My home town is Kroonstad in the Free State. I have made a commitment to myself that every time I go home I will visit at least one family i.e. guardian/beneficiary and it is so amazing what one learns from that visit.

The coincidence on this visit is that I went on Monday 8 August and that same morning a beneficiary wrote a letter to the mother telling her that she hates her because she refused to let her go play and because the mother wants to change her from the school that she is currently attending because of financial constraints. So, when I got there it was late afternoon and the mother, grandmother and aunt were there and they told me how the daughter had been misbehaving. Yet when I spoke to the daughter she said how can she behave when the mother doesn’t involve her when she makes decisions and how can she just decide to change to another school when she (the beneficiary) came to the Fairheads guardian workshop in Gauteng last year and knows for a fact that her father left her money and the money is for her education.

Yo, I had a lot of explaining to do to her about how much money she had and that her mother only wants to make sure the money sustains her until she at least completes grade 12. She is a tough cookie but I managed to get through to her during our one-on-one session. Her biggest fear is that her mom is not well and she is afraid she is going to die like the father. So, I hope the counselling I did will help them get along better and cope with the situation.

The IRF conference this year was titled “The Changing Retirement Fund Landscape”. Fairheads CEO Richard Krepelka comments on some of the themes discussed.

“Governance and the need to stamp out fraud and corruption were important issues. Linked to this, there is a continual need for trustee training. To do their job properly, trustees need to upskill and they need help in doing so.

“Another big theme was social and environmental investing. No longer is this a nice-to-have but rather an essential component of any portfolio and an integral part of achieving sustainable long-term returns.

“Lastly, the issue of savings was highlighted. As South Africans we simply do not do enough to save and this is a cause for huge concern,” said Mr Krepelka.

Giselle Gould, Fairheads Business Development Director, took part in a panel discussion on the distribution of s37C death benefits. Read the press release below.

Fairheads was very proud to have won an award for the second year running. This time we won the Best Green Stand award. Based on an idea from our CEO, our stand used recycled materials from our offices and the money we would have spent on a stand was donated to an educational institution.

Click here to see photos of the stand here

Press release IRF

Fairheads has extended its successful guardian workshop concept nationally this year for the first time. At the time of writing, we have been to three regions: Lesotho, KwaZulu Natal and Eastern Cape. The turnout has been very encouraging, which reinforces our belief in the importance of this face to face contact with guardians. The numbers were as follows: Lesotho: 304 (in 2010 we only had 71) guardians; KZN: approximately 800 (in 2010 we only had 323) guardians; Eastern Cape: 479 (in 2010 we only had 26) guardians. In the next issue of Fairheads times we will report back on the questions and findings of this exciting initiative.

Should you wish to know more about these workshops please feel free to give us a call or follow this link for more information. Click here to see the schedule for upcoming workshops.

Did you know that Fairheads' call centre handles a staggering 1 270 calls on average per day during our peak period, December - March, August - September? During the rest of the year, we receive an average of 900 calls per day. The call centre has 16 agents who between them speak all 11 official languages, plus a few others.

Fairheads services some 110,000 beneficiaries across the beneficiary funds and umbrella trusts it administers. You can imagine how much paper is generated through correpondence - and it grows every month. This, combined with a desire to go green and save costs for our clients, means that we have undergone a vital transformation to handle our administration electronically.

After extensive research to ensure that the best option was implemented, our in-house IT team was tasked to design and develop a specifically tailored Workflow Document Management System (WDMS) as part of Tricon, Fairheads’ main operating system. The decision to go in-house had the benefits of saving costs, and avoiding the need to integrate with another system and explain our business and software architecture to an outside service provider.

The new workflow system:

• Allows us to manage the indexing, storage and retrieval of both electronic documents (fax & email) and physical mail (mail gets scanned into the system), and
• Enables us to create electronic tasks on our existing system per beneficiary.
• Provides quick and advanced search facilities when looking for documents.
• Is effectively “real time”, meaning documents are available immediately after indexing – directly from your desktop, by more than one user at a time. No more waiting for paper to move between departments or users!
• Logs an audit trail of all transactions and movement of when and who modified a task, giving a complete storyboard till completion or deletion, which is almost impossible to maintain with paper.

In general, the new system will assist vastly in planning and prioritising, leading to efficiencies which will benefit our clients.

Solvej Strandvik, affectionately known as Solly by those close to her, passed away on 24 June 2011 and left a gaping hole in many people’s lives. Vibrant, loyal, honest, caring, loving are a few words people can use to describe Solvej. She had a personality that you could only love and a smile so contagious you had to smile in return.

Solvej started working at Fairheads in February 2004. She was first diagnosed with cancer in January 2005,but instead of stopping her dreams it pushed her to pursue them further. In February 2006, as part of the KFM Superstar project, she ran her first marathon. This wasn’t the end of her dreams and soon after Solvej got stuck into dragon-boat racing where she joined the Amabele Belles, a team of breast cancer survivors. This group of women were another family and not only did they encourage, support and strengthen each other, they also raced their way into the first ever dragon-boat racing breast Cancer Survivor Wold Championships in Singapore. Solvej was also passionate about giving back to the world and through her illness she had dedicated the past few years serving in children’s work and a homeless housing project at her church.

In June 2010 Solvej’s cancer was back and doctors did not give her long to live. When she became too sick to work any longer staff did not forget this amazing person and in October a number of people gathered together and joined “Team Solvej” to walk in the Breast Cancer Awareness 20 km walk. Even though Solvej is no longer with us her memory lives on and Fairheads Benefit Services has sponsored a team of staff to take part in Rotary’s annual dragon-boat regatta, who this year, are working in concert with the Amabele Belles. All proceeds will be directed towards the treatment and care of breast cancer victims.

Fairheads’ call centre team of 16 people held a unique team building exercise last December. They spent a day with orphans in a children’s home to understand the situation many of our clients may find themselves in. Ivor Jennet, Call Centre Head, describes the event.

We chose Heavens Nest Children’s Home in Ottery, Cape Town and made arrangements to visit the home on 16 December 2010. They provided us with the names, ages and gender of each child as well as specific needs for each one.
We agreed that each staff member would contribute towards a Christmas gift according to the needs specified.

The children weren’t very receptive to us at first, but as the games, painting, drawing, mask making and face painting came along, you could see the huge smiles on their happy faces. After a few hours, we had become heroes to these children. The children were extremely happy to see “Father Christmas”. As each of them opened their gifts, you would hear a loud cry of amazement, YORR! That made my day. The fact that the schoolgoing kids could identify their names on the gifts made it so much more special to them. Many hugs were received during this exercise.

Through the exercise we were made aware of the some of the basic needs of orphaned children and how sad life can be without parents. This has certainly helped the team when on some days their patience is tried during call centre service.

More than just a teambuild

Before leaving the home, we had a discussion with some of the staff members at the home. They showed us the classroom they had built and the outside play area. During the discussion we learnt that the children had no place to play on rainy days and also got very wet just running to the classroom.

On our return to work, we had discussions as team and unanimously decided that we would try and raise funds to have a veranda erected allowing for a safe, dry place for the children.

We set out obtaining quotations for the work to be done. The total amount fell just short of R10 000. For a start we needed permission to hold fundraising events at work. This was given and accompanied by an amazing gesture by our CEO that the company would match every cent we managed to raise for the project.

Food sales, manicure services, and a raffle were used as our big ticket items in raising the money. In addition to this, every staff member in the Support Services department contributed R50 as a donation. Eventually, we had raised the money needed to start the project. The work was done and the veranda had been erected. Staff at the home could not thank us enough and were extremely grateful for what we had done. Thanks to as fantastic effort by the Support Services team and wonderful support from all our colleagues.

The relationship between Fairheads and Heavens Nest Children’s Home has not ended there. Heavens Nest has benefitted from other initiatives such as our Easter Egg, Winter Blanket and “1 day without shoes” campaigns.

Our entire team has benefitted immensely from our relationship with Heavens Nest. The experience has certainly been a very rewarding one and one that will long continue. The joy on the children’s faces during our visit is something we will never forget.

Every year for the past 11 years, Fairheads has sponsored an arts project involving some 700 children in Clanwilliam. The project is aimed at restoring the Xam (San) heritage to the community through art and drama. It is run by UCT and Magnet Theatre. A story is taken each year from the Lucy Lloyd archive of San narratives. This year the theme was "The lions, the crows and the little tortoise".  The theme is workshopped by the school children and a modern-day lesson taken from the story.

This unique project has been nominated on numerous occasions for a Business & Arts SA (BASA) award, which it won last year in the category of Youth Development. A highlight for the kids this this year was the etv crew who filmed the proceedings and interviewed some performers. About 60 staff members from Fairheads made the trip up to Clanwilliam to show their support for the project.

Read the press release and story here

View the etv newsclip here