With the new year approaching, frontline industry people leaders Bernalene Adams, group head of HR at Clover South Africa; Andrew Millson, group executive of people & sustainability at Food Lover’s Market; Maanea Mabirimisa, group human capital systems & data analyst at Italtile Group; and Lorelle Viljoen, group head of culture & leadership at Capricorn Group Namibia, share the practical priorities shaping their 2027 roadmaps.
As organisations look toward 2027, HR leaders face a compounding squeeze. Rising living costs, talent retention, shifting employee expectations, and rapid technological disruption are fundamentally reshaping how businesses support their people.
Frontline employee experience expert Wyzetalk brought together people leaders across its enterprise client network to explore what keeps them up at night. Representing 23,500 workers across complex frontline operations, their answers reveal a consistent reality: solving today's immediate operational friction is what genuinely shapes a future-ready workforce.
Building tomorrow’s workforce starts with today’s people
For Bernalene Adams, group head of HR at Clover South Africa, preparing 6,500 employees for the future is a key people priority. The focus is on “building a future-ready workforce by strengthening critical capabilities, embracing new ways of working and creating opportunities for employees to grow alongside the business”.
At Food Lover’s Market, Andrew Millson, group executive of people & sustainability, points to the organisation’s Same Faces Higher Places strategy. Across 11,000 corporate employees, they focus on seeking out and developing internal talent, so that people can grow, progress and increase their earning potential within the business. For Andrew, development at every level starts with a simple idea: “All this begins (and ends) with curiosity.”
At Italtile Group, Maanea Mabirimisa, group human capital systems & data analyst, says attracting and retaining the right talent in its stores is a key challenge across its 3,500 employees. Building a strong pipeline of future store managers is a major focus.
At Capricorn Group Namibia, Lorelle Viljoen, group head: culture & leadership, places leadership at the heart of this. For their 2,500 employees, priorities include “retaining critical talent, strengthening leadership effectiveness, building a sustainable succession pipeline” and “future-proofing workforce skills, driving a high-performance culture.” Creating an employee experience that attracts and retains talent, while using organisational culture as a competitive advantage, is equally important. As she puts it, “strategy is only as effective as the quality of leadership that employees experience every day.”
The common thread? Future-ready organisations are investing in the potential of the people they already have. For large frontline workforces, that means development opportunities need to reach employees across stores, factories, shifts and sites.
Putting people and culture at the centre of performance
While future skills matter, the everyday employee experience remains fundamental to business success.
Bernalene doesn’t see employee experience and business performance as competing priorities. In her view, the organisations that perform best are those creating environments where employees can “perform, grow and contribute at their full potential.”
Andrew identifies rising living costs, particularly transport, as a significant concern for Food Lover’s Market employees. Alongside career development, the business is prioritising a culture rooted in care and family values, which he says become even more important as the business grows. Supporting “genuine heart-based leadership” is a big part of that.
For Lorelle, strengthening leadership effectiveness and building a high-performance culture go hand in hand with attracting and retaining talent. She also sees culture itself as a competitive advantage.
As organisations grow, making sure employees feel connected, informed and supported becomes more important, especially across dispersed frontline operations.
Making technology work for all employees
Digital transformation and AI are firmly on the 2027 agenda, but these leaders are looking beyond implementation to real impact.
Bernalene sees the opportunity in “enabling people to work differently, build confidence in new ways of working and use technology to enhance productivity and decision-making.”
Andrew is candid about the uncertainty. One of his biggest headaches is “trying to figure out technology, and where this is all going to go in the years ahead!” The challenge, he says, is to invest in tech that is “at best, somewhat future proofed!”
At Italtile Group, recent changes to HR systems have shown how important it is to help employees embrace new technology and move away from manual processes.
“It’s one thing to implement new technology, but getting people to actually use it and seeing the benefits is where the real value is,” says Maanea.
At Wyzetalk, working across non-desk and frontline sectors reveals a recurring gap: technology fails when it treats all workers as desk-bound. Meaningful adoption starts with digital inclusion and requires meeting employees where they are: data-free access, mobile-first workflows, and unified hubs that remove friction instead of adding another login.
Instead of navigating several disconnected systems, employees should have one central hub for HR self-service, information, communication, and learning and development.
The opportunity for 2027 isn’t simply to add more technology. It’s to make existing investments more accessible, connected and valuable. When employees can help themselves, HR teams spend less time on repetitive queries and admin, and more time on what drew them to the profession in the first place: people.
Turning today’s priorities into tomorrow’s progress
Perhaps the most encouraging finding was how closely these leaders’ priorities for 2027 match the challenges they face today. All four described strategies shaped directly by the realities of their businesses and employees.
That doesn’t mean the road ahead is easy. Bernalene highlights the speed of change, noting that “HR can no longer operate on annual planning cycles alone.”
For Lorelle, the challenge is ensuring that organisations “don't just solve today's talent challenges but also protect time to develop the future leaders and critical skills they'll need tomorrow”.
For Maanea, simplifying HR processes and making better use of data are ways to reduce admin, so store managers can spend more time with their people and customers.
It’s a practical reminder that HR productivity isn’t only about helping HR teams work more efficiently. It’s also about giving time back to the people they support.
Looking ahead to 2027
Bernalene sums up HR’s evolving responsibility: it is “not only to respond to what the business needs today, but to anticipate what it will need tomorrow and ensure our people are ready for it.”
For organisations preparing for 2027, the opportunity is to turn today’s challenges into progress for both employees and the business. Building tomorrow’s workforce starts with how we connect, develop and enable our people today.
Five things to act on now:
- Plan in shorter cycles, because annual planning can’t keep up with the pace of change.
- Make development reachable for frontline staff in stores, on shifts and at sites, not only for office teams.
- Focus on adoption, not just implementation. Ensure employee technology is accessible to all, delivers value and is widely used across the workforce.
- Measure HR productivity by the time it gives back to employees, not only to HR teams.
- Use technology to free up HR for the people work that matters, from developing future leaders to supporting employees, rather than getting caught up in admin and day-to-day firefighting.
