Hire curious people

The pandemic truly demonstrated the resilience of humans, says Abey Kgotle, HR executive director at Mercedes-Benz SA, who kicked off the HR Indaba Conversation on leaders and creating a learning culture discussion, which was sponsored by Mercer.

BY REABETSWE RABAJI

Mercedes-Benz, as an established brand, had to transform into a liberating organisation in its journey of learning, and to accomplish this, the team underwent a reverse learning experience, which received positive feedback.

“We had to quickly learn how to adapt and reinvent ourselves to demonstrate that we are capable of surviving beyond the pandemic,” Abey Kgotle, HR executive director at MercedesBenzSA, said. “We never imagined we’d get to this point with a hybrid working mode. Covid19, on the other hand, has given us a beautiful gift, the gift of how we as leaders can learn and improve our leadership styles in the future.”

He added that managers have had to move from managing people from the office to managing them remotely. The silver lining is how leaders have unlearned how they managed businesses in the past, and to never waste a good crisis.

“Participants expressed how rewarding, refreshing, and enriching it was to learn from other people. Learning from both experienced and inexperienced people is critical, and this is a fantastic opportunity to take advantage of. Digitalisation also improves the learning and

Abey Kgotle Tamara Parker

“The goal of learning is to become more enlightened after each meeting and gathering.” - Zogan Opperman, HR director at Tsebo Solutions

employee experience, making it more appealing to millennials to learn,” he said.

Abey pointed out that life as we know it will never be the same again, and that we must simply adapt to a new reality. “There will never be a return to the status quo as we know it; hybrid work is a part of business today. It works, and people can still deliver in a hybrid model and even outperform. We need to keep the hybrid working mode going,” he explained. Linda Roos, group head of human capital training at Ooba, told participants that the first step toward learning was to make it a core value of your organisation, which sets the tone for the type of business you want to build. “If you have the luxury of changing values, do so and make sure they speak to learning,” she said.

Learning agility

According to Linda, one way for leaders to drive a learning culture is to encourage people to think for themselves and asking people to think critically is a smart and inexpensive way to do so. “Hire curious people with learning agility. In order to prepare for the future, we need to look for people who can learn and adapt,” she explained. She says that even while we are learning, it is important to normalise and reward learning and that the learning experience doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise. “Learning can be as simple as reading a book; people must be given a variety of learning options. The goal of learning is to encourage people to learn for the benefit of their personal and professional lives.” Kim Usher, HR director at Illovo Sugar, said HR leaders are too entrenched in their ways, and the most difficult challenge was changing the way they learn. “Changing the way we learn is the most difficult challenge in HR, and leaders are at ease with this. Businesses create learning cultures when they understand their learning capabilities. Collaboration, individuals needing to understand what they need now, self-motivated/self-directed learning, and personal mastery skills are examples of learning culture characteristics,” she said. She added, “Co-creation also accelerates learning by obtaining executive leadership buy-in and making the learning process exciting.”. Zogan Opperman, HR director at Tsebo Solutions, said that he decided to incorporate learning into the overall business strategy. “Through my work in the hospitality industry, I have made the client the focal point of my learning strategy. “Putting the client first enables you to learn, understand, and improve on what you deliver,” he explained. “The goal of learning is to become more enlightened after each meeting and gathering you attend, and platforms like the HR Indaba Conversation are excellent places to learn,” he added. 

Seen in the chat

“A good way to assist the learning culture is to understand your organisation’s learning agility. It makes you aware of the different areas that you can harness learning.” – Keshnee Reddy-Chetty, ICE TECH

“We have managed to get a clear view of at least 50 percent of our people’s learning agility. Now I know where I need to focus on growing agility.” – Linda Roos, Ooba.