We have continued to ensure regular informal communication flows within BSi.
In our Gauteng operation we have a weekly meeting attended by all staff,
including the CEO, to share ideas and new developments within the organization.
We have also introduced a “think tank” for suggestions and ideas to be freely
and creatively communicated around the team.
Our company magazine, “Steel Talking”, is published and continues to build a
united spirit of one BSi community across our entire local and export regions,
where great distance could easily fractionise and divide our teams if allowed to
do so.
Our Worker Forum for the Kliprivier base continues to provide direct two way
communication between management and shop floor employees. This Forum meets once
every 8 weeks and involves operational line managers, shop stewards, worker
representatives and HR. Issues common to all parties are discussed and
improvements sought from these discussions. This Forum has gone a long way to
break down silos between internal divisions on the base to ensure that we
function as one united team even though we may have different areas of work.
We have revitalized the Shop Steward meeting’s on our KZN base to ensure that
the same feedback loop is taking place in this region. In addition to this all
our KZN operational staff attend an “Imbizo” to share the latest information on
company performance and acknowledge individual performance achieved within the
team.
The annual company engagement survey was once again run by the HR Team to
gauge exactly how engaged staff were within the various teams and to help
identify any weak areas within the work environment or leadership practices,
which are then actively targeted for improvement by corrective action plans
involving line management, HR and the team members themselves. This survey
closed in early Feb 2011 and we are about to give face to face feedback to staff
and managers by end July 2011. Our goal for the 2012 financial year is to use
automated online software to reduce the manual requirement within this survey
and increase the flexibility and adaptability of the data.
We have well established effective procedures in place to manage employee
relations, disciplinary action, employee grievances and trade union
negotiations.