The best companies employ the best people

Think tank, educator and professional association dedicated to the advancement of strategic human capital and talent management practices for individuals and organisations, Human Capital Institute (HCI) Africa, has appointed Christine Williams Chairperson, and John Antony Vice Chairperson.

Williams is the Director, Global Head: People Strategies and Metrics for the Standard Bank Group, and Antony is the Managing Director of Singapore-based Antony Consulting, a practice-based regional management consulting company.

Extremely passionate about growth opportunities, leadership and human capital potential on the African continent, Williams says HCI Africa has an important role to play promoting differentiated human capital/talent strategies as a core enabler of business strategy, driving business sustainability and competitive advantage. “I am particularly excited about taking the great work that HCI Africa has done into new geographies and expanding its role in supporting both line leaders and human capital/talent professionals,” she explains.

Williams plans to strengthen the link between business strategies, human capital and talent management. In so doing, she hopes to strengthen the perceptions of how HR can help drive business results. She also intends building the HCI Africa brand and reputation by delivering an enhanced range of products and services.

Additional goals include developing new mechanisms and technology to share content, knowledge and best practice garnered from HCI Africa conferences and seminars with wider target audiences; establishing a research and publication capability to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and best practice; promoting better governance of human capital and talent management through standard setting, metrics and reporting; and identifying key partners, who are strategically aligned and will enable HCI Africa to achieve its strategic intent and key objectives.

Collectively, Williams and Antony boast over forty years’ experience in human capital and talent management. While Williams has 15 years’ experience working with a wide range of executive leadership teams, developing growth and people strategies across various industries, Antony has 26 years’ consulting experience in a diverse range of industries across Asia Pacific, Europe and Africa, including experience in strategy development and implementation (BSC), change management,leadership development, HR Systems and implementation. Antony is currently focusing on sustainable wealth creation in companies through growth and value creation.

Williams’ interests include ensuring alignment between business strategy and people strategies; driving alignment and accountability through strategy maps/scorecards/metrics; defining people strategies; understanding the levers for true employee engagement and sustainability; creating a performance culture in organisations and building people capabilities through a range of business-driven learning interventions. She is also passionate about understanding unconscious bias, leveraging diversity and creating inclusive organisational cultures.

Williams says people are an organisation’s most important resource: “the right people create value and provide competitive advantage.”

Strategic talent management is a prerequisite for business success: “it enables organisations to attract, develop and retain the right people and also, organise and manage them in such a way that they are able to perform on a sustainable basis, ensuring the organisation’s future success.”

Key learnings in talent management include the importance of ensuring that talent management is business-driven and owned; recognition of the need to educate and incentivise managers to ensure they understand the importance of finding, retaining and managing the best people, and also, establishing a culture of our people; and understanding what makes talent tick and the experiences required in order for talent to perform.

With much of the world’s attention now focused on the Eurozone and the US, Antony’s focus is “on getting management and organisations to remain focused on fundamentals, steering clear of herd-instincts, while building core capabilities.” Antony is currently in the preliminary stages of establishing a private equity fund, which will offer conscious wealth creation strategies by investing in ‘grow-able’ companies, and organisations, which can be grown in a rapid, sustainable manner through restructured operations and, or repositioned in the market.

Turning to corporate wealth creation, Antony says corporate wealth is premised on a number of key principles: corporates must provide value to customers. They must also focus on excellence. There must be clarity of purpose, which implies a clear mission or purpose. Finally, corporates must have a clear positioning in the market. At an organisational-level, wealth creation means managers and employees are engaged, talents are clearly defined and valued and management sends succinct messages, which create value.”

Antony will not be drawn into individual wealth creation in South Africa. He cautions, however that “neither the alleviation of unemployment, nor job creation in itself, creates wealth. Opportunity creation, value creation, the alignment of skills to critical skills, and excellent mind-sets, creates wealth.”

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