Photo Gallery: 4 July 2023, CHRO Day, The Leonardo, Sandton, Johannesburg

Sakeena Adams, regional people director for Africa and the Middle East at Sage, believes the future of HR is about giving people more time to do what they do best. By using technology to take care of repetitive tasks, she sees an opportunity for HR to focus on people, nurture talent and help businesses grow.

The mining industry knows all about digging deep. CHROs from across the mining sector kicked off the month of October by doing just that, gathering around the dinner table at Seven Villa Hotel in Sandton to dig deeper into the financial pressures shaping employees’ lives long after payday.

The missing ingredient in many employee experience strategies is often the simplest one of all: Care.

A successful HR transformation used to mean getting the technology right, embedding new processes and reaching go-live. Today, that is only part of the story. The real challenge is building an organisation that can continue to adapt long after the project is complete.

HR leaders know where they want to go. The challenge, according to Sage vice-president for medium business, Africa and Middle East Gerhard Hartman, is finding the time and capacity to get there.

Women’s empowerment in the workplace is often discussed in the language of representation, targets and transformation. Those measures matter. But they are not the destination; they are evidence of whether we are changing the conditions in which women enter, grow, lead and succeed. The question is no longer whether organisations can afford to invest in women. It is whether they can afford not to.