'Batho Pele' approach to ICT business success matrix

The Maredi Technologies approach is to place its workforce at the core of its overall business outcomes.

Johannesburg, 04 Jun 2019
Maredi family
Maredi family

ICT is a rapidly changing industry, and businesses, together with their workforce, must work hard to ensure they are effectively and productively meeting the evolving needs and demands of their customers. Consequently, the complexity of the nature of these changes has given rise to greater challenges and complications in how we manage and engage with the evolving demands on skills, capacity and the diversity of our employees.

The 2019 State of ICT report stated that as much as South Africa’s ICT industry is substantially growing our economy and contributing to the highest employment absorption rate in the country, “the majority of employees in the telecommunications sector are, however, semi-skilled at 46% of total employees, 34% are skilled, and 6% are unskilled".

For a company such as Maredi Technologies that is establishing itself as a game-changer in the ICT space specialising in telecommunications services, the appropriate response to this report is to holistically modify how we manage, upscale, invest and empower our total workforce so that we can respond effectively to the imminent opportunities and challenges that arise within our industry.

We are all aware that the centre of any business system and success matrix is the function and role of the human resource department and how it is instituted to support the broader and more strategic business objectives of the company. Accordingly, our approach as Maredi Technologies has been to place our workforce at the core of our overall business outcomes. This business intelligence approach that is based on a people pivoted strategy has licensed us to add value and provide quality services and products to our customer base.

Our people matter and this is a principle that is sacrosanct to our brand equity. We consider our workforce as a key vehicle towards building an enhanced and optimised outcome and performance-driven system. Consequently, to achieve this, we employed a three-tier approach that simplifies and integrates our human resource management system (HRMS) approach with our customer-centric and satisfaction focus.

The first tier of our approach consolidates and streamlines the personnel and personal development criteria enshrined within our company policy. The criteria places a mandate to constantly invest in improving the core skills and capacity of our people so that they are better equipped to meet the demands and pressures of our rapidly changing ICT sector while simultaneously focusing on their personal well-being and needs. This customer-oriented and people-centred driven HRMS allows us to define and execute an intuitive people development strategy without compromising on our focus to provide value-add services that support our business objectives. This approach has successfully delivered better business results and business performance for our company.

The second tier focuses on our recruitment model. We are aware that our sector is characterised, unfortunately, by traditional and conventional recruitment models that do not always work to the foster an organisational culture that is conducive towards the kind of innovation and change outcomes that we hope to see within our employees.

Experience usually disqualifies potentially great recruits. We therefore made the decision to abandon this non-modifiable model that impedes on our ability to respond effectively to the innovation demands that arise within our sector and to recruit what we coin “diamond in the rough” personnel. This is a targeted recruitment process which focuses on finding bright, dynamic young people with an insatiable hunger to excel in our sector. The recruitment model complemented with our internal development mechanisms work well to support, invest and groom the kind of recruits that will excel in meeting the needs and expectations of our customers.

Lastly, the third tier of our HRMS is based on being the employer of choice. The perspicacity of our HRMS approach, as indicated above, is based on the understanding that in order to successfully marry our customers to the Maredi Technologies brand, we need to first align the competence, capacity and experience of our people with meeting the needs and expectations of our customers. However, we realised very early on that the gold nugget of this approach is only realised when we integrate and concretise the well-being and personal needs of our workforce not just in our policies but within the everyday activities and engagements of our company.

Maredi Technologies, therefore, cultivates a work environment where employees are treated as members of the family. The company essentially is a family business. Our employees concurred with our approach and positioning and voted Maredi Technologies as the 2019 Black Business Quarterly employer of choice. This validates our vision and commitment not to just be the preferred ICT partner of choice, but to simultaneously be the employer of choice.

In closing, we are proud to have developed an HR architecture and system that is geared up and equipped to deliver our companies strategic outcomes through the investment and development of our people. Our ability to balance both personnel and personal development is what will inform our continued success. The current trend of servicing customers in a continually changing ICT landscape, which in turns affects our customers’ expectations on how we deliver products and services, adds a welcomed challenge to continue to re-imagine and reshape our human resource management system to better service our customers and our people.

Our employees are more than strategies, objectives or bottom lines. As a company, we inherently believe that our people are an essential and integral component of our business success matrix. They are inextricably connected to the value, competitive advantage and longevity of our business.

Our people are the heart and the life blood of Maredi Technologies!

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