Fit-for-purpose people practices

Old Mutual believes there are three key attributes that contribute to creating an employer of choice, with the first attribute being the importance of building a foundation through thoroughly benchmarked human resources (HR) practices. This it does through multiple surveys and diagnostics that strengthen its employer brand in the marketplace.

“This way we know how we compare against industry leaders across the world,” explains Anisha Archary, human resources director, Old Mutual Emerging Markets.

“The second attribute is leadership linked to business strategy. Business leaders who play their role in driving accountability, lead change and build organisational renewal enable our employer of choice efforts. The third attribute is a sound employee engagement strategy with a multidisciplinary team leveraging multiple communication channels.

“Our biggest success right now is that we are certified as a Top Employer in Africa in 13 countries where we do business — we are the most certified business in Africa.” Old Mutual has been certified again in 2017 in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Malawi, Swaziland, Nigeria, Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan. It has been participating in the Top Employers Certification Programme for the past six years.

“This means we have consistent people practices across all the operations,” continues Archary. “This is phenomenal for our business and in line with our aspirations to be the leading financial services champion in Africa.

“One of the lessons we learnt was to ensure that we customise certain practices in line with the country and the language requirements of each territory.

“This survey has also allowed us to support our people strategy through building fit-for-purpose people practices, enabling business growth with the right innovations to support talent management, culture management, leadership development and ultimately to create the right employee experience, which strengthens our employer brand for talent attraction and retention.

Building leadership

“At Old Mutual, we believe in creating people practices that are applied consistently across regions and across different countries. We have developed our flagship employee engagement programme of action called The Old Mutual Way, which builds leadership and management practices to lead people in a consistent manner in our business. The Old Mutual Way is our where we also build leadership ability to drive authentic conversations and engagement as a way of being in our business.

“One of our examples is our partnering with the Old Mutual Foundation in support of staff volunteerism on the first Friday of each month. Employees across regions and countries observe and engage in this programme, which connects employees with our purpose — to enable positive futures for our customers and communities.”

No employee is just a number on the Old Mutual payroll. Archary says: “Our secret sauce is that we are a values-based business, and our leaders are focused on creating a great place for people to work at.

“Through our focus on culture and values, we engage employees to drive performance excellence. Accountability and integrity are crucial in all we do, and we hold our employees to this and ensure they contribute to their own growth.”

Old Mutual’s people strategy is enabled by a solid employee value proposition, which is linked to its aspiration to do great things. The pillars of this are a great global brand, great leadership, great culture, great careers and great compensation and benefits.

Continues Archary: “This is the foundation for how we engage and care for our employees. We have a multi-modal approach made up of contacts through both face-to-face and technology-enabled HR to build our relationship with both current and prospective employees.

“Old Mutual’s culture of fostering greatness touches every individual’s career, creating a working environment that empowers employees to do great things for our customers and communities.

“We are living in a digital era and therefore all organisations are faced with the challenge of having leading practices to support employee engagement. Consumers transact through mobile devices and online platforms. Our future employee base prefers this method of communication and the same applies to employees as well.

“Organisations are looking for most effective and cost-conscious ways to reach employees, and therefore the shift is evident in more businesses leveraging mobile connectivity and virtual working tools like video conferencing to minimise travel costs.

“Technology must support and enable business decisions rather than replace the personal contact that people enjoy with each other, so we are also on a journey to continuously drive MMS, SMS, online, apps and TV communication as some of the channels to improve employee engagement across generations and workforces.”

Archary says Old Mutual has done some exciting work in driving the understanding of employee segments within its business and has introduced typologies that help them understand the basic need states of employees, based on generations and life-stage.

“For example, millennials have certain attributes and needs that are very different to those of pre-retirement employees. We deal with the employee experiences through dedicated programmes and we have introduced frameworks for engaging employees differently.

“‘Enable positive futures’ is our company’s shared vision and promise to customers, employees and the communities where we operate. As part of our proud heritage of 171 years we have strong values of accountability, respect, pushing beyond boundaries and integrity, which guide all our interactions as employees in our business. These are integrated in all our people practices, evaluated in terms of each individual’s performance scorecard.

“Like most businesses we do drive the employment equity agenda in terms of reporting and execution, but our differentiator is our focus on employee engagement.

“One long-standing initiative is called Diversity Day, which is now celebrated on the birthday of the business — May 17 — by all employees, in all our locations around the world. On this day employees choose a theme of diversity that we celebrate in terms of cultural heritage, history and differences,” says Archary.

“We also have a strong focus on gender empowerment. The Old Mutual Women’s network is a platform for empowerment, education, awareness and mentorship. The network runs a full calendar every year of interventions that support empowerment and inclusivity.”

Old Mutual strives to encourage innovation and avoid implementing restrictive policies. To create an environment of entrepreneurship, Archary says Old Mutual hasa set of core behaviours that the company promotes.

“We call these ACTNOW leadership behaviours: Accountability, Customer First, Treat the business like your own, Need to talk honestly, Own your decisions and Winning Together.

“All these behaviours are core to our business strategy and culture shifts that we are driving to enable positive futures for our customers and communities. We run employee recognition awards across the organisation, and employees receive psychological and monetary recognition for outstanding creativity and entrepreneurship over and above the core achievements on their performance scorecards.

“Our chief executive also runs a dedicated chief executive recognition programme where he awards specific individuals who have demonstrated outstanding creativity with sound business results.

“Our leadership development programmes encourage innovation; employees work on a real-life business problem and generate solutions for it. These solutions produce tremendous return on investment for the organisation and for employees in terms of on-the-job learning.

Attract and inspire

“We believe that policies are an important tool to enable organisations to be effective and create harmony on the basis of consistency. This is linked to our responsible business strategy to ensure Old Mutual is a good corporate citizen. This is part of our good corporate governance, proactive employee engagement and enabling efforts to be an employer of choice.

“It is important to educate line managers so they can understand their role in educating employees about these policies. As part of the Old Mutual Way programme we now have an online portal where employees, line managers and HR can easily access the policies and HR tools of the company,” says Archary.

“Our culture is built on a compelling vision that Old Mutual is a great place to work with people who do great things. Our focus is to build an environment that attracts, inspires, develops and retains talent to build Old Mutual’s competitive advantage.

“Our employee value proposition is linked to our sustainability agenda whose pillars are delivering stakeholder value, creating value for our customers, building skills, leadership and a transformative culture, investing responsibly, and building our communities.

“We participate in culture and employee engagement surveys every year where employees have a voice and can help shape the culture of today and tomorrow.”