Njabulo Mashigo’s masterclass on leveraging technology to enhance employee experience.
Speaking to a select group of HR leaders during a recent CHRO South Africa Community Conversation, 2022 CHRO of the Year and Vodacom SA executive director: HR, Njabulo Mashigo said it was time HR was highlighted as a priority.
“HR is not always prioritised when it comes to technology and digitisation, particularly in large organisations, so as we transition from being a telco to being a techco, we became intentional to become progressive in the HR space. It is important to us that the transition is also reflected in terms of our employee experience, and not just on the customer side of things.”
Njabulo highlighted that as part of Vodacom’s technology journey, they have developed an Engage App and TOBi AskHR Digital Assistant.
Njabulo, who also scooped the HR & Technology Award and the Transformation & Empowerment Award at the 2022 CHRO Awards, said companies should not be shy about using technology to fast-track their transformation agendas.
“Through the evolution of our Engage App we’ve been able to create an enhanced and seamless digital and personalised employee experience. It grew from being like a payslip checkpoint platform to a fully-fledged engagement platform. For instance, we are now able to easily engage with our company’s strategy through the platform, so whenever our strategy updates, people can access it and keep in touch with what’s top of mind, from a leadership strategy point of view.”
To date the platform has 6,390 users and the aim is to have a ‘one stop shop’ where employees can gather critical information.
Speaking on the other platform, TOBi AskHR Digital Assistant, Njabulo said it is more of a digital assistant when relating to HR matters. She did, however, highlight that while employees appreciate the journey the organisation is on, to create digital and personalised experiences by leveraging technology, it is important to not lose the human interaction and humanness in the process.
“That’s also just the reality in all environments: you’re going to have all diverse opinions and technology adoption lifecycles. But it’s actually nice to have the option between a human or a digital assistant, if you do choose to exercise it.”
Inclusion and diversity
Njabulo acknowledges that Vodacom has been on a transformation journey for a while and thus far there has been much progress with racial and gender diversity, inclusion and equity.
“We have put much muscle behind gender inclusion and transformation across the organisation through the employee-led network forums. The mechanism has proven to work very well, as employees are the ones driving the topical issues.”
Njabulo highlighted that the organisation is intentional in its work with regards to inclusion. “We started at the top just so we can set the tone for the entire organisation. At present we have 63 percent representation from a female point of view in our Vodacom SA exco, which is rather progressive. Globally, Vodafone has a goal to have 50/50 gender representation by 2030 across all markets.”
In order to reach the bigger goal, she notes, every year there is a set target to accomplish equal gender representation, and at present the South African entity is sitting at 39 percent women representatives across all management spheres.
Zenobia Mothilal, corporate HR manager at JD Group, commented that as much as there is a big focus on women development, men should not be left behind. She shared that her organisation started hosting men’s forums, which covered an array of topics. “We hosted our first men’s forum and received such positive feedback from it. It made us realise that men need the support as much as we do.”
In the past year the organisation has also started conducting lived experience interviews, which have served as a way to create networks of female employees to enable open and honest conversations about matters that affect them, she said.
Lived experience interviews explore ways in which people with lived experience of multiple disadvantages can be supported to move into and progress within the workforce.
Neridha Moodley, head of people and culture at SNG Grant Thornton asked how Vodacom managed to get buy-in from senior executives to support a youth community programme and succession planning.
Neridha added that SNG Grant Thornton had developed an accelerated directorship programme as part of its succession planning process. “In order to create a pipeline of candidates for leadership/director positions in the firm, one has to journey through various stages of management in the programme. A part of this journey includes the selection, execution, finalisation and implementation of strategic projects that are of relevance to the firm. We allow the candidates to select what these will be as they are closer to the ground,” she noted.
Njabulo responded that with succession plans, the quality process of selecting the individuals was improved, to groom them for future leadership roles, and another option was to look at the scope of work the young leaders are given. “We’ve had to make sure there are projects that they are driving and present to the leadership on progress, accomplishments and challenges.”
At the end of the two-hour, highly interactive Community Conversation, attendees were left with great insights, strategies and ideas on how to use technology to enhance employee experiences in their respective organisations.
