Cell C’s listing towards the end of 2025 marked a journey shaped as much by people as by performance.
Speaking to CHRO South Africa, Cell C CPO Juba Mashaba reflects on the workforce, cultural and governance interventions that supported the organisation’s multi-year turnaround and prepared it for sustainable success as a listed company.
Q: What were the most critical workforce readiness interventions you led to ensure the organisation could operate effectively as a listed company?
Although Cell C has historically operated with listed-company discipline, being a major subsidiary of a JSE-listed entity, we further strengthened our workforce readiness by enhancing governance, compliance and organisational capability. This included comprehensive internal governance and compliance audits, and the rollout of mandatory company-wide training (Popia, whistleblower, fraud awareness) to embed a culture of accountability and alignment to our core values of honesty, transparency and integrity.
To further ensure listing readiness we also initiated a search and appointed a suitably experienced investor relations professional to ensure strong investor and market engagement, and reviewed and aligned our remuneration policy to listed-entity best practice to support transparency, fairness and alignment with shareholder expectations.
Q: What changes did you implement in HR’s own operating model to support this transition?
Our operating model was already structured for a listed environment; however, we strengthened several key levers to support the transition. We have already implemented an effective performance management framework process with company-wide standardised KPIs linked to business performance, leadership and culture. With regard to the building of the best culture ambition, we prioritised the embedding of our core values of transparency, honesty, integrity and simplicity (THIS) as well as the alignment of our people agenda to our refreshed employee value proposition (EVP). We have also enhanced our remuneration capability by reviewing and aligning our remuneration policy to comply with listed-company standards, improving governance, equity and market competitiveness.
Q: What cultural shifts were necessary to sustain performance and engagement?
A deliberate cultural transformation underpinned readiness for listing. Over the past two years, we have embedded “Our Unstoppable Way” – our cultural blueprint designed to operationalise our refreshed EVP across four pillars:
- We lead together: meaning we lead collectively and in our individual areas of responsibility. We are all leaders and share the leadership responsibility regardless of grade or seniority.
- We grow together: This pillar prioritises our commitment to creating a conducive environment to enable the growth and development of our people through tailored relevant training interventions applying the 70:20:10 principle where 70 percent of the learning is on the job. By growing our people we will collectively grow the business as our people contribute more through improved performance and productivity.
- We thrive together: In this pillar we focus on creating a conducive working environment for our employees to thrive. We do not strive to achieve work-life balance but rather life balance. We understand that people are human beings with physical, emotional and spiritual needs and that these cannot always be attended to over weekends or after work. We have therefore implemented a flexible working policy which allows employees to attend to any personal matters/errands whenever they need to and trust them that they will be responsible and ensure that their work deliverables are not compromised. The flexible working arrangement is subject to each and every employee having clearly articulated Smart KPIs. We have also implemented an unlimited leave policy for senior managers and executives and intend to roll this out to the rest of the employees this year in 2026.
- We win together: This has strengthened accountability, collaboration, and performance orientation – as a collective, whilst still holding the individual accountable. This pillar emphasises the performance imperative in that we win or perish together. This fosters cross functional alignment, prioritising the collective achievement of company objectives above individual recognition. Our incentive schemes have also been designed to align to this.
Progress in our culture journey is evidenced by a 90 percent engagement survey participation rate and a significant improvement in our eNPS from -3 to +34. Continuous communication through monthly town halls and weekly CEO updates has ensured transparency, alignment and building of trust throughout the organisation.
Q: Given Cell C’s multi-year transformation, what was your role in ensuring the people strategy supported every phase of the turnaround and eventual listing?
The turn-around of Cell C was underpinned by our people strategy i.e. to build the best culture, by prioritising our people agenda. This entailed revising and implementing a refreshed EVP that is aligned to our brand promise. We also implemented a performance management system with common mandatory KPIs across the business for business performance, leadership and culture. To ensure a fit-for purpose operating model, we implemented an agile operating model with four clear lines of business, supported by the various functions. This ensured that we have a clear focus on the key lines of business which deliver our revenue without duplicating resources. An important element in the implementation of the new operating model was a company-wide review of job descriptions to align with key desired outcomes while broadening role accountability, streamlining spans of control and reducing hierarchy layers.
Q: What long-term people-related priorities now sit at the forefront as Cell C navigates life as a listed company?
- Attracting and retaining top talent through a compelling EVP and a high-performance, values-driven culture.
- Sustaining and growing our young talent programme to build a strong pipeline of current and future scarce and critical skills.
- Continuously strengthening organisational capability through skills assessments, capability gap analyses, and targeted development interventions that support long-term business resilience and competitiveness.
- In the short to medium term leveraging the benefits of AI to improve employee insights and productivity.
