Alinda Nortje (middle) and some officials of Afri-Consult in a group photograph
FREE TO GROW – a South African company that offers corporate training – on Wednesday took some 60 business executives selected from the financial, manufacturing, services and construction sectors on strategic ways of establishing a strong corporate culture in their organisations.
Alinda Nortje, founder and CEO of Free-To-Grow, led the participants through cutting-edge international research on culture and employee engagement with best practices, from her outfit’s work over 25 years in 33 countries, involving 1,260 organisations.
Saying that leaders should be the key drivers in creating a dynamic and sustainable culture at the workplace, Ms Nortje highlighted: “The reality, however, is that most leaders are so occupied with the challenge of ‘managing’ such that they do not focus on proactively developing culture.”
“Senior leaders in organisations have been known to set the priorities, goals and objectives of the business. Even more, they set the cultural tone for the organisation. Although these leaders realise the central role employee engagement plays in driving profit and growth, it is frequently viewed as a minor initiative that can be delegated to the human resource department ‘when and if’ funds are available, or to be presented as a feel good factor at kick-off events,” she added.
Known as SHAPE, the programme inspired the participants to be the change that they wanted to see in their organisations.
Martin Atta-Fynn, Managing Director of Afri-Consult, in a remark, said that in the modern challenging business environment, a culture of collaboration and engagement was critical. According to him, “Organisations need to fully utilise the potential of every employee to remain competitive so that they can no longer tolerate passive employees who only look for what they can get from the company instead of what the company can get from them.”
A business desk report