Commitment to our people
Sustainability report 2024
Our culture is our strategic differentiator
As a culture driven organisation, our values and philosophies must underpin and inform people’s conduct. Our organisational design is a flat structure to show deep respect for all individuals and to uphold an environment that encourages an entrepreneurial drive in line with the organisation's purpose and business strategies.
Culture is how you grow an organisation and determines how it thrives. Culture is an organisation’s greatest asset because the people who are passionate and embrace and immerse themselves in that culture are the ones that understand your business and make it fly.
We invest significantly in a number of opportunities for developing and upskilling employees through bursaries, leadership development, skills programmes, personal mastery and coaching.
We have various mechanisms to monitor, gain a ‘felt sense of’, and evaluate how people experience our culture as well as their alignment and adherence to our system of beliefs.
Our wellbeing strategy is informed by our culture and recalls our values of freedom to operate, respect for others and personal ownership.
We invest significantly in several opportunities for the development and upskilling of our employees.
Our remuneration practices comply with local regulations and reward people meaningfully for performance and contribution.
Our diversity and inclusion framework has a sense of belonging for all our people, irrespective of difference, as its goal.
Diversity and inclusion
Investec’s approach is to recruit and develop based on aptitude and attitude, with the deliberate intention to build a diverse workforce, which represents the population of the relevant jurisdictions and reflects its clients. Our recruitment strategies actively seek difference, engaging with minority groups, females and people with disabilities.
We believe in the importance and benefits of diversity and strive to foster a culture that is supportive and inclusive of different perspectives and experiences
Our workforce aims to reflect the diversity of our client base and the society within which we operate
We are progressing towards a working environment that is more inclusive, agile and responsive to the needs of all individuals, for example, flexible work arrangements
We work proactively to rebalance our organisation in line with the communities in which we operate through education and entrepreneurship and leveraging the value of diversity
We will continue to measure and track progress annually and strive to achieve our targets through concrete actions
Learning and development
As a learning organisation we aim to constantly stretch and develop our people, recognising that the calibre of our employees is a unique long-term competitive advantage. Our environment encourages individuals to be curious, express their views and drive their own learning.
We invest significantly in providing learning opportunities to develop our people holistically, focusing on technical (role based) and professional skills as well as personal and interpersonal skills. We offer our employees access to programmes, conferences, seminars, and courses and provide employees with formal development opportunities through registered and accredited institutions, to enable the acquisition of knowledge and skills necessary for career development within Investec.
Performance against our targets
58%
2.1%
- Introduced Investec Spaces, a global app for digital workplace access, with ongoing enhancements
- Reviewed our Private Medical Insurance provider in the UK to ensure the best of benefits available to staff and their families
- Enhanced our South African wellbeing strategy through a safety app for employees and their loved ones, providing emergency assistance
- Introduced a staff banking programme available to all employees in South Africa
- Focused on the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace and designed learning resources on both AI and sustainability.
- Our early career and graduate strategy has attracted exceptional and diverse talent across the business
- We had 43% Board members as persons of colour (measured in terms of the Parker Review metrics) as at 31 March 2024
- Investec was rated a BBBEE Level 1 in 2024, under the Financial Sector Code
- In SA, we have financed more than R97bn of empowerment transactions since April 2018 (as defined and reported under the empowerment financing element in the Financial Sector Code)
- In the UK, we are signatories to the Race at Work Charter and continue to track progress against our commitments.
Living in society
Aligned to our purpose of creating enduring worth, we are committed to living in society in a sustainable and inclusive way, for the benefit of all our stakeholders. We invest deeply in education and job creation initiatives for our own employees as well as the communities in which we operate. These initiatives align to our support of the SDGs, particularly our commitment to SDG 4: quality education and SDG 8: decent work and economic growth.