Old Mutual chair Trevor Manuel has hailed the move by the group to set its minimum wage at R180,000 a year as one of the highlights of its 2023 financial year, adding the move was transformative for the financial services sector.
“Our employees continued to navigate the dynamic macro environment adeptly, including embracing the new ways of working. The board ensured employees received holistic support, while the business, with our backing, invested in attracting and retaining critical skills and nurturing a high-performance culture,” Manuel said in the financial services group’s annual report.
“One of our 2023 transformation highlights was increasing the minimum salary of our employees in SA to R180,000 per year. This makes me very proud, especially because we are among the first companies in the financial services sector to take a decisive step towards narrowing the wage gap and one of the first to provide voluntary disclosure in our remuneration report.”
Old Mutual also introduced an “inclusive parental leave policy”. From the beginning of 2023, employees qualified for a minimum of four months of fully paid parental leave across the group.
The policy’s highlights include updated definitions of parents and co-parents to that of primary and secondary caregivers and fully paid parental leave across the group.
Group CEO Iain Williamson said the minimum annual salary of R180,000 took effect on April 2023 and “the policy was changed to ensure that SA-based employees are appointed at this new minimum pay line”.
Empowerment
“We remain a leader in broad-based transformation and empowerment. This is reflected in our ongoing commitments to uplift not only our customers and broader communities, but also our employees,” Williamson said.
“In SA, we retained our level 1 BBBEE contributor status for the fourth consecutive year. We strive to be an employer of choice and in this regard have progressed our policies in support of fair and responsible pay.”
Santam, SA’s largest short-term insurer, joined Old Mutual in setting its minimum wage at R15,000 a month, putting pressure on other financial services companies to reconsider their minimum wage.
The company, majority owned by insurance group Sanlam, said in its annual report released in March that the minimum wage had increased to R180,000 annually by September 2023.
Old Mutual’s annual report also shows it spent R241m on learning and development initiatives to “support emerging talent, employee reskilling and upskilling and future-fitting our leaders”.
However, the group regressed in terms of black leaders in senior management in its SA operations, with representation at the end of 2023 financial services at 55%, down from 61% from the previous year. Still, about 42% of senior management are women.
Old Mutual also gave details of its plans to meet the requirements to the Employment Equity Act amendments that were signed into law in April 2023. The new employment equity regime empowers the minister of employment & labour to identify national economic sectors and set employment equity targets for each of these sectors.
“Considering the importance Old Mutual Group places on equity in the workplace, we commenced our journey to align with and, where possible, exceed the sector targets when the initial iteration of the amendment bill was published,” the group said.
“We stretched employment equity targets into the group plan and track these targets through established segment and legal entity employment equity forums. The group consulted with trade unions regarding the final plan and numbers, and cascaded the targets to the group’s employment equity forum, which were ultimately included in the group’s employment equity plan.”
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