Celeste Sirin, Employer Branding SA, kick-started the webinar by sharing some interesting research from a Gartner Survey, which revealed that 82% of company leaders plan to allow employees to work remotely some of the time. As companies migrate their employees back into the workplace, serious consideration is being given to creating the popular hybrid workplace model with employees working both onsite and remotely. However, this does not come without challenges; such as workers struggling to establish boundaries between private and work life, not being able to disconnect, resulting in high levels of burnout, questionable levels of trust related to productivity between both employees and leaders, upskilling remote workers to deliver more competently etc.
Dr Benade, practice lead for Employee Insights and Well-being and custodian of Momentum Metropolitan’s EVP at a Group level, said their biggest realisation was that they couldn’t try to be everything to everyone. Upon establishing this, they set out to understand what they wanted to achieve in order to target and attract their key talent segments.
Nowadays, talent is looking for what is valuable for them in terms of growth plans, ability to work from everywhere and anywhere and flexibility has become an important employment consideration.
The traditional EVP offerings/services of e.g. a nice canteen, coffee shops or watercooler set-ups have become less relevant. Being properly set up from home with the right technology, data availability and fibre-line connectivity is now what counts.
The well-being of employees has always been important for Momentum Metropolitan, but Benade confirms that wider consideration for individual financial wellness support and mental well-being is becoming increasingly important.
Chief learning officer to Momentum Metropolitan, Chantel van der Westhuizen highlighted the challenges leaders were facing with managing virtual teams and how they were enabling their leaders to weather the Covid storm. As with many organisations, Chantel confirmed that there is “no textbook recipe” and the challenge was around how to respond appropriately when the answers weren’t necessarily there.
Van der Westhuizen confirmed that Momentum Metropolitan has always been a strong relationship-based organisation with a solid culture, and leaders have been struggling with not being able to engage employees face-to-face, resulting in leaders:
Van der Westhuizen believes that competencies are no different to the past, but it is now all about how we demonstrate and act on them i.e. the ability to function in a digital environment is not new but it’s about how to “learn in the flow of life”.
Cognitive and problem solving abilities to manage large projects are just some of the competencies, but key is the energy, focus, meaning, purpose and hope that leaders can bring into the workplace, all of which is connected to the greater good of the organisation.
Lyn Muzondo, Head of Human Capital for Metropolitan Retail confirmed that Metropolitan’s business consists of just over two-thirds of salesforce, where business is conducted face-to-face.
Fortunately, pre-lockdown, Momentum Metropolitan’s digital processes for sales advisors were already in place, but she admits that adjusting to virtual versus face-to-face was challenging.
However, they did not stop recruiting for advisors and Muzondo believes our local talent market boasts “real gems”.
Muzondo explained that Momentum Metropolitan chose not to expand their workforce unnecessarily until they had a better understanding of how Covid-19 would affect their staffing requirements. They reverted to contracting, freelancing and crowdsourcing, which was particularly effective in their creative, writing/designing and digital roles amongst the young millennials.
It was comforting to hear Muzondo reaffirm the company’s support to nurture the skills development of homegrown talent over growing their international gig workforce. They advertise internally first, with a view to looking after their “talent bench”. When non-critical positions fall away, their focus is on actively reskilling, upskilling and growing their own talent into these roles first.
Muzondo says that “Work is an activity and not a place,” thus being more flexible in where they source their talent from. They are looking towards transforming and enhancing their recruitment, onboarding, training, and e-learning to a digital and more mobile-friendly environment, to improve better engagement, upskilling and to remain digitally relevant in the workplace.
Dieter Veldsman, group human capital executive of Momentum Metropolitan Holdings (MMH), summarised the discussion with five key pointers to achieving an attractive organisational culture: