The event, ‘Talking Talent’, is the second edition of a series of HR workshops planned to take place across different countries in Africa and is the brainchild of The African Talent Company, a Pan-African recruitment firm offering ‘Fit-For-Purpose’ HR solutions across Talent Acquisition, HR Technology, Data Analysis, and Consultancy.
Senior HR professionals from a wide range of top companies and industries, such as Wananchi group, CBA, Kenchic, Ramco, Netfund, Karen hospital, Autoxpress and Melvin’s Tea, were in attendance as speakers, panellists, and workshop participants.
During the panel discussion, chaired by BrighterMonday CEO, Emmanuel Mutuma, noted that; “There are behavioural traits in an individual, beyond the technical skills or qualifications listed on a CV, that can help recruiters identify top performers and high potentials.”
The two key activities that struck a chord with the participants were the presentations and the break-away sessions to deep dive on three key HR pain points: ‘Hiring Right’, ‘Managing Talent’ and ‘Succession Planning’.
An encouraging statistic that stuck out was that succession planning is being practised at the top level in Kenyan companies although not in as many organisations as would be desirable. That implies that there is a need to encourage and grow this trend in all economic sectors to ensure that whenever high performers leave, a skills gap is not evidently felt in business operations.
The one-on-one sessions were respectively led by three talent Gurus: Heather O’Shea - Managing Partner, TATC; Martin Sutherland - Global Director, PeopleTree Group and Brett Mulder - COO, PeopleTree Group.
“Data is useless unless someone starts doing something with it. Turn data into conversations, and with it create a development plan for your organisation that will encourage and drive succession planning,” said Brett Mulder, who led the breakout group on Succession planning.
“Top companies all struggle with getting their workforce planning correct, not knowing when to ‘Buy, Borrow, Build or Bind’ the skill. This can be very costly, from a time, money and emotional perspective and we want to make it easy for HR leaders to understand how to choose the right strategy,” Heather O’Shea, who focused on hiring right, added.
