On the 2nd July 2019, the HR Think Tank in association with PPS hosted a discussion session to facilitate collaboration between industry and universities. This session was used to identify approaches to build a partnership and address the relevance gap between academic research and daily HR and societal challenges. HR Think Tank members, a number of HR Executives and the HODs of the HRM- and Industrial/ Organisational Psychology departments from various universities were invited to attend the session.

We are proud to announce a new HR Think Tank publication due to be released in 2019 around the theme of HR: The New Agenda. We are excited to share that the two Editors will be: Mechell Chetty, HR Vice President, Africa at Unilever and Paul Norman, Chief HR & Corporate Affairs Officer at MTN Group. Our Advisory Board provided input on what should be included in the content and members were also invited to be contributors. 

We released a White Paper on the Jobs Summit Framework Agreement. We analysed the agreement and summarised the key messages. We also provided critique and recommendations. To view the white paper click here.

We hosted a Labour Productivity Seminar to explore the reality of South Africa’s labour productivity. Productivity SA and PwC shared case studies of how companies addressed low productivity and co-determination as a possible solution to hostile labour relations and low labour productivity was discussed.

We received important media coverage on prominent platforms: eNCA, 702 Talk Radio, SAFM, Moneyweb, Classic FM.

A new HR Think Tank Initiative was launched: the first comprehensive HR Metrics Survey in South Africa. This survey aims to collect a large range of detailed HR metrics from companies across sectors and will gather HR metrics for employees at different occupational levels within firms. The survey will provide much needed information to benchmark companies’ HR Metrics against South African industry counterparts. Currently, no South African data of this nature has been collated.

We released the results from the Business-Government Relationship Survey. We collected information on the experiences of HR Think Tank members and other HR executives in their dealings with government (be it at a local, provincial or national level, relating to any legislation, regulation or policy that affects their business). The aim was to get a better understanding of which areas of the relationship and interactions are the most positive and negative, and the nature of any engagement respondents may have had with anyone in an official government role.  We’ve interpreted the findings and incorporated it into a Spotlight paper on the current state of, and way forward for, the relationship between government and business in South Africa. To view the paper click here.

We took a closer look at the gender pay gap in South Africa. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report has suggested that rather than shrinking, the global economic gap between men and women has been growing, and that it may now not be closed for 217 years. Improving gender equality is one of our focus areas we therefore hosted a seminar addressing various topics on gender inequality in the workplace, and published a Spotlight paper aiming to address the gender pay gap issue in South Africa further. 

We hosted the Futures Thinking for HR Executives workshop in collaboration with the IFR. Assisting members to: understand principles futures thinking; identify trends and drivers of change; analyse trends and drivers of change; evaluate a system; understand the cognitive strategies and tenets of systems thinking and consider future system evolution and possible future states of a system.

We hosted a round table in Johannesburg and in Cape Town to unpack ways to improve learning and development in South African organisations. An integrated summary of the two discussion sessions along with some key learnings and recommendations was circulated to all members. 

We submitted a proposal to President Cyril Ramaphosa, addressing the issues and challenges in South Africa's TVET system. A copy of the proposal was also submitted to Minister of Higher Education, Naledi Pandor. This was the product of several workshops with more than 50 executives and stakeholders in Johannesburg and Cape Town over the last year. Professor Paul Evans, Academic Director, Global Talent Competitiveness Index, INSEAD and Morne Mostert, Director of the Institute for Futures Research, Stellenbosch University were instrumental in this proposal and provided great insight into the topic of improving our country’s talent competitiveness. To download a copy of this letter click here

A series of workshops were hosted in Johannesburg and Cape Town to come up with a strategy to revive expertise-based education and training in South Africa.  Professor Paul Evans, Academic Director, Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI), INSEAD Business School facilitated the workshop that were attended by HR Think Tank members and various other stakeholders.

Five working groups were established: 

1. Education and Development Working Group 

2. Vocational and Technical Skills Working Group 

3. Gender Working Group 

4. Productivity Working Group 

5. Business/ Labour/ Government Relationships Working Group 

The five working groups met in Johannesburg and in Cape Town during June, July and August.  Using a design thinking process all the working groups: 

1. identified the problems contributing to poor ranking on specific indicators, 

2. generated and clustered ideas to address the problems, and 

3. identified a number of stakeholders that need to be involved for each working group. 

 Two inaugural sessions were held in Johannesburg and Cape Town in March 2017.  Professor Paul Evans from INSEAD Business School and director of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index presented the GTCI 2017 report. South Africa ranked 67th out of 118 countries participating. The ranking is based on 65 criteria. 

The following overall goal/vision was formulated (with thanks to Dr. Morne Mostert) and accepted by both groups: THE HR THINK TANK MUST AIM TO HAVE SOUTH AFRICA RANKED AMONG THE TOP 50 COUNTRIES BY 2024.