern. We also ensure that all leaders of these processes are adequately equipped with the requisite skills in human capital development.
Gold Fields has a clearly defined job architecture which outlines the skills requirements for all roles and the natural career progression pathways that individuals can take. This looks at both current and immediate future skills needs, and provides transparency on the role requirements for talent.
We implement a range of skills development, technical training, leadership and management training interventions to upskill our workforce. Training ranges from on-site training in our training centres in Ghana and South Deep, eLearning training, to working with service providers to provide specialised training. Training includes onboarding, legal, health and safety, technical, and key projects or initiatives in the business. We also have a strong focus on leadership and diversity and inclusion training. We build human capital through bursaries and scholarships.
We conduct biannual performance reviews for all management employees and quarterly reviews for production employees. This is supplemented by 360 reviews on Values and Culture Attributes that align to our Culture Aspiration and the Gold Fields Group Code of Conduct requirements. These performance conversations form part of the input into our annual talent review processes, where talent pools are identified and targeted development planned for employees.
Gold Fields’ employees have the full range of benefits in line with legislative requirements in the regions that we operate. Although benefits vary between locations, typical benefits for full-time employees include vacation, maternity and paternity leave, flexible work, sick leave, medical support, pensions and life insurance, long service awards as well as healthcare services. Part-time employees are not eligible for the same benefits or annual incentives. Some regions offer additional benefits which include company accommodation or housing allowance, meals, interest-free loans, and educational assistance. Parental leave is applied as per local legislation. There are group standards in some areas, such as the notice on termination of employment. This is typically 30 days although it can be longer for certain some leadership roles - ranging from 60 days for senior management, 6 to 12 months for executives; and other standards are country specific in line with local legislative requirements. Benefits are reviewed periodically in line with local requirements and international best practice, and all employment policies and procedures are subject to internal and external auditing.
In addition to financial benefits, all employees have access to Employee Assistance Programmes that are designed to provide support to leaders and employees in managing personal or work related issues.
We engage with our contactor workforce on matters relating to safety and health, and contractors are included in our culture programmes and critical training, where required.
We also work with our local communities, focusing on host community employment and other matters of strategic importance to the business.
We closely monitor our turnover rate - in 2022 average voluntary turnover in Gold Fields was low at 8% (this excludes retirement, terminations and retrenchments). Detailed culture surveys are conducted every 2 years and shorter check-in surveys are conducted annually to monitor how employees feel about working for Gold Fields. The results of these surveys inform initiatives to improve employee engagement.
We include a detailed breakdown in our annual report on workforce composition; diversity indicators like race in South Africa, Indigenous people in Australia (which both show positive trajectories); wage ratios; female representation and wage ratios; total wages and benefits; and training spend per employee, amongst others. These are all publicly available in the GRI tables and annual report tables.
We have a number of human capital stakeholders and partners. These include partnerships with local universities and training providers; contractors who provide core and critical skills; institutional bodies like the ICMM Future Skills working groups; and local communities where we source some of our talent. All of these partners play a critical role in our human capital strategy deployment.
We have a range of human capital metrics that are reported in our Integrated Annual Report and on our website. We also participate in a number of external reporting programmes such the DJSI, Bloomberg Women in Business and others.
Responsibility for employment resides with the Human Resource and Executive (Exco) teams in the Regions. Accountability for Regional Exco appointments resides with the EVP: People and Organisational Effectiveness and the Chief Executive Officer. Execution and oversight are enabled via a recruitment system which systemically records, analyses and reports on positions advertised, recruited and placed.
Gold Fields’ capability project and job architecture was showcased by the ICMM case study which can be found here https://www.icmm.com/website/publications/pdfs/social-performance/2022/guidance_tools-for-social-performance.pdf - see page 37, Integrating social performance into core competencies at Gold Fields
