CLIENT OVERVIEWMassmart is a South African-based globally competitive regional management group and the second-largest distributor of consumer goods in Africa, the leading retailer of general merchandise, liquor and home improvement equipment and supplies. 2017 total sales reported at R93.7 billion. The group has around 30,000 employees, housed under brands such as Builders Warehouse, Game, Makro etc, located in multiple locations and regions across Africa. CLIENT CHALLENGEAs a company, Massmart had to rely on internal memos, top down communication and, in many cases, roadshows. This is very costly and difficult to ensure that a quality consistency of internal culture building, employee engagement and compliance training is maintained and propagated. The traditional mechanisms were not seen as effective and required significant budget allocations each year. Walmart Massmart group employee benefits general manager as well as the ethics and compliance department engaged with team to find an optimum and sustainable financial model. The aim was to explore and set up a innovative digitized model to allow a meaningful two way communication channel that would allow for dialogue and feedback with all staff members. The focus was to communicate all employee benefits, ethic and compliance amendments and policies. Equally important to the management team for the future organisational success was intended on gathering feedback on exactly what was happening in the workforce to enable it to deliver the right solution fit. SOLUTION APPLIEDSmartphones were supplied to employees as an employee benefit. An application was developed as a mobi first community engagement platform. The platform utilised various animated characters representing the personality and culture of the company. They were created to be the voice of Employee Benefits as well as Ethics and Compliance. The creative and development teams brought the characters to life via short animated video communications, infographics and text elements that would edutain employees through their various benefits and compliance training. The online communication tool was fondly called MyMassmart and became a standard operating process within the employee benefits department. This allowed the company full access and control to be able to engage and communicate with the employees. With the convenience of this platform being accessible on any mobile device, including smartphones, tablets and or desktop devices, this meant the company was also able to provide other enhanced services such as staff development through trainings, surveys and other timeous business communication. Some of the features of the personalized platform meant that valuable data could be gathered, whilst making the employee feel heard and treated as an individual. The features included: My Profile, My Surveys, My Chats, My Videos, My Documents, My Buzz, My Rewards and My Basket. It included gamified rewards and recognition which became key drivers of culture and engagement. Putting a smartphone in every employee's hand also enables head office to stay in touch with employees on a real time basis. It has a push notification approach that provides SMS and email notifications to staff to logon. Leadership could effectively profile it's employee base as well as provide a real time dashboard to management. The user friendly backend system with analytics and monitoring, empowered HR to overseeing KPIs and skills deficits. RESULTS 10,689 staff voluntarily signed up within the first year with 65% active users. The 55% male and 45% female users constantly interact with the mascot character we created who we have fondly come to name Zanelli the Zebra. The majority of demographics are blue collar workers who are also mobile users, have uploaded incredible stories of how the app has and mobile communication has improved their employee experience.
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CLIENT OVERVIEWLitha Pharma is a South African pharmaceutical company that was recently acquired by Acino Pharma based in Basel Switzerland. The group focuses on representing international pharma generic and innovative pharmaceutical brands in South Africa through licensing and distribution agreements. CLIENT CHALLENGELitha Pharma was a fast growing pharmaceutical sales and marketing company who had just gone through a major merger where five privately owned companies were being integrated into one newly form pharma division as part of the Litha Healthcare Group (JSE listed). As in any large merger, culture alignment issues as well as a high staff turnover created a significant challenge in terms of ensuring a successful merger. In addition, the company faced tremendous pressure from International pharma brand owners due to contractual obligations related to any merger and acquisitions. The legacy leadership with their various management styles had the onerous challenge of not only integrating these companies but also faced the challenge of being deployed to new management roles under a new experienced pharma CEO and also working with each other within specialised functions rather than their historical general management role. Another challenge that lay ahead was the expectations of shareholders to deliver the financial budget commitments in the first year of integration carrying over the historical successes of these entities while facing people and processes integration which impacted people performance and productivity in the early months post the integration. The pharma CEO and head of sales brought in our team in collaboration with Clear Fusion to diagnose and assist with the people performance aspects and confidential HR concerns whilst at the same time formulating marketing solutions for the various products within the Litha Pharma bouquet. SOLUTION APPLIEDAs a first directive mechanism, the team applied an early detection tool to understand the inherent working qualities of the 20 member leadership and management team. Once this was complete and a common understanding and working relationship was established, the mechanism was then rolled out then to the 120 sales and marketing personnel. Further online assessments and surveys were instituted followed by independent one on one coaching sessions with each staff member. This gave good insights into management and personnel on working preference styles and how to work collaboratively with each other for better work outcomes. Armed with the motto: “There’s nothing like an extraordinary experience that helps leave an imprint in people’s hearts and minds”, a strong foundation was created for facilitating effective group workshops that assisted with internal brand culture alignment, forged a stronger bond, built a better understanding as well as effective WOW (Ways of Working). The group sessions used games, dialogue, interaction and creativity to ensure that the employee experience was unforgettable and created a positive sustainable momentum to work together. To ensure that management stayed on track we had monthly sessions for the following six months advising on how to apply the foundational knowledge received as well as monitor the progress of the Participlan. Once the internal challenges were met, the team could now focus on the external marketing front. Out-the-box online marketing strategy was applied on behalf of the various products and, despite pharmaceutical legislative restriction, the team was able to effectively position products thereby creating significant revenue growth. RESULTSStaff attrition stabilised with the organisation retaining the legacy leadership and management team for a period of plus 1 year post the integration exercise. Organisational performance improved and majority shareholders equity increased from 55% to over 74% and the company also managed to sign new product pipeline due to the stronger leadership collaborative and market presence of the new entity. The overall merger eventually became 100% owned by Canadian shareholders who eventually became target of American owned pharma.
The USA management team had a strong focus and commitment towards this organisational focus in South Africa that they delisted the group holdings and sold off the medical and vaccines businesses to the original founding partners, allowing better focus with the pharma team and products portfolio. At the time of merger in 2012, expected sales revenues was around the R600 million which grew to the group targeting over a billion rand revenue in 2017, representing a 5 year CAGR of around 10.5% After we were spotted online (through our digital customer experience management partners - Torque Solutions), we were approached by Kamau Media to assist with producing a music video for artist C4 Pedro at very short notice. We also had to develop a strategy that would reach a new audience, namely, the English speaking countries within Africa. This required intense out the box thinking and fast paced ideation in order for us to pull together a production that was highly creative, in time and within budget. Within two weeks the video had already gained over 100,000 views. Part of the marketing solution was to leverage Anglo African stars SA celebrity #Boity and the famous DJ Maforiso. We also drove online engagement on YouTube as well as utilizing MTV base as a means of targeting. This blend of traditional marketing together with digital impact resulted in the video getting over one million YouTube views and increasing C4 Pedro's target audience significantly. Executive Producer: Xoli Moloi (Kamau Media) Producer & Production Design: Jono Wegerle (Ideate Studios) Assistant Producer: Chwayita "Pepper" Dlulane Director / Director of Photography & Editing: DJ Marcel Assistant Director: Wendy Waterston Choreography: Mpho Mthetwa Stylist & Wardrobe: Jessica Rayne Production Manager: Nuzel Wegerle Hair & Make up: Claudia Hamman & Jules Ruby  Last year we were commissioned by Massmart in South Africa to develop a learner management system for their ethics department. It was collaborative project which involved our partners from Clear Fusion, Banter Media and Torque. After interviewing a few people we discovered a couple things that did'nt work about e-learning, namely, it feels like a chore, it takes time away from work, its too long (according to TED Talks the max attention span of someone is 18 minutes), it can be expensive to develop and implement and it’s difficult to measure.
Also, completing an e-learning programme doesn’t ensure that there will be a change in behaviour or performance, so it may give a false sense of whether staff have actually adopted the training. Because there isn’t only one solution for every performance challenge, we look at the challenges that our clients present to us and address them with an innovative solution that addresses Massmart's unique needs:
Well, the results speak for themselves in that of all those that registered 90% completed the training within three months and 100% of those that completed the course rated it has an excellent learning experience. Some of the employees who struggled to register with their work email went on with their personal emails because they were so excited to get going. People related so well to the animated character that people shared brand sentiment confiding in the character we fondly named Sandile. We are now rolling this out across other industries with hopes that we could disrupt and ignite the digital learning space. |
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