Telkom AR front.qxp

36
Telkom Annual Report 2009
Sustainability review
The modern corporation must meet the
expectations
of a diverse range of stakeholders
As one of South Africa’s largest
corporations, Telkom’s public visibility is
enormous. Our activities impact on the lives
of every South African in one way or
another and so our sustainability must be
beyond reproach.
As the draft King Report III notes: “Although
a company is an economic institution, it
remains a corporate citizen and therefore
has to balance economic, social and
environmental value. The triple bottom line
approach enhances the potential of a
company to create economic value…”
Telkom has long subscribed to this
philosophy and sustainability is a key driver
of our business strategy. It is a business
opportunity for us, an opportunity we
pursue with relentless vigour in all our
operations.
Last year we reported that we continue to
focus on the transformation of our business
and, to this end, in the latter part of the
year under review we embarked on a
focused internal transformation programme,
Telkom Renaissance, a programme geared
to ensuring that we become Africa’s
leading ICT service provider. It is, at least,
a two year initiative during which time the
Company will completely renew itself in
terms of markets, processes, skills,
capabilities and a new behaviour. Our goal
is to create a high performance company
that is capable of executing our ‘defend and
grow’ strategy; a company that is
characterised by profitability, sustainability
and an ability to realise its vision; a
company that is customer-focused with
leading edge value solutions, and where the
creation of value through excellence is the
norm and not the exception.
To date, we have distinguished ourselves
as an entity that subscribes to the values of
good corporate governance but, we can
do better. We can, like the Renaissance
Period of the 14th to 16th centuries that our
initiative is named after, expand our vision
beyond the conventional and traditional,
and sustainability is a key focus area in this
regard.
Stakeholder engagement
The modern corporation must meet the
expectations of a diverse range of
stakeholders and, as such, the
management of stakeholder relationships is
not a nice to have but a critical must.
Throughout the year we refined our
stakeholder management policy to ensure
systematic engagements with:
• Employees
• Customers
• Investors
• Government
• Regulators
• Media
• Suppliers
• Unions
• Civil society
As a result, we achieved:
Employees: A significant improvement in
levels of employee engagement over the
last three years via briefing sessions,
training initiatives and electronic and print
communication. In the year under review
there was an on-going refinement in
promoting a culture of engagement and
internal communication channels. Greater
prominence was given to face-to-face
communication, especially between top
leaders and the next management level, as
well as electronic communication from the
CEO across the company.
As one of South Africa’s largest corporations,
Telkom’s public visibility is enormous