10 Questions for Pieter van der Westhuizen

10QUESTIONS FOR PIETER VAN DER WESTHUIZEN

Life Healthcare Group CFO Pieter van der Westhuizen shares how a strong work ethic, perseverance, teamwork, experience and agility have been instrumental in weathering the Covid-19 storm. By Puseletso Mompei

Life Healthcare group CFO Pieter van der Westhuizen didn’t expect he would have to lead South Africa’s second-largest private hospital operator through the biggest health crisis in recent times when he was appointed as acting group CEO in addition to his role as the company’s group CFO in January 2020. Pieter joined President Medical Investments in 1999, which became part of Afrox Healthcare. He served in various roles within the finance department of Afrox Healthcare and played a significant role in the company’s delisting in 2005. In 2010 the company relisted as Life Healthcare.

Pieter was appointed as group CFO in 2013 and served as Life Healthcare’s acting group CEO from 17 January 2020 to 31 August 2020.

1What influenced your choice of career?

I grew up in Pretoria and realised that I wanted to become a chartered accountant at an early age. I had a natural knack for logical subjects like maths and accounting and made the choice following a career-based assignment at primary school. Further cementing my decision was seeing my father, who was a bank manager, thrive in a corporate environment. Initially, I wanted to work in banking, but during my articles, I very quickly realised that the healthcare industry was more appealing to me as an environment that both challenged and excited me.

2What is a recent challenge you had to confront?

It was not long after I was appointed interim acting group CEO in addition to the group CFO role that Covid-19 hit and I had to lead the company through an unprecedented crisis. As a healthcare company, we have been in the frontline of fighting Covid-19 and so our challenges during this period have been very different from other industries.

As if a pandemic were not enough to deal with, we were the victim of a brutal cyber-attack that effectively took our IT systems down for 30 days.

“I envisage an increased focus on environmental, social and corporate governance matters due to the impact of the pandemic on communities.”

3What were your biggest concerns when the pandemic started?

To ensure patient and staff safety first and foremost. That meant rapidly putting in place appropriate proactive and reactive responses to unfolding events, as and when the need arose. What is very important in the healthcare industry specifically is to have a caring and empathetic approach when executing your role, at any level and within any faculty.

4How have you approached the various business priorities you had to address?

As the CEO the focus was on ensuring appropriate protocols were implemented to ensure patient and staff safety in addition to regular communication to all key stakeholders on the actions taken during the pandemic, as well as to provide motivational messages to all our staff in all countriesin in which we operate. I am proud and humbled by the dedication and professionalism our staff managed during this crisis. As the CFO, the overarching goal from a finance perspective has been to ensure liquidity and solvency during the Covid-19 period and beyond. In addition, a huge priority was to ensure that all relevant employees had the ability to work remotely, with proper equipment and connectivity. This was followed by making certain that formal feedback sessions were scheduled to track the team’s daily and weekly progress against varying degrees of challenges. The finance team increased the regularity of the financial forecasting and scenario analysis to reflect the changing environment as Covid-19 raged on. Since it was business unusual, I constantly updated the business on the actions required to adapt to the new and very fluid working environment in the operations and increased communication to inform teams of what is happening in the business, as well as updates on projects on the go.

We also set clear targets to conserve cash to ensure the sustainability of the organisation and put in measures to monitor the achievement of these targets regularly and take immediate corrective actions, if the need arose.

With the cyber-attack, the team immediately had to switch over to manual systems and make alternative arrangements to enable communication between the various teams.

5What helped you during this time?

The pandemic tested all leadership teams in the world differently. As an organisation, one of our biggest strengths is the number of long-tenured employees within the group. This assisted during the crises we have faced recently because these individuals have a clear understanding of the business issues and how to deal with these, even in unprecedented circumstances.

6Looking ahead, what do you think the future holds?

I expect changes relating to monitoring and sustaining performance in a remote work environment, as well as the increased utilisation of technology to assist in a more efficient work environment and to create the framework and ability for remote delivery of one’s role. Calculating the financial impact of Covid-19 on the group and determining the run-rate of the impact will be significant challenges, specifically, what operational cost/revenue will remain even if Covid-19 is not around anymore. Most notably we will have to look closely at its broader impact on the economies we operate in and the resultant impact on healthcare funding, inflation and salary expectations. I envisage an increased focus on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) matters due to the impact of the pandemic on communities where we operate and the requirements of the various stakeholders.

7What is your approach to challenges?

Most business problems do not have a clear-cut and immediate solution. You need to collaborate with experienced leaders in other areas of expertise such as HR and marketing to reach consensus on the way forward. Our organisation had unique challenges during this year, and I think as a team, we have done exceptionally well to manage both the pandemic and the unexpected cyberattack.

8What are the personality traits that have helped you succeed in your career?

Honesty, transparency, a strong work ethic, independent thought and persistence in getting to the bottom of any potential problem have been my guiding principles. I have also been fortunate enough to work for and with a number of exceptional leaders and experts in their respective fields. I have learnt a lot from them and each one has contributed to my growth and my accomplishments. I think being humble and collaborative as a colleague, and later in my career, as a leader, have been helpful in my career.

9What is your biggest professional accomplishment to date?

Even though it has been extremely difficult, a standout professional accomplishment so far has been shouldering the responsibility of leading the Life Healthcare Group as acting group CEO and group CFO through the initial phase of the pandemic. It was immensely challenging but also extremely rewarding.

10 How do you unplug from work?

I believe in a balanced approach to life and outside of work. I love all sports but specifically watching rugby and football, and am a big fan of the Liverpool football team. I like playing golf and socialising with friends. I also love art; especially painting building landscapes using watercolours. I am blessed to have a loving wife who has been my rock in supporting me throughout my career. Our two wonderful kids are my pride and joy. l

“As a healthcare company, we have been in the frontline of fighting Covid-19 and so our challenges during this period have been very different from other industries.”