Human capital and relationships

Human capital is of core importance in all of Life Healthcare’s operations and is the foundation of our success. Life Healthcare recognises that the growing shortage of critical skills globally, particularly in the healthcare industry, makes retention and motivation of employees a priority.

We aim to achieve an ‘employer of choice’ status, striving to attract and retain calibre people who share a common vision and embrace our values and goals. To support our employees, Life Healthcare provides a range of benefits that focus on recognition and reward.

In line with business requirements, we empower our employees to develop as leaders and professionals as part of the Life Healthcare team, while ensuring that their contribution to the Group is encouraged and recognised.

Life Healthcare complies in all material respects with the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the Labour Relations Act, the Employment Equity Act and the Skills Development Act, and is committed to achieving various employee related transformation targets.

The group employs 13 526 permanent staff as well as 498 sessional staff – see table below:

Transformation

Life H ealthcare is committed to sustainable transformation and aligns itself with the Codes of Practice under section 9(1) of the Broad-Based Black Economic Employment Act (Act 52 of 2003). Transformation and exercising sound corporate responsibility are fundamental to our business ethos and promote an equitable and non-discriminatory culture within the group.

Progress in each hospital or business unit is monitored against measurable targets. Our staff profile reflects our transformation drive, with 11 500 female personnel and 8 200 black personnel. Our progress is reviewed at monthly executive management meetings and this ensures that employment equity, legislative compliance and numerical target levels are set on a national basis in consultation with executive management, the employment equity steering committee, and consultative forums.

Management and employment equity

BEE participation at group level is a strategic priority. Prior to the IPO, which preceded our group’s listing on the JSE, our BEE equity ownership in Life Healthcare stood at 42.67%, making it a truly black owned South African company. With the subsequent change in shareholder mix, there has been a dilution of direct BEE shareholding but it has remained above 25%.

Employee and management equity ownership in Life Healthcare has been channelled through various trusts. Prior to listing management held 9.19% and post the listing event this shareholding has reduced to 6.50%. Equity ownership has been an important component of our staff retention strategy and we are currently reviewing options in terms of a new employee equity structure.

Life Healthcare espouses equal opportunity and fair treatment and strives for an employee composition that reflects the demographics of South Africa. The group has good BEE credentials and a solid track record of attracting and advancing historically disadvantaged individuals (HDIs). Driven by our transformation strategy, Life Healthcare exceeded its BEE targets for the year. HDIs in the group accounted for 61% of employees.

Our BEE approach recognises ownership, management and employment equity, skills development, enterprise development, preferential procurement and corporate social investment. We have made good progress in achieving our objectives. Recently new appointments to the executive management team have included Dr Nilesh Patel, Dr Keith Shongwe, Dr Sharon Vasuthevan, and Janette Joubert.

Employee empowerment and skills development

Life Healthcare strives to be a learning organisation that makes a considerable investment in training and development to create skilled and motivated employees who will deliver quality service. The executive management team conducts monthly reviews of the training plans within the business, and further education leads to opportunities for career progression.

The Life College of Learning offers programmes in management development, hospital management, health sciences and life skills, as well as ongoing professional training of nurses. The college had another year of excellent results in the registered examinations, reflecting the professionalism of our clinical educators. Our training and personal development initiatives for staff at all levels are designed to develop the wealth of talent within the Group.

Through the college, 24 133 workplace skills training events took place with another 15 560 training interventions planned for 2011. All new nursing employees are inducted in a process which includes competency based training. New courses were developed in health sciences, incorporating occupational therapy assistant and occupational therapy technician modules, as well as an operating theatre technician module.

To realise Life Healthcare’s vision of quality healthcare, it is imperative that competent nurses are continually at our patients’ bedside, nursing and supervising clinical care. During the past two years, a project was introduced to increase performance levels and competencies. Led by a team representing nursing, pharmacy, patient services and human resources departments, some 500 senior nurses have attended regional training workshops. The project included a focus on reviewing nursing processes affecting clinical outcomes, restructuring nursing roles, and implementing a competence assessment framework.

Several public sector nurses and previously disadvantaged individuals have enrolled at the Life College of Learning. Close ties are maintained with the HWSETA and our group is currently providing 86 nursing learnerships including skills development and basic training to people from previously disadvantaged communities.

During the year the Life School of Health Sciences, which is part of the college, liaised with key stakeholders in developing the qualifications for operating theatre and institutional care workers, and the draft qualifications have been submitted to the South African Qualifications Authority. Twelve operating theatre technicians qualified in 2010. They are a new cadre of healthcare workers who assist nurses in the operating theatre.

The Life School of Management, also forming part of the college, achieved accreditation with the UK based Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) to offer the Front Line Management Certificate, and 117 delegates graduated during the year. Sixteen trainee managers completed the group’s first hospital management programme.

As 2010 was the International Year of the Nurse, Life Healthcare initiated and implemented the My Nursing 100 campaign. This campaign was subsequently adopted by the NEA and the Forum for University Deans in South Africa (FUNDISA ). It became a South African initiative and, on 12 May 2010, nurses and others involved in healthcare celebrated their profession by spending 100 minutes in patient care in any healthcare environment. The campaign embraced nurses currently in practice, retired nurses, healthcare administrators and managers as well as community members. It presented an opportunity to support nursing related activities and to emphasise the care, commitment and compassionate aspects of the profession.

Training of pharmacy professionals

Life Pharmacy Management Services (LPMS) is dedicated to the development and training of pharmacy professionals and has partnered with eight South African universities to offer a comprehensive and guided pharmacist intern programme.

In 2010, our hospitals trained 13 pharmacist interns, as well as 13 basic level and 39 post basic level pharmacist assistants, with more than 80 percent of these candidates being from designated groups. This is a threefold increase in students from 2009.

The LPMS pharmacy in-touch programme communicates with, and offers support to, qualified pharmacist interns during their community service year. As a result many qualified pharmacist interns are interested in joining our Group’s hospital pharmacies in 2011. Furthermore LPMS offers bursaries to five pharmacy students through HWSETA . Three of these students will be doing their internship with LPMS in 2011.

LPMS is actively involved in the South African Association of Hospital & Institutional Pharmacists (SAAHIP). In September our pharmacists held events throughout pharmacy week promoting the profession and their role in the community.

Employment benefits

Life Healthcare’s infrastructure provides for employee commitment through fair representation in the workplace, structured succession planning, and competitive remuneration and compensation benefits. The Group offers a choice of medical aid cover, including a basic option for lower income staff, while a generous subsidy is offered to employees who are members of a medical aid supported by the Group. Life Healthcare introduced a life stage investment model which has assisted in the appropriate management of benefits for employees approaching retirement.

A wellness programme that encourages and assists employees to take responsibility for their own physical, mental and financial well-being, and also extends to family members, has been enthusiastically embraced. We have contracted with an external service provider, ICAS, to provide a confidential support and information service to which employees and their family members have access. The service includes trauma debriefing, family and personal counselling, advice on legal and financial management, and substance abuse support. The programme is measured quarterly and is well utilised.

The Group has engaged the services of an external service provider to assist certain employees with the judicial management of their indebtedness. Response to this support has been positive.

Recognising the importance of education, Life Healthcare also provided for 110 staff bursaries and 103 bursaries for employees’ children to study for a tertiary qualification. On merit, managers may be offered education at master’s degree level.

Healthcare professionals’ recruitment and retention

The ability to recruit and retain staff of a high calibre is a critical success factor in our competitive healthcare industry and is vital to the provision of quality care. The global shortage of medical professionals has been well documented and the chronic shortage of skilled workers in South Africa is of national concern.

Life Healthcare currently sponsors a fellowship for gastroenterology at the Pretoria Academic Hospital, and is sponsoring trainee cardiologists at both the University of the Witwatersrand and University of Cape Town.

Doctors

Life Healthcare depends on doctors and other healthcare professionals to provide clinical services, as patients can only be admitted to our hospitals on the instruction of an admitting doctor. The reputation, expertise and demeanour of the doctors and other healthcare professionals who provide clinical services in our hospitals are therefore instrumental in the Group’s ability to attract patients.

The doctors who are affiliated with, and use Life Healthcare’s facilities, are not employed by the Group. Exceptions to this are the 120 doctors in our rehabilitation units and hospitals or clinics in the healthcare services division, whom we employ under special dispensation from the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).

Nevertheless, Life Healthcare enjoys a strong symbiotic relationship with the doctors practising at our facilities. Our doctors benefit from our high quality infrastructure of personnel, facilities, technology and equipment. In addition our excellent relationships with medical schemes (including preferred network agreements), provide a constant flow of patients. Investment opportunities are offered that allow doctors at certain hospitals to own equity in Life Healthcare and/or the hospitals where they practise.

Doctors have a strong consultative role in the operation of our hospitals, participating in the medical advisory committees and/or hospital boards. During the past financial year Life Healthcare has experienced a low rate of turnover of doctors practising at our facilities.

Nurses and pharmacists

Life Healthcare is committed to ensuring continuity of high quality nursing and pharmacy care through the adoption and implementation of innovative strategies to recruit, train, develop and retain our nurses and pharmacists. In excess of 15% of our total workforce is now involved in training and education initiatives through the Life College of Learning and universities. We have stepped up our recruitment of specialised and experienced nursing and pharmaceutical professionals in particular, and for the past two years we have recruited nurses from India to augment our nursing complement.

Life Healthcare maintains competitive remuneration policies, monitored to respond to the developments in the market and providing increased pay for personnel in certain positions where the group faces shortages. We have also developed a pipeline of critical nursing skills for our hospitals through the Life College of Learning.

Employee trust

One successful retention tool used over the past five years is the Life Healthcare employees trust which was financed through a special purpose vehicle by the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC). The trust has enabled employees to participate in the group’s financial growth and ensured that people identified strongly with the success of Life Healthcare. Eligible beneficiaries of the trust are fulltime South African employees who are also members of a Life Healthcare retirement fund and had to be in the Group’s employ on the date of listing. In June 2010 (on the listing of Life Healthcare), 70% of the trust was paid out and the balance will be distributed in December 2010 as a dividend to the beneficiaries, after which the trust will be deregistered.

Employee engagement and labour relations

Life Healthcare is committed to creating and maintaining sound labour relations. Formal and informal communication channels are used to shape behaviour and share information. Regular evaluation of our policies and procedures ensures fair treatment and a safe work environment. An employee climate survey is conducted every second year. This year’s results have been interpreted and strategies devised to address and mitigate areas that need attention and improvement.

Cultural diversity

Life Healthcare takes pride in the cultural diversity of its people, and employee differences are appreciated. As set out in our code of conduct, we encourage tolerance and sensitivity to other cultures and are committed to maintaining a work place free from discrimination, where employees are selected on merit and an ability to perform.

HIV/Aids

HIV/Aids remains one of South Africa’s most pressing challenges. Life Healthcare’s HIV/Aids policy has recently been revised to align with the latest developments in communicable diseases, and is based on sound business principles as well as the obligations associated with our social responsibility as an employer.

Through the Life College of Learning’s training and ongoing peer education, our employees are encouraged to know their health status. The Life Healthcare HIV/Aids programme dictates absolute confidentiality, compassion and fairness including non-discrimination on the grounds of illness. The focus is on awareness, lifestyle education and the prevention of infection and re-infection. Employees are offered voluntary counselling and testing, monitoring, care and continuous support as well as access to appropriate treatment for those on medical aid. All employees undergo HIV/Aids awareness training as part of their induction into the Group.