6.1 Driving a high-performance culture
Overview
| Group human resources performance | |||||||
| Category | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 20125 | |||
| Total employees (excluding contractors) | 9,052 | 8,954 | 10,167 | 9,684 | |||
| Contractors | 7,798 | 6,486 | 6,685 | 8,961 | |||
| HDSA employees in South Africa (%)¹ | 71 | 71 | 70 | 68 | |||
| HDSA employees in South Africa (%) - Senior management¹ | 48 | 47 | 44 | 31 | |||
| National employees in Ghana (%) excluding contractors | 99 | 99 | 99 | 98 | |||
| Minimum wage ratio² | 1.50 | 1.70 | 3.00 | 3.00 | |||
| Female employees (%) | 14.00 | 14.00 | 10.90 | 12.00 | |||
| Ratio of basic salary men to women | 1.09 | 1.10 | 1.20 | 1.43 | |||
| Employee wages and benefits (US$m) | 410 | 468 | 595 | 780 | |||
| Average training (hours per employee) | 240 | 181 | 97³ | 142³ | |||
| Employee turnover (%)4 | 8.00 | 20.20 | 10.00 | 8.00 |
| 1 | Excluding foreign nationals, but including white females and corporate office staff; HDSAs – Historically Disadvantaged South Africans, according to the Employment Equity Act definition |
| 2 | Entry level wage compared to local minimum wage. The narrowing of the ratio reflects a sharp rise in the minimum wage in Ghana |
| 3 | Figures do not include Yilgarn South assets |
| 4 | Includes voluntary and involuntary turnover |
| 5 | Excludes Sibanye Gold |
The profile of our workforce was profoundly impacted during the initial years of our Group-wide transformation journey (2012 – 2014) with large-scalereductions in the number of employees and contractors. However, since then our human resource base has stabilised with 9,052 employees and 7,798 contractors on our books at the end of 2015. Since the restructuring our smaller, yet more skilled, workforce has ensured that Gold Fields works more efficiently within more constrained budgets and we believe that the size and skills level of the workforce is appropriate to successfully deliver our business strategy.
Gold Fields’ People Strategy focuses on building a high-performance culture that ensures our people deliver on the business strategy of creating shareholder value through cash generation from a portfolio of largely mechanised assets.
Today our business requires a smaller, highly skilled workforce that can work more efficiently, within leaner budgets, and that is incentivised to deliver against clearly defined performance targets. To ensure our People Strategy supports our business objectives, the following five focus areas have been identified, of which the first four are incorporated into the Group balanced scorecard:
| 1. | Talent management: ensuring we have the right people in the right jobs at the right time |
| 2. | Performance management: measuring, incentivising and motivating people to expend discretional effort to deliver highperformance results |
| 3. | Communication and engagement: ensuring employees have the information and two-way engagement platforms they need to understand and operationalise the business strategy |
| 4 | Great people managers: building strong people management skills in line managers, and empowering them with the tools and processes necessary to understand, attract, motivate and manage a diverse workforce |
| 5. | Supportive work environment: ensuring employees have the environment and tools needed to function optimally, taking into account their holistic wellbeing, so that we have a safe, healthy, balanced and productive workforce. |
Critical to the success of the new
People Strategy is the launch of a
new centralised electronic human
resources platform, called
‘SuccessFactors’, which replaces
the different software systems used
by the regions. It houses a full suite
of modules across the HR value-chain
– for the first time the balanced
scorecard, talent reviews,
succession planning, learning
management, recruitment and
compensation will be integrated on a
single user-friendly platform. It
provides real-time HR information to
managers, as it is integrated to our
payroll system, and also facilitates
two-way feedback from employees.
| Total workforce by region | ||||
| 2015 | Total workforce |
Permanent employees |
Contractors |
|
| Americas | 2,044 | 375 | 1,669 | |
| Australia | 2,206 | 1,549 | 657 | |
| South Africa | 5,837 | 3,699 | 2,138 | |
| West Africa | 6,670 | 3,336 | 3,334 | |
| Corporate Office | 93 | 93 | – | |
| Total | 16,850 | 9,052 | 7,798 |
| Proportion of Nationals per region | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | |||
| Peru | 99.5% | 99.2% | 99.9% | |||
| Australia | 98.0% | 98.0% | 97.0% | |||
| South Africa1 | 81.0% | 84.0% | 83.0% | |||
| Ghana | 99.0% | 99.0% | 99.0% |
| 1 | Nationals includes all South Africans and excludes all foreign nationals |
 |
 Underground employee at our Australian operation |
The Gold Fields Performance Culture
