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Busi Mtsweni, HR executive at the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), says she consciously chose to have a career in people management unlike many people in the profession.

Save time. Save money. Become a productivity ninja. Learn how to "Work smarter not harder".

In this age of multi-channel communication, we need to be diligent about our communications because the consequences - be it at home, in the workplace or in the M&A environment - can be far-reaching.

"In an age where digitisation, robotics and AI are wreaking havoc with traditional business models, it is easy for executives to focus on superior technology as the solution to ensuring the competitiveness of their organisations and to overlook the human element," said Ilya Bonic (pictured), President of Mercer's Career business.

Crowdsourcing promises to make scarce and critical skills available cost effectively, perhaps close to 90 percent cheaper, and disruptively. Yet most companies currently rely on talent management - a human resource function that has been around for over half a century but whose tools and techniques has changed little during its existence - to identify, attract, develop and keep talented people who have these sought after scarce and critical skills. The question is: will crowdsourcing make talent management obsolete?

Some of South Africa's foremost HR executives shared experiences, ideas and knowledge during the launch event of CHRO South Africa.

Nomakuze Mguqulwa-Nyembo, group HR director at Servest South Africa, is passionate about issues concerning women in leadership, especially with regard to creating a culture that allows women rise to senior positions within their organisations, and stay there, without having to emulate the leadership styles or characteristics of their male counterparts. In fact, the natural traits of women, such as their propensity to empathise and nurture, gives them an upper hand in being able to grow people, motivate them and, therefore get the best out of employees.

Sun International's group director of Human Resources Verna Robson is a lawyer by training, who spent much of career practicing labour law. She believes it has been an advantage to have a career where she has worked closely with HR but not necessarily within it, because that has allowed her to think about her role from a very different perspective.

Before coming to Openserve to become the managing executive of HR, Kgomotso Molobye (pictured on the right) worked predominantly in the mining and oil & gas industries, having been at AngloGold Ashanti and within the mining division at Sasol.

Anneke Andrews, the Director of Human Capital at Deloitte, is a chartered accountant and was already some way into her auditing career when she made her the transition to talent acquisition. Her move from auditing was initiated from her involvement in a management solutions division, which, essentially, sought to assist clients with whatever business problem they might be facing.

Unlike most human resource practitioners who unexpectedly stumble into their careers, Vodacom's Chief Human Resources Officer Matimba Mbungela has had his heart set on HR since the beginning of his working life.

A well-drilled team, acting in disciplined harmony and each performing their individual tasks within the greater strategy, will outperform any grouping of individuals. Here are three crucial factors to integrate acquired teams successfully.

Candice Watson, Southern Africa Area Head of Talent at British American Tobacco (BAT), has garnered a lot of experience as an executive-level human resources professional in a short space of time. Since September 2014, she has been the HR partner at Lenovo, HR director for Sub-Saharan Africa at Pernod Ricard and now at BAT, where she has been for three months.

Nova Human Capital Solutions is a company that offers turnkey HR solutions to companies of all shapes and sizes. From simply providing payroll services to doing a total overhaul of a business's HR function, they do it all.

Sheila Motsepe, a trained clinical psychologist, has worked for a variety of companies, ranging from the Reserve Bank, where she was former governor Tito Mboweni's director of human resources to her current role as HR director of German telecommunications company T-Systems.

Blair Mackenzie, vice president of human resources Sub-Saharan Africa at Ericsson, is an entrepreneur at heart. Having worked in management consulting and sales, he started a recruitment business, Ethoz, which evolved into South African's first true Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) business.

Valentine's Day 2017 marked the start of CHRO South Africa, a deeply connected organisation for HR directors.