Tsogo Sun ranked third most empowered JSE-listed Company

Tsogo Sun is a proudly empowered JSE-listed company, having been ranked third on the JSE Top 100 Most Empowered Companies for the second consecutive year, on 4 October. Tsogo Sun’s majority shareholder, Hosken Consolidated Investments Limited, was ranked the most empowered black-owned company in South Africa in 2017.

Says Tsogo Sun CEO Jacques Booysen, “We place immense value on sustainable empowerment across multi-faceted levels within the business for the structured growth and development of all stakeholders as well as the company, and we are proud to say that many of our empowerment figures have shown improvement over last year.”

Tsogo Sun is a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor with 135% B-BBEE procurement recognition, 62.10% effective black ownership and 34.44% effective black women ownership. The group’s performance was verified against the Tourism Sector Scorecard and saw Tsogo Sun receiving 101.52 out of a total available points of 111.

Booysen adds, “Tsogo Sun is a pioneer in transformation and a leader in the empowerment of people, businesses, and communities in South Africa, and we believe that improving our empowerment performance is an indication of our commitment to transformation, sustainability and growth. Hard work has been put in across the organisation over the last several years in order to ensure that we achieve results in accordance with our strategy.”

Tsogo Sun’s empowerment strategy includes a focus on nation-building initiatives with various partners such as the National Business Initiative and Proudly South African; Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) policies and processes through the groupwide Tsogo Sun Entrepreneurs programme, which not only connects promising suppliers into the procurement pipeline but also empowers non-profit organisations to become self-sustaining; local procurement; employment equity; and skills development. In the financial year ended 31 March 2017, the group added R8.5 billion in value to BEE businesses and government, and invested R93 million in value in support of emerging black owned small, medium and micro enterprises in South Africa.

In the same period, the group’s Socio-Economic Development initiatives reached 46 398 learners through education and job-readiness community programmes. Active citizenship and empowerment seminars are held across the group in order to ensure that the strategy is well understood and effectively implemented. Regarding the group’s employees, 4.3% of payroll was spent on upskilling Tsogo Sun’s 12 800 direct employees and extended to unemployed people through the Tsogo Sun Academy.

At the JSE Top 100 Most Empowered Companies event, keynote speaker, Dr Zweli Mkhize, treasurer-general of the ANC, said, “We need transformation that will improve the socio-economic circumstances of the majority of South Africans, and we must continue in efforts to accelerate programmes aimed at encouraging and driving real transformation in businesses.”