successes, in terms of diversity management, to employee engagement. During another series of roundtable discussions it emerged that staff felt the representation of black, disabled and female staff were not at the levels that they should be. Initial inroads were made and two years after diversity management programmes were introduced Microsoft South Africa achieved a Level 4 status. During a presentation to the organisation it was highlighted that just one female had been promoted to a senior level within the organisation. Staff members again were vocal about the numbers and today 3 of the 12 senior positions are filled by women. Nyati recognises that more development is needed and comments that it is a continuous process involving all staff within the organisation.
Microsoft South Africa’s developments in other BBBEE scorecard dimensions have been distinct and exemplary. They have been achieved with insight and inclusiveness. Nyati shared that, “another aspect that I highlighted during my first presentation was that we needed to work on our representation within the organisation. Immediately when you say something like that it creates a worry amongst staff. I explained that as we grew the business we would be able to employ additional staff whilst retaining the exiting staff members.
The route that we embarked on entailed that we started to hire based on diversity criteria biased to the groups of people that were not properly represented.
But it is one thing to say and a different thing in practice. When people think about BBBEE they mostly think only about the numbers. Government looks at it from a scorecard perspective containing many dimensions where adjustments and improvements can be made. After we unpacked the details we allocated responsibility for each dimension. We allocated specific ownership to each of the leadership teams and we set ourselves measurable annual targets on each dimension.”
A success to highlight is around the dimension of ownership by black individuals of the organisation. Microsoft Global’s business model promotes sales of shares only in the USA. But the South African Government offers an Equity Equivalence process to assist global organisations in achieving within this BBBEE dimension. It entails calculating what 25% of the value of the organisation amounts to and for the organisation to then launch initiatives within South Africa to the equivalent value. Microsoft Global is investing US$65 million into the South African economy over the next seven years.
“Another aspect that I highlighted during my first
presentation was that we needed to work on our representation within the organisation. Immediately when you say something like that it creates a worry amongst staff. I explained that as we grew the business we would be able to employ additional staff whilst retaining the exiting staff members.”
Mteto Nyati, M.D. 24 Management Today | March 2012
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