The financial education company was more than happy with their return on investment.
With over 3,000 attendees, close to 50 exhibitors and numerous knowledge-sharing sessions, the inaugural HR Indaba was arguably a resounding success. In this article Sonja Harmse, Head of the Employee Fin-Ed Division at Worth Financial Education sheds light and what she found so appealing about that event.
What was your overall impression of the inaugural HR Indaba?
It was a fantastic event. We covered our investment and then some, and generated great awareness about what a worthy benefit an independent financial education solution for employees is, and why it matters to companies’ bottom lines.
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What was it that convinced you to sign up for this year’s event?
The opportunity to meet with, and showcase our benefit to South Africa’s top HR execs and change agents. Also, since we have been appointed as the exclusive financial education partner to Discovery’s Healthy Company EAP, we are so excited that this partnership will allow us to roll out new short courses to further educate and improve the financial future of tens of thousands of South Africans over the coming year.
How did HR professionals at the Indaba respond to your unique service/product offering and to what extent were you able to generate promising sales leads?
They loved it! A lot of HR professionals are frustrated at the increasingly poor financial health of their employees and have been looking for a proactive solution that wasn’t going to sell their staff more products and loans. A couple of people even expressed relief at finding us and learning that we provide an independent financial education that is not only positioned as an aspirational employee benefit, but that is scalable, easy to implement and can be done nationwide – both online and face-to-face – in English and Zulu.
Is there any particular conversation that stands out or changed your perspective about the HR landscape?
I remember clearly the surprise on one of our potential clients face (who then became a client) when she realised that not only would we roll out this training for her staff, but that we provided a comprehensive marketing campaign to launch the benefit to employees, which meant she didn’t have to do it, and that we would provide her with a ROI Report which would provide with a board-pack ready risk analysis (pre and post) of her employees financial health and behaviour.
When we explained that we also have a dedicated Learner Success Specialist whose job it is to nudge and encourage employees to complete the courseware she was sold. The comprehensiveness of our offering – and our commitment to ensuring it’s successful rollout at her company - blew her away. And that was before we started sending her testimonials of how her partnering with us had changed her staff’s lives.
What are your strategic objectives and goals for the coming year?
We’re looking forward to helping more companies use their ED and SED spend with us in meaningful way that will uplift the financial literacy and wellness of thousands more South Africans.
We were appointed as the exclusive financial education partner to Discovery’s Healthy Company EAP. We’re so excited that this partnership will allow us to roll out new short courses to further educate and improve the financial future of tens of thousands of South Africans over the coming year.
