They are preparing an offering that is relevant for leadership in 4IR
If you’re looking for a place of higher learning that understands the intricacies of a range of industries both locally and internationally, visit The Independent Institution of Education MSA (IIE MSA) exhibition stand at HR Indaba Africa, which will be held at the Sandton Convention Centre on 16 & 17 October 2019.
When AdvTech bought Monash South Africa, the Ruimsig campus became IIE MSA but HB Klopper, a professor at the institution, says nothing has changed other than the ownership.
“It’s not only your relationship with your partners that defines you as a higher education institution, it’s also your ability to deliver content and effectively manage the process of knowledge transfer. So whether we are affiliated to Australia or South Africa from an ownership perspective is neither here nor there. Being contextually relevant is what matters,” says HB, whose takeaways from the inaugural HR Indaba gave him insights on how they should be tinkering their offering to meet the learning demands of tomorrow’s leaders.
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“I had a positive experience at the Indaba, not only in the sense that it was a great platform for people within the HR profession but as a platform for people outside the field I found it to be extremely enlightening. This is especially true for organisations like ours that are charged with recruiting the talent that organisations need to be competitive.”
He says he learned that people are extremely curious to know how they should be approaching the conversation around key skills and competencies in lieu of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It was particularly eye-opening in so far as it gave him a better idea of what they should be doing in the executive education space where most people are working full time and studying part time, which presents an entirely different andragogy.
“Individuals at that level learn more from experience and digest theory far differently to younger students so we have had to rethink our approach to the market, which in general is not shifting quickly enough in South Africa to meet the learning needs of executives,” he says. “A lot of institutions are still designing their programmes based on material that is either not applicable in executive’s day-to-day work environment or becomes out-dated within four or five years.”
HB says he is looking forward to engaging with executives and HR practitioners specialising in learning and development to share the efforts that IIE MSA campus had put into designing programmes that meet the requirements of working professionals.
