Practice Leader: Performance Management
First National Bank (FNB)
Total years of experience :33 years, 1 Months
Sandra has been appointed as the Practice Leader: Performance for First National Bank. Her role has a national impact managing the performance frameworks and systems to manage the performance of 26 000 employees.
She is responsible for providing a service to the various CEO’s and Heads of HR within FNB. Her objective target is to combine other elements of the HR value chain (such as HR Business Partnering, Learning & Development, Learnerships, traditional Change Management & ERP Change Management, Talent Management, etc.) with performance linkages at a corporate and business unit level to assist the Bank in meeting its performance objectives via its Performance Scorecard with the First Rand Group and increase the number of High Performers in the bank.
Sandra was employed with the GPAA as the Organisation Design Specialist responsible for designing three (3) structure scenarios with a final recommendation of a new Process-based structure.
Se worked solely with an internal team and Exco to design the new structure, a very technical and consultative process because the organisation was moving from being a functional organisation to a process based structure aligned to the GPAA strategy for 205-2016.
It included an initial situational analysis which required country-wide consultations to map the as-is processes at regional and branch level. Since the organisation also had a Modernisation agenda, similar to the SARS Modernisation Programme, the inter-dependencies with other projects to modernise the GPAA became an integral part of shaping the ‘to-be’ structure recommendation.
Once the process-based structure has been designed (x 3 scenarios), the team embarked on an organisation-wide consultation process. Because the organisation is highly unionised, the placement protocol development and union consultations were critical to the process.
Lecturing English Business Language to university students at an English Business School in Usak, Turkey.
The move to Turkey was more about taking a career break in a different country before returning to South Africa.
Sandra was an Executive Lead or Senior Manager within the Deloitte Consulting environment. She joined Deloitte as a Manager and after two years was promoted to a senior management role based on her performance.
Within the Deloitte environment she worked across business units with teams on client projects. She worked extensively in the areas of human capital and organisation design projects, concentrating on the Economics and Finance Sector. Some of her clients included the Department of Trade & Industry, including organisations such as SEDA, SAMAF (South African Micro-finance Apex Fund), the DTI, ECDC (Eastern Cape Development Corporation) amongst others. These were all large transformation or restructure projects.
Her role as CEO encompassed establishment of the South African office in Johannesburg. The structure of the organisation included a regional responsibility for Southern Africa driving Stracienta’s revenues in the region through marketing and sales activities in co-ordination with Stracienta’s global Director; ensuring high quality project implementations, working closely with the global Director of Operations; people management, day-to-day management of the operations. She also fulfilled a global responsibility for HR. This involved setting the policies and strategic that best ensured that Stracienta worldwide would recruit the best possible staff to drive its business. One of her main projects whilst at Stracienta included winning business in Mozambique.
After leaving the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Sandra decided to pursue her own business activities. She established Abaholi Consulting, with offices in Bryanston, Johannesburg and a staff compliment of 4 permanent staff and a network of associate consultants. She consulted to a number of institutions including, UNISA for the development of job profiles across the institution; the National Development Agency as Conference organiser for an international conference on the "State of Giving and Volunteerism in South Africa"; the Department of Social Development with a research study on the development of the National HR Strategy for Orphans & Vulnerable Children.
This is one of the highlights of Sandra’s career. She was requested by the Nelson Mandela Foundation in 2003 to assist the Foundation in becoming a site of excellence, by providing her expertise in the fields of Human Resources and Organisation Development. Her success at Umgeni Water, earned a well trusted name in the environment.
Sandra’s role included:
- Taking over the Payroll domain and establishing a new HR environment with policies and procedures.
- Developing an HR Strategy and Plan
- Designing a new structure for the NMF including job descriptions which linked to a new Performance Management System.
- Working with the Management Team to establish new organisation programmes as part of the Organisation Development Programme for the NMF. These included the inception of the 46664 Campaign, the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and the establishment of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation.
• Managing organisation development and human resources for a water utility of 1300 employees.
• Umgeni Water has seen a change in leadership, there was great union participation and engagement and constant media reports in the news. Part of Sandra’s role was also to serve as the Transformation Co-ordinator to the newly formed Transformation Committee of the Board of Umgeni Water. This involved managing part of the transformation process of the utility (revision of business strategy in conjunction with the Transformation committee of the Board, Exco, Manco and the majority union.
• She was also instrumental in implementing a performance management system, holding regular workshops with management and staff for the roll out of the system. Her passion for the Balanced Scorecard and assisting in managing the process at executive level provided her with a platform to engage the entire organisation.
• Training management on diversity; employment equity; skills development and health & safety.
• She served on the Transformation Committee; Negotiating Committee and Employment Equity Committee of Umgeni Water. She also assisted the CEO with the establishment of the Umgeni Water Women’s Forum.
• Managing projects throughout the business, which included mapping business processes with staff, training the staff on business process mapping and reviewing all of Umgeni’s business processes to be ‘lean’ processes and for financial savings.
Sandra started her career, post ML Sultan Technikon where she studied a Diploma in Administration, with the Driver’s Licence Bureau at Natalia.
She was promoted from an Administration Clerk based on her performance and moved to the Road Traffic Inspectorate.
She was responsible for the following:
• carrying out processes related to the Driver’s Licence & Legislation Bureau which included: assisting the Senior Administrative Officer with drafting of amendments to the Road Traffic Act (Act No. 29 of 1989);
• facilitating the process of approvals various permits for KwaZulu-Natal which included permits for: sporting events such as the Comrades Marathon; Safety Belt Exemptions; establishment of Vehicle Testing Stations; Foreign Driver’s Licence applications; Driving Schools Instructor’s permits; Public Driving Permits for Taxi’s.
• She was also involved in the first Help Desk for NaTIS (National Traffic Information System) in conjunction with the Department of Home Affairs as a pilot project for the implementation of NaTIS and the card driver’s licence system.
Management Development Programme (18 Month Programme) in management with a dissertation in Performance Management (74%). Skills Development Programme (6 months) - Action Learning and Learning to Learn - Multicultural Integration - Personal Effectiveness and Motivation - Situational Leadership - Stress Management - Team Building - Training Interpersonal Skills Management Development Programme (12 months) - Management and Skills - Decision Making, Decision Making Techniques and Creativity - Interpersonal Skills - Marketing and Strategic Management - Organisational Structure - Organisational Culture, Power and Quality - Human Resource Management - Financial Management - Information Management
Project Management Tools & Techniques Project Management Administration