Human capital review
We view our HR professionals as strategic business partners who contribute to strategy development and identify the human capital levers that enable its execution. They also develop efficient HR practices and enhance employee capacity while leading change management initiatives.
Human capital achievements for 2025
- Leveraged new HR technology and systems.
- Redeveloped and launched the employee value proposition (EVP).
- Broadened our succession pool and activities.
- Secured SETA funding of R4.6 million (2024: R3.5 million).
- Create new scratch file from selection
- Access to ESS for our BU employees.
- Career paths project developed to support employee mobility.
Human capital priorities for 2026
- Continue our HR digitalisation journey.
- Implement a fit-for-purpose remuneration approach for roles in key functions.
- Relaunch Employee Wellness Programme.
- Achieve an NPS of above 21 (2025:14.1).
- Improve the ready now succession score to 25%.
- Secure SETA funding of R4.2 million.
- Conclude the two-year wage agreement with bargaining unit employees.
- Automate the salary review process.
Employee value proposition
We strive to create a supportive environment where employees receive the right tools and training and are rewarded and recognised for their performance. Our EVP addresses the Group's main human capital challenges, which include attracting and retaining talent in a competitive market, upskilling and reskilling employees for new work requirements and ensuring effective succession planning. We regularly review and update our EVP to ensure it remains relevant. In 2025, we relaunched our EVP to educate our employees about our holistic offering through visually appealing and effective storytelling!
Our EVP elements are as follows:
Entrenching our core beliefs
We seek to cement our position as the leading, innovative, branded franchise and food services business in South Africa and selected markets. This vision is anchored by our Core Beliefs here, which shape our organisational culture and values-driven leadership.
We communicate our vision, purpose and core beliefs across the Group and ensure that they are entrenched in every aspect of people management. Our core beliefs are integrated into our performance management and influence reward and recognition across the Group.
Our annual employee survey, Voice your View, provides an opportunity for employees to give feedback on how we uphold these core beliefs.
Cascading our strategy
In December 2024, Exco introduced monthly online Isikgotla sessions that are available to all administration employees¹. The session provides an opportunity for Exco to explain strategic initiatives and business performance and for employees to provide suggestions and ask questions. These sessions foster two-way communication, employee engagement, and increase understanding of our strategy and how employees can support its delivery.
Grow and Lead Awards
The Grow and Lead Awards is an annual recognition platform that acknowledges our administration employees' outstanding achievements. Employees with excellent performance and behaviours that demonstrate the Group's Core beliefs are nominated from each business unit or department.
1 Administration employees refer to our non-unionized employees in South Africa and our other markets.
Voice your View Employee survey
The Voice your View Employee Survey, launched in 2015, is an annual survey that provides our South African administration employees with a platform to provide feedback on the Group's culture, leadership and communication. Employees respond to 67 statements related to culture, leadership, happiness, and communication and rank each statement on a five-point scale.
When calculating the report, the scale is converted to a percentage, and each statement's scores are averaged to give an overall score. The Group's overall score is 77% (2024: 78%), which places the Group in the top company category. The NPS is based on the question: How likely are you to recommend Famous Brands to your friends and family as a place to work? It is calculated by taking the percentage of employees who are promoters and subtracting the percentage who are detractors. In 2024, the NPS declined to 14.1, which can be attributed to employee dissatisfaction with a delay in receiving increases (moved from March 2024 to June 2024) and a 20% reduction in the overall annual bonus pool.
The overall response rate was
The overall score declined slightly to
The NPS declined to
2 In 2024, this was incorrectly reported as 84%.
Our world of work cascades the Group's business strategy into divisional and business unit strategies down to personal scorecards, aiming to optimize business outputs and results. It also includes comprehensive onboarding and induction programmes, flexible working hours, and the option for some employees to apply for four days per month of work from home.
HR digitalisation
We continue to automate and digitalise the HR environment to remove repetitive, manual HR tasks and improve our analytics capabilities. In 2024, we introduced SAGE 300 People, which offers HR and payroll and an employee self-service (ESS) portal. This was first implemented for administration employees. In August 2024, we rolled out the ESS portal to all bargaining unit employees. Bargaining unit employees can access free Wi-Fi at work to interact with the portal on their mobile devices.
In 2026, we will implement HR solutions to further digitalise our HR processes. These include:
- A cloud-based and scalable solution to digitally manage our recruitment, employee onboarding and exiting processes.
- A digital remuneration management solution.
- A mobile-based employee communications platform that allows us to distribute content, stream webcasts and conduct surveys. This will allow us to communicate with the bargaining unit and administration employees simultaneously.
Upskilling and supporting our employees is crucial to developing a robust talent pipeline and enhancing employee retention. We assist employees in identifying personal development goals through a Personal Development Plan, which the employee and manager review annually. Our career development opportunities include:
- Leadership development and sponsored courses.
- Technical and job-specific training and a comprehensive eLearning offering.
- Financial assistance for approved studies.
- The opportunity to work on innovative projects.
We have established a strong relationship with FOODBEV SETA and have rolled out SETA-funded learning and development offerings. These offerings cover technical skills for our Supply Chain, including the supervisory level.
Recruitment and retention
We have recruitment and retention strategies to attract and retain top talent. This includes initiatives for key and specialised skills in our franchising division. We are developing our internal recruitment capabilities and have appointed an internal recruitment specialist for Leading Brands in addition to the Group recruitment specialist hired in 2024. We offer a referral reward process to motivate employees to refer candidates. We work with major online recruitment platforms to advertise positions. Bolstering our internal recruitment capabilities allows us to better match skills and culture fit with business needs and has resulted in significant savings on recruitment fees. We are comfortable with our retention statistics for 2025.
Key career development indicators
Recruitment and retention statistics
Succession and leadership development
In 2025, our ready now succession score dropped to 22% (2024: 32.50%). This drop is not attributed to poor performance of our succession planning, but rather a broadening of our identified successor pool from 33 to 73. We have increased the number of employees with leadership potential and have introduced management panels to evaluate these individuals. The panels, which consist of Exco members and their direct reports, meet throughout the year to discuss the progress made by identified successors.
Famous Brands has several programmes to develop leaders and support succession at all levels of the Group.
| International Executive Development Programme (IEDP) | This programme is tailored for Exco members and other executives who would benefit from international exposure. We sponsor candidates to complete a four-to-17-week leadership course from leading international universities. |
| Executive Development Programme (EDP) | The EDP supports senior management in developing the skills required to lead at an executive level. Managers complete a short leadership course from a top university. |
| Managers Challenge (MC) | The MC exposes middle management to best practices in leadership. This includes a mix of classroom training and action learning. Approximately 18 managers are selected to participate in the challenge each year. |
| Junior Management Programme (JMP) | Our JMP develops employees in junior management positions who have demonstrated leadership potential. Approximately 15 managers undergo this 12-month programme each year. |
| Supervisory Development Programme (SDP) | The SDP is for Supply Chain supervisory employees. Approximately 15 supervisors undergo this 12-month programme each year. |
iPerform statistics for 2025
Our eLearning offering – iPerform
The iPerform online training and performance system, launched in 2021, offers all employees access to over 3 000 eBooks, online courses, audio learning and learning journeys related to business management and Famous Brands-specific training. We offer a wide library of courses that allow employees to explore areas of interest outside of their roles or training. This supports internal employee mobility. We work with business units to develop and arrange course content. Employees can download podcasts, and managers can easily share learning content with their teams. The system integrates with Bookboon, which provides audio learning and eBooks.
This year, we released a newer version of iPerform to improve its performance management function. Bargaining unit employees can now also access iPerform training through cyber centres at seven Manufacturing and Logistics sites. We plan to roll out an additional two cyber centres in 2026.
Key employee well-being indicators
We support employee well-being by providing the following:
- Medical aid, medical insurance and provident fund.
- On-site clinic at Head Office.
- Access to an employee wellness provider offering counselling.
- Group risk cover, including disability benefit (three times annual salary tax-free) and dread disease protection.
Employee wellness
Employee wellness, including mental health, is an increasingly important focus area for Famous Brands. Employee feedback indicates that depression and stress are the major wellness issues we face. In some instances, these are exacerbated by financial issues and indebtedness. We are working with Nedbank to offer employees budgeting and financial wellness training.
We work with Lyra (formally known as ICAS) to provide employee health and wellness services. The Lyra-facilitated Employee Wellness Programme gives employees access to mental health services and counselling. The programme's overall engagement rate, including uptake of all services provided, was 2.2% (2024: 5.1%). The individual usage of the core counselling and advisory services was 8.7% (2024: 7.9%). In 2026, we will relaunch the Employee Wellness Programme to drive awareness and adoption. Together with Lyra, we will implement mental health training for line managers to help them identify and respond to employees' mental health challenges. We will also communicate the value of our medical aid and affordable medical insurance offering to increase employee health coverage.
Rethinking remuneration for scarce skills
We are developing a bespoke remuneration approach to attract and retain key skills for Leading Brands. We have identified key roles and skills to be retained and have analysed exit interviews to understand how we can better cater for these individuals.
Employment Tax Incentive (ETI) programme
In October 2024, Famous Brands joined the South African Employment Tax Incentive (ETI), a government programme to incentivise businesses to hire and retain young employees (between 18 and 29 years of age). At year-end, the Group has saved R1.6 million in Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) taxes.
Trade union engagement
Famous Brands maintains a positive relationship with trade unions. Employees have the right to associate with relevant trade unions. The unions mainly represent members who are employed in our Logistics and Manufacturing divisions. We recognise three unions: Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU), Security, Cleaning, Manufacturing and Allied Workers Union (SCMWU) and National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (NUPSAW). Our two-year wage agreement expired in February 2025. In April 2025, we concluded a new two-year wage agreement with the three unions.