Michaela Voller, chief HR executive at Dimension Data
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Seventy-two percent of Dimension Data’s workforce today is made up of millennials, a generation looking to government and corporates to solve societal problems. Overwhelmed employees need work that inspires them and enables them to make a difference in society.
To be a Top Employer and to attract and retain our talent and that of the future, means employers need to create an environment built on empathy and wellbeing, one that provides coaching and mentoring, where careers are transformed into experiences.
It’s about time we hand over the mundane tasks to robots, so we can focus on work that inspires us. A successful organisation of the future must become a data-led social enterprise, treating employees fairly, transparently and in an unbiased manner, says Dimension Data Middle East and Africa people and culture executive Michaela Voller.
Voller says there is a need to reimagine how management will operate and transform Dimension Data to be fit for the future, and the journey of transformation has begun. The company has adopted a Scaled Agile Framework methodology to scale lean and agile work practices, and is moving towards agile workspaces to support this. “Our aim is to provide a more efficient service to our clients through this collaborative approach,” says Voller.
“Last year, we launched a new way of working through our global HRIS platform, Workday. We needed to improve the employee experience with tools that provide real-time transparent information, and enable employees to manage their own careers. Our employees can set performance objectives and get feedback on their progress from various peers at any time. They can in turn ‘give feedback’ and recognise their peers for great work. They can also showcase their careers by sharing their career history, competencies and aspirations, and can map their learning journey through our integrated learning platform, making them more accessible for promotional opportunities.
“We also launched a new on-boarding experience,” continues Voller. “We decided to digitise induction as part of our broader digitisation journey, through a mobile application, to ensure a social experience to on-boarding. By digitising the knowledge transfer on the platform, we’ve managed to create time and space for human connections through conversations.”
Dimension Data is also integrating robotics into its organisation. As one example, the bot “Pippa” screens thousands of CV’s, cutting out the bias nature of candidate selection currently performed by HR departments, explains Voller.
“These are massive mindset shifts and we are encouraging and empowering our people to consider these changes and make this a success in our business. Our transformation journey is not nearly over, as we look forward to further exciting challenges ahead. In our world today, change, after all, is the only thing we can be sure of.”
Jenni Burgum is internal communications manager at Dimension Data