OUR BUSINESS

Materiality Determination Process and Material Matters

We must consider and understand our material matters; their significance to SANBS and our proactive approach in addressing them. This becomes even more vital as we bolster our foundation and navigate our journey towards sustainability.

Material matters are those issues that could substantially affect our ability to create value in the short-, medium- and long-term. These matters influence our strategy and how we manage our associated risks, as well as opportunities we explore as a result of these factors.

The process we follow to determine our material matters is as follows:

Identification through ongoing cross collaboration

    Identification of material matters are identified by:

  • Analysing our operating context: Scanning our internal and external environment
  • Ongoing engagement: Collaboration with key internal and external stakeholders to establish material interests, emerging risks and opportunities
  • Resources that inform our business model: Financial, Intellectual, Manufactured, Human, Social and Relationship, and Natural capitals

Prioritisation through frequent engagement

    Material matters are prioritised by:

  • Analysing impact: Identifying materiality themes and those that have the biggest impact on creating value and sustainability
  • Exco engagement: Facilitating discussions with Exco and Senior management to take an enterprise view and applying integrated thinking
  • Board insights: Holding discussions with the Board and obtaining insights into key issues tabled at Board committee meetings

Monitoring through governance structures

    Material matters are monitored by:

  • Exco: The Executive Committee who assumes responsibility for the material matters before submission to the Board for approval
  • Board: The Board has ultimate oversight of monitoring material matters and tracking progress of response strategies
  • Sub-committees of the Board: The Board assigns accountability for oversight of material matters to the respective Board sub-committees
  • Balanced Scorecard measures: Key Performance Indicators are defined for each of the iHEALTh strategic priorities to measure results

Access to highly specialised/portable/scarce skills

Capitals Impacted

Strategic Priorities

Top Risks

Importance to SANBS in delivering value

  • To deliver on our purpose, SANBS is reliant on a truly committed, highly motivated workforce with the required leadership and future fit skills to deliver on our current objectives and constantly innovate and adapt to the changing external environment
  • The healthcare sector in South Africa, including blood services, often faces shortages of skilled healthcare professionals. Recruiting and retaining qualified medical and technical employees, including doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, and other specialised roles, can be a significant challenge for HCM at SANBS
  • SANBS may face challenges in succession planning and will need to manage the risk related thereto

Risks to value creation

  • Inadequate succession planning in certain parts of the business
  • Lack of leadership support for key Human Capital Management (HCM) initiatives
  • Inadequate HR resources and onboarding processes
  • Insufficient skills and required competencies to execute the iHEALTh strategy
  • Skills shortages in the broader healthcare sector
  • Loss of institutional knowledge

Opportunities and strategic response to create value

  • Maintaining high levels of employee engagement and retention is crucial for the sustainability of our business and retaining top talent
  • As part of the iHEALTh strategy we optimised the SANBS operating model. This resulted in changes in our management structures which were realigned, ensuring integration across our core value chain. Most recently we appointed a Corporate Services Executive who will be responsible for Procurement, Administration, Facilities and Safety and Environment departments
  • Our succession planning has stood the organisation in good stead as we made 150 internal promotions. We also recruited externally to attract scarce skills
  • A continued focus was placed on skills development and knowledge management through the Learning and Development department and the RAD Academy to ensure future fit skills
  • A dual career pathway is being piloted to explore management and specialists’ career options

Outlook for the year ahead

  • Formalised a structured approach to succession planning beyond Executive and Senior Management levels
  • Refine our reward and recognition approach to ensure an appropriate reward mix in our multigenerational workforce
  • Acknowledging and rewarding top performers by providing opportunities for further studies
  • Continued collaboration across divisions in cross functional teams building closer alignment in the value chain
  • Ongoing focus on employee health and wellness
  • SANBS is proactively looking at innovative solutions to build capacity, i.e., graduate and intern programmes
  • Over the next five years, we will implement workforce planning, considering retiring employees to ensure a robust skills pipeline
  • Succession planning at middle management level – promotion and replacement of business imperative skills
  • Build change leadership capacity to continue to support all the initiatives

Organisational culture

Capitals Impacted

Strategic Priorities

Top Risks

Importance to SANBS in delivering value

  • SANBS recognises that building a strong corporate ethical culture will support our identity as an organisation that provides the gift of life. We entrench our THREAD values and ethical behaviour in the SANBS culture and will be re-enforcing it as part of our focus on strengthening our foundation
  • A sound organisational culture underpins our purpose, promoting the highest levels of ethics and integrity to ensure we are acting in the best interests of all our stakeholders as we continue to be trusted to save lives. We are prioritising change management to navigate continuous disruption from digital transformations, economic uncertainty and political tensions, all of which impact the organisational culture

Risks to value creation

  • Dissatisfied employees, who threaten the availability of critical skills
  • Unethical behaviour which erodes trust, causes low productivity and impacts on employee wellness
  • Failure to drive organisational purpose
  • Silo mentality impacting negatively on timely strategy execution

Opportunities and strategic response to create value

  • Our comprehensive culture programme has gained significant traction, encompassing the DNA formula programme, values refresh, ethics embedding, leadership development and updated HR policies
  • The appointment of ethics ambassadors further strengthens the culture project. Inclusive planning and prioritisation, along with cross-functional collaboration, have become standard for executing projects and initiatives
  • We have introduced an ethics help desk and fostered a “speak up culture” to encourage open communication

Outlook for the year ahead

  • Consideration of team-based coaching to create a common reference point for successful collaboration and teamwork
  • Continue rollout of the culture plan, annual DNA survey
  • Monitor improvement in ethical behaviour via an Ethics Risk Assessment
  • Integrate ethics related risk in the organisational tactical risk registers
  • Ethical people management – revision of related HR policies/ethics-related policies
  • Utilise existing management forums to ensure that ethical dilemmas are discussed
  • Design and implement initiatives where employees showcase exemplary ethical behaviour
  • Ongoing awareness of elements of workplace harassment to ensure safety of all employees

Meeting blood demand

Blood products, Group O and Apheresis platelets

Capitals Impacted

Strategic Priorities

Top Risks

Importance to SANBS in delivering value

  • To fulfil our purpose of being “Trusted to save lives”, SANBS is mandated to maintain a safe and sufficient blood supply in the provinces in which we operate. Ensuring a five-day stock level for all blood groups is crucial to providing trusted blood products and services to patients in need. Shortages would severely impact healthcare delivery, patient care, stakeholder trust and our ability to meet contracted commitments. Maintaining financial sustainability is also at risk
  • The challenge of collections is exacerbated by less than 1% of South Africans actively donating blood, making it difficult to achieve our target of collecting 3 300 units daily. Donor and patient demographics are also changing due to emigration and immigration respectively
  • Group O and Apheresis platelets blood products face particular pressure because of higher demand for Group O blood in emergency situations and difficulties in recruiting sufficient Apheresis platelets donors. Poverty, unemployment, lifestyle factors and infectious diseases negatively impact the health of potential donors, affecting donation rates. Additionally, iron deficiency may be worsened by regular blood donation

Risks to value creation

  • Shortage of blood to meet demand and introduction of restrictive issue of blood to patients (cutbacks) for longer periods
  • Decrease in donor base due to fears about safety regarding traditional methods in collecting blood
  • Employees shortage, particularly of professional nurses, impacting on the ability to collect sufficient blood
  • Iron deficiency threatens further expansion of the donor pool

Opportunities and strategic response to create value

  • We increased collection capacity and changed our traditional model for blood collections to adapt to the changing environment (i.e., people working from home) and expanded on the Patient Blood Management (PBM) programme to proactively manage conditions leading to the need for transfusion, thereby reducing the need for blood
  • Increased recruitment and marketing campaigns including SMSes, tele-recruitment, donor incentives, etc., to address periods of seasonal/anticipated shortages and retention of donors
  • Patient blood management/demand management, monitoring of wastage and issuing blood on a returnable basis
  • Donor wellness programmes, including iron monitoring and replacement

Outlook for the year ahead

  • Increase the manufacture of pooled platelets by using all available buffy coat from qualifying donors
  • Motivate Group A and AB donors to become plasma donors, as whole blood collections from these groups exceed targets
  • Extensive social media campaigns, with high visibility across multiple platforms raising awareness for the need for blood donation, particularly for Group O and Apheresis platelets
  • Extensive communication with Group O and Apheresis platelets donors for retention and return donations
Future Changing World