Safaricom PLC Wins The 2019 Visionary Award For Leadership And Governance

Safaricom PLC (NSE: SCOM) has scooped the 2019 Visionary Award for Leadership and Governance for its commitment to promoting women to the C suite and best in class workforce diversity and inclusion.

The award, issued by the Women Corporate Directors - Kenya Chapter further recognised Safaricom’s efforts in exhibiting innovation, creativity, and good governance systems and processes. 

“We are honoured to receive this accolade and recognition which is a true testament to our commitment to promoting diversity in the workplace. This acknowledgement further underlines our efforts as an equal opportunity employer, actively recruiting diverse staff from different backgrounds to reflect the communities we serve regardless of gender, disability, religion, race, age, thinking style or any other quality,” said Michael Joseph, CEO, Safaricom PLC.

The award comes just a week after the telco was named by the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) as the third listed company leading the gender and inclusion agenda after Standard Chartered Bank and WPP-Scangroup which came in first and second respectively.

In the current financial year, Safaricom announced a two percent growth of women in senior management level from 32%. The telco intends to achieve a 39% representation at the close of 2020 following recently placed robust interventions.

Besides, Safaricom has set a target to achieve 50:50 gender parity at the management level by the year 2021.

Currently, the telco has 4,503 permanent employees, with 2,252 being female while 2,251 are male. At least 2.3% of the employees are differently-abled with the number expected to rise to 2.9% at the end of the next financial year. 

“We have set a target that five per cent of our workforce will comprise of differently-abled people by the end of the 2021 financial year,” said Joseph.

WCD – Kenya is part of WCD Global which is the world’s largest membership organization and community of women corporate board directors. 

The organisation is a trusted community of directors serving on more than 8,500 public and private boards around the world. It supports thousands of its global members in connecting with peers and advancing visionary corporate governance.