The second instalment of the CHRO Solutions Summit inspired the HR community with cutting-edge innovations and insightful discussions.
CHRO South Africa hosted the second instalment of the Solutions Summit on 17 July at The Venue in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg. This followed the resoundingly successful ‘Shark Tank’ CHRO Solutions Summit in August last year.
Hosted by top South African comedian Joey Rasdien, the night began with high energy and loads of laughter. Joey, who raised the standard for the evening as the MC, charmed the audience with his impeccable comedic timing and meticulously crafted routine.
CHRO South Africa community manager Sungula Nkabinde officially welcomed the attendees and made sure the rules of engagement were clear to both the audience and the crowd.
Partner pitches
The summit also gave the HR community a front row chance to engage and interrogate trusted community partners on their latest and most innovative HR solutions yet.
It was time to get the timer going, as partners kept a close eye on the clock, while giving their utmost to keep the audience educated and engaged - all before the buzzer sounded at the five-minute cut-off time.
First on stage was Marlinie Ramsamy, CEO of FranklinCovey South Africa, who gave an overview of how the business is leading the charge in organisational change by empowering every leader at all levels.
“Everything we do is designed to help our clients succeed in four key areas, which are to develop exceptional leaders at every level through instilling habits of effectiveness in every individual, building an inclusive high-trust culture and finally we use a common execution framework to pursue their most important goals,” she said.
Blessing Utete, managing executive at Old Mutual Corporate Consultants, touched on the current financial crisis that employees faced across the land.
“As a business we have launched a business product that is called Right Track which aims to break this cycle of financial distress. With just a name, surname, and ID number, Old Mutual, through solutions offered by Empowerfin, initiates a financial diagnostic process to liberate employees from issues such as reckless lending, prescribed loans, illegal garnishees and overpriced credit life policies. It’s time we collectively make a change in our employees lives,” he said.
Lungile Longmans, associate consultant at Mercer Africa who took the audience through the assignment process of Mobility with Mercer which includes managing assignments, onboarding and employee experience. Their offering supports the employer, employee and HR.
“With over 4,800 global mobility clients, Mercer’s data is trusted by 66% of multinational companies. Our systems can be integrated with yours and we provide solutions in the realms of data, program management and technology.”
Workday South Africa was represented by solution consulting lead Jannie Malan who highlighted how the organisation is solving one of the leading concerns for CHROs.
“What we specifically see when we speak to our customers and potentials in the HR space, is that most organisations are concerned about creating a skilled workforce. At Workday we empower our customers to thrive in the future of work. We have already been incorporating AI and ML in HR which will help HR teams be future fit. Our AI models are transparents and human centric and to help organisations become skills driven,” he explained.
Next on the centre stage was Oletilwe Ramashala, head: business development and strategic partnerships representing Sanlam Corporate. “We solve our customers' holistic financial product and advice needs through innovative yet simplistic solutions.
New players on the block Bridging & Associates represented by seasoned HR executive and CEO Antoinette Roberts, all-in-one women's health digital clinic Zoie Health represented by Deidre Huysamen, who is the organisations clinical operations & sales manager, and Ayanda Hove, senior enterprise account director who represented LinkedIn Talent Solutions, also gave hard hitting presentations on solutions for pressing HR matters.
Antoinette introduced an employee engagement tool, #moreme, which aims to supercharge internal communication as well as learning and development through gamification while Deidre captured the audience with insight into an on-demand digital health and wellness platform EasyDoc.
Even though the sessions were fast-paced, all partners came prepared to wow the audience with their insightful presentation on workable and practical organisational solutions.
Unpacking hybrid 3.0
HR executives and leaders in attendance were then given an opportunity to dive deep into a pivotal pain point shared by CHROs worldwide – return-to-office mandates and their impact on morale, organisational culture and workplace agility.
Kirsty Phaal, senior vice president of HR at Dimension Data, Lindsay Burgess, head of HR at Mainstream Renewable Power South Africa and Njabulo Mashigo, executive director: HR at Vodacom South Africa were part of the panel discussion.
Lindsay explained that her organisation had no issues with adjusting to remote work during Covid and became more creative around encouraging employees to return to the office.
“Our people travelled a lot anyway so we were used to people not being in the office so when Covid hit, it was an easy adjustment. We concluded two wind farms and another big project working 100 percent remotely and that gave us the confidence to continue in that vein. When the time came to return to the office, we were faced with the challenge of having people who live far away from the office come in, taking away a significant part of their flexibility which they had become accustomed to,” she said.
Lindsay further explained that the organisation then made a call on an anchor day where everybody who is not travelling must be at the office. “We do Together Tuesday which can be anything from quizzes, pizza, quirky awards, team challenges to ensure people are connecting and engaging with colleagues they don’t typically work with,” she said.
This was quite the opposite for Njabulo who, along with the mobile communications company leadership, had to make the difficult decision of having the people leaders in the business return to work. “This created a bit of controversy within the business with people leaders arguing about whether it is possible to lead from the office when employees work flexibly location-wise, but through open and transparent communication, the team is now well-adjusted to being at the office full time.”
Kirsty added, “Hybrid is never going to be what it was during Covid and there will always be casualties when employers introduce a return-to-work mandate but there won’t be a crisis.
She noted her observations that employers are also directly and indirectly mandating people back to the office. “We have also noticed how people are starting to dress more formally and reverting to the traditional approaches to working from the office,” she said.
As the event drew to a close it was evident that both esteemed partners had created a strong lasting impression on the audience members and also forged long-lasting partnerships, living up to the ethos of CHRO South Africa.
