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THERE ARE, depending on which business textbook you read, seven forms of capital. Headlines and bottom
lines tend to focus on financial capital, followed by a mix of social, political, natural, cultural and built capital. ‘But,’ says Malusi Ndlovu, Director of Large Enterprises at Old Mutual Corporate, ‘the largest asset that most companies own – even though it never shows up on their balance sheet – is human capital.’
Human capital is the ‘animating factor’ of any business, he says. ‘It’s the people, and their skills, experience and know- how that allow those other capitals to produce something that customers want and which provides value for all stakeholders.’
The disruptive events
of 2020 – from mass retrenchments to tighter outsourcing budgets and
a shift to remote working
– have put human capital under the spotlight. ‘Even before Covid, a number
of shifts were already making the management of human capital, especially from a remuneration and incentives and benefits perspective, even more complex,’ says Ndlovu.
Against that backdrop, Old Mutual Corporate recently concluded a purchase agreement
for PwC’s Research Services, better known as Remchannel. The acquisition means Old Mutual Corporate Consultants’ clients now have a single source of expertise and advice, covering both salary and long-term employee- benefits aspects. This includes employee-benefit consulting for employers
in umbrella funds and trustees of standalone
funds as well as general risk-benefit, communication and investment consulting.
‘It’s always been our ambition to develop that capability,’ says Ndlovu. ‘Remchannel is a market leader that has a 20-year track record and some of the most prestigious clients in South Africa from JSE-listed multinationals to medium- sized corporates, public and private-sector enterprises, even SMMEs. It’s a great addition to our capabilities.’
TOTAL REWARDS
Remchannel provides job profiling and job-evaluation tools, remuneration benchmarking, remuneration data and salary surveys, as well as remuneration and rewards consulting to more than 700 clients in Africa
in countries such as South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Eswatini and Botswana. ‘When you talk about Remchannel’s online salary survey, you’re really talking about benchmarking to establish external equity,’ says Managing Director René Richter. ‘Benchmarking, and the quantum of the cash
and benefits employees receive, is, however, only one aspect of the total rewards statement. Benefits are
often regarded as the “poor cousin” of rewards, simply because employees don’t understand their value.’
The Remchannel
platform provides clients with a holistic view of their remuneration and benefits offering. This helps them
to design pay structures
to manage reward effectively. ‘It further allows clients
to assess their position in the market while allowing employees to understand their benefits a little bit better,’ Richter explains.
Such deeper insights will also help businesses to more fully understand the
‘Even before Covid, a number of shifts were making managing human capital more complex.
– Malusi Ndlovu, Director of Large Enterprises,
Old Mutual Corporate
implications of the rapidly changing world of work. ‘About two years ago we asked a number of South African C-suite and human- resources executives to name the most pressing human capital issues they had to resolve in order to be competitive over the next 10 years,’ says Ndlovu. ‘Two stood out: work-life balance, and automation and its impact on the workforce.
As much as they were looming before Covid-19, the pandemic has forced us to reckon with them now, be it automation and digitisation of the workforce, or the move from working at the office to working from home to working from anywhere.’
THE NEXT QUESTIONS
Ndlovu believes that the next set of questions will be around the types of skills required in the workplace. ‘How do you do workforce planning?
expertSPACE employee benefits
What type of leaders do
you need to manage a workforce that works from home? If someone is used to micromanaging their team and now has to oversee remote workers, what does that mean for management training? On top of that there are questions around the end of full-time, permanent employment and the growth of gig workers, temporary assignments and an augmented workforce
of robots. All these trends have been pushed forward by the pandemic.’
Old Mutual Corporate Consultants want to help organisations to get the best from their people, and remuneration benefits and incentives are key
to achieving it. ‘You
can’t talk about benefits and incentives without talking about salaries, without talking about benchmarking, and without talking about profiling
and measuring jobs.’
That, he says, is what makes Remchannel’s contribution so important. ‘As much as the long- term employee benefits of retirement funding, medical aid and so on are important in getting the best and the most from your staff, we would not be able to meet our clients’ full organisational needs if we didn’t also help them with such shorter-term aspects.’ M
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ISSUE 1 2021 | 33
WRITER: MARK VAN DIJK. PHOTOS: GALLO IMAGES/GETTYIMAGES