As organisations reset their people strategies for the year ahead, Bianca Anthon, HR director at Illovo Sugar; Juan du Toit, CHRO at Master Drilling Group; and Emelia Abotsi, CHRO at Fuchs Electronics, share how they are turning 2025’s hard-won lessons into 2026 HR new year’s resolutions, shaped by the realities of the work ahead.
For Bianca Anthon, HR director at Illovo Sugar, 2026 is about ensuring people are equipped not just for today’s roles, but for what the industry is becoming.
“My top priority for 2026 is building future-ready capability across our workforce. In a rapidly evolving manufacturing environment, technical skills alone are not enough – we need leadership agility, digital fluency and a culture of continuous learning. This is critical for sustaining operational excellence and driving transformation in a cost-sensitive industry like sugar manufacturing,” she says.
That focus has been sharpened by the realities of the past year, she explains. “One of the most profound lessons from 2025 came during one of the toughest periods for the sugar industry, a devastating drought. It taught us that adversity can be a catalyst for creativity and innovation. We saw teams reimagine processes and develop sustainable cost-reduction solutions and new ways of working that are better than before. In 2026, I’ll continue to champion this mindset of resilience and innovation as a core part of our HR strategy.”
That same pragmatism extends to the challenge of sustaining operational continuity, particularly where skills are scarce and experience takes years to build.
“Talent scarcity in critical operational roles remains a challenge. In 2026, we’re doubling down on succession planning and supernumerary talent pipelines to ensure continuity and resilience. This includes leveraging our Eston Academy for skills development and using data-driven insights to anticipate future talent needs,” says Bianca.
Digital meets human
Alongside people and capability, she notes how technology has also emerged as a powerful enabler of better decisions and experiences.
“Another key takeaway is the power of technology in enabling HR transformation. AI-driven analytics can help us make smarter workforce decisions and personalise learning. In 2026, we’ll scale these tools to enhance predictive workforce planning and improve employee experience.”
That same intersection between human capability and digital transformation is also playing out on a global scale at Master Drilling Group as the CHRO Juan du Toit explains how 2026 represents a critical phase in embedding a digital foundation that supports growth across multiple geographies.
“My top priority for 2026 is to fully realise Master Drilling’s digital and human-capital transformation journey. We have invested significantly in a centre of excellence and a business transformation programme that will integrate digital solutions into core business processes ranging from asset optimisation to data management and operational excellence in the HR space. The first phase of our new business system goes live in December 2025, and it is about embedding it globally in a phased approach stretching well into 2026, ensuring that every function, including HR, extracts measurable value from it,” he says.
“This includes leveraging AI and analytics to enhance recruitment, accelerate screening, strengthen employee experience and drive more equitable decision-making. Globally, CHROs are moving towards AI-supported hiring models that reduce time-to-hire while improving candidate matching. At the same time, sustaining a high-performance culture remains essential. Our digital performance management platform and retention programmes is a cycle of continuous improvement to play a key role in creating transparency, aligning expectations, and supporting leadership and accountability,” Juan continues.
Agility is key
He then notes a defining lesson from 2025 – that technology succeeds only when paired with a deeply human-centred approach.
“Digital tools such as performance management platforms and learning management systems proved valuable, but only when aligned with cultivating and connecting the human desire for change, wellbeing initiatives, ethical culture, and trust,” he explains.
“A second lesson is the need for organisational agility and the ability to embrace and ultimately embed change capability within the group globally. Our digital systems, transformation programmes and new data infrastructure have shown immense potential, but they also taught us that strategy must bend with reality and we need to be agile to change. As global HR research warns, digital transformation fails when organisations automate without empathy. In 2026, we will therefore blend high-tech with high-touch, ensuring that people remain at the centre of transformation.”
Juan also notes the global shortage of technical, data science and engineering talent as an urgent challenge. “This risk was flagged repeatedly in our human-capital assessments. Competition for these skills is intense, and mobility barriers across our global operations and jurisdictions add further complexity.”
“We are also a very entrepreneurial business and the constant search for entrepreneurial skills to spot business opportunities and the ability to execute on them remains a key challenge and focus. Globally, HR leaders are shifting to skill-based hiring and predictive analytics, and we will embed the same approach to build a future-ready workforce.”
Juan then highlights that their 2026 HR strategy includes expanding cross-functional teams, reshaping jobs to match future skill needs, and enabling rapid redeployment when market conditions shift.
Guided by trust
While scale and complexity define the mining sector, for Emelia Abotsi, CHRO at Fuchs Electronics, the organisation’s next chapter rests on a skills-based workforce where confidence in leadership, systems and opportunity is restored and strengthened.
“My top priority for 2026 is a skills-based workforce anchored in trust,” she says. “The employee survey indicated that trust is an area for improvement across our operations. As the company evolves, it is essential to foster the development of critical skills among colleagues to support growth. We are therefore introducing a renewed employee value proposition centred on professional development and ongoing relevance.”
She continues to explain that some lessons from 2025 that will shape her approach as a CHRO in 2026 include agile workforce planning, talent focused on skills, ongoing feedback and quicker decision-making at the operational level, prioritising capability over headcount (skills & learning velocity), designing policies as principles with guardrails, not one-size rules and treating workforce data as a real-time navigation tool, not for reports.
She also points out structured and human-centred change management as central to sustaining momentum.
“I’m determined to close the skills gap while keeping employees engaged and future-ready within the industry. Change management will shape the approach wherein we can apply change management strategies to adapt within a constantly evolving yet stable industry, helping employees develop new skills and establish clear career pathways for team members.”
