We are committed to building a diverse team to ensure that we can harness the benefits of diversity. Diversity and inclusion focus on inclusivity, co-existence and tolerance in areas such as gender, ethnicity, religion and generational differences.

We strive to ensure that women are treated with dignity and respect, enjoy their human and labour rights, and that their health and safety is protected. In addition, we aim to ensure that women have access to education, training and professional development opportunities.

We have a leadership commitment and support for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Key commitments in this regard include circulation of internal communications and formal acknowledgement of the relevance of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles Journey

In 2020 Alexforbes pledged its commitment to the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles (UN WEP) as an official signatory, joining 107 South African signatories and 6 713 global signatories. Further to this pledge we assessed our policies and processes against the UN WEP’s gender gap analysis to understand our current positioning on the gender parity journey and how to advance this agenda impactfully in Alexforbes and the communities where we operate. We followed a conservative approach to the gap analysis: even where we knew certain practices had been applied or were part of processes, if the survey required such to be proven through a formal policy, we regarded ourselves as non-compliant.

In the 2024 financial year, the group continued to close gaps identified through the UN WEP gender gap analysis in order to strengthen and expand on our policies and framework to better support gender parity. Our gender gap score improved from 73% in 2023 to 79% in 2024. This score has enabled us to move up to the ‘Leader’ category.

Going forward, we will focus on improving our score even further by addressing the remaining gaps in our implementation, fully integrating gender equality into our corporate sustainability strategy and increasing transparency for our stakeholders. Our aim is to become a true leader on gender equality.

Governance: Board diversity

As part of our ongoing focus to maintain the highest corporate governance standards and in line with the JSE Limited Listings Requirements, the group has adopted a diversity policy on the promotion of broader diversity at board level. The policy focuses on the promotion of the diversity attributes of gender, race, culture, age, field of knowledge, skills and experience. The board, with guidance from the nominations committee, has considered and applied the diversity policy in the nomination and appointment of directors. The board has determined specific targets for certain indicators.