Head: Employee Relations, Employment Equity and HR Governance at Santam Insurance

What will you do?

A position as Head: Employee Relations, Employment Equity & HR Governance exists in Santam Human Resources – the position could be based in either Sandton or Bellville

To provide direction in Employee Relations and strategic transformation through developing, implementing, maintaining and evaluating employee relations policies and practice in promoting sound business labour relations for the Santam group.

What will make you successful in this role?

Manage sound Employee Relations

• Ensure that proactive labour relations policies, structures and procedures are in place and that they are properly communicated to all, consistently applied and that they promote cooperation and respect amongst all stakeholders to achieve effective relationships
• Maintain and update all IR policies and procedures, ensuring the enforcement and adherence of these policies and procedures by advising and monitoring management and employees
• Drive and manage sound Employee Relations with support of an External Labour Lawyer
• Manage delivery of external service provider in line with the retainer agreements
• Ensure advice provided to HRBP team and line are timeous and in line with SLA
• Facilitate the up skilling of HRBP’s and other key stakeholders on latest employee relations developments and legislative changes including the continuous provision of advice and coaching
• Communicate and implement the latest SA Labour legislation ensuring compliance by all stakeholders
• Ensures legal compliance by monitoring and implement legislative requirements – conducting investigations, driving disciplinary and grievance processes
• Maintain management guidelines by preparing, updating and recommending employee relations policies and procedures
• Ensure management compliance to all internal procedures on grievances and disciplinary enquiries
• Provide oversight on all employee relations dispute cases within the company ensuring that sound, fair and appropriate practices are followed in accordance with legislation, agreements with employees/ union and company policies and procedures
• Build and maintain an effective relationship with the Santam union to ensure sound employee relations
• Facilitate high level engagement in respect of cases referred to the CCMA and/or Labour Court

Employee Relations Reporting

• Implement and maintain a comprehensive ER administration system, ensuring the accuracy and currency of all ER-related information
• Complete analysis and reports of Santam group disciplinary enquiries, identifying trends and providing feedback to the HR leadership and Santam Senior Management
• Maintain an electronic library of all Santam employee relations cases for referral in ensuring sound business and employee relations within Santam
• Provide reports on internal and external trends in employee relations that may impact the Santam business
• Stay abreast of latest employee relations legislation, trends and best practice for benchmarking purposes and share with management and the broader HR community

Stakeholder Relations

• Build and maintain effective relationships with HR, Santam management, trade union and external partners
• Manage the relationship with the external employee relations service provider ensuring compliance to legislation and Santam policies at all times
• Ensure that stakeholders are supported in their communication, consultation and negotiations including managerial staff restructuring and redundancy processes
• Manage ad hoc projects that are aligned to the annual priorities and HR strategy

What will make you successful in this role?

Employment Equity - Strategy, Advice and Support

• Custodian of Santam’s Employment Equity strategy, policy and implementation plan
• Collaborate with HR Centres of Expertise (COE’s) to ensure alignment of processes, systems and initiatives required to affect the company’s EE strategy and plan
• Initiate and coordinate accelerated development programmes and learnerships in liaison with Learning & Development (L&D) and Talent COE.
• Support HR COE’s in diversity work:
• OD – help to drive the delivery of the Diversity strategy working with the CoE and the HRBP communication by:
• Assist in designing and engaging with relevant stakeholders in order to ensure the key Diversity actions remain relevant, impactful and valuable.
• Project manage the delivery of various Diversity-related initiatives
• L&D –development initiatives (including accelerated development programmes)
• Talent Management
• Recruitment policies and practices
• Support the implementation of the Strategic Resourcing plan for Santam
• Total Rewards – EE reporting
• Ensure that the EE strategies and plans contribute to the Santam and Business units strategic goals
• To ensure regulatory compliance and proactive adaptation to pending legislation changes and other external factors
• To ensure relevant consulting structures are in place to drive the EE strategy and plan
• To ensure the effective functioning of the consulting structures (including training)
• To provide on-going support to line manager regarding diversity related matters (working with relevant COE’s where necessary)
• To create a network of internal and external alliances with industry role players and regulators to optimise the attainment of the Santam Diversity strategy
• Responsible for budget planning and Management

Reporting

• To report to relevant authorities on Employment equity strategy, plans and initiatives
• Monitor and track progress of EE strategy and plan and recommend actions where required.
• Set EE targets per group company and BU’s where relevant
• Complete analysis and reporting on EE and FSC dimensions
• Provide monthly reports on Employment Equity to ensure progress against targets and suggest corrective actions where required
• Barrier survey – Monitor implementation of BU action plans based on barrier survey feedback

Qualifications

• Honours degree in related field of study
• Post graduate Diploma/Certificate in Labour Law/ Labour Relations

Knowledge And Experience

• Knowledge of all applicable labour legislation in South Africa
• At least 8 -10 years’ experience and knowledge of Employee Relations (including CCMA rules, processes and cases)
• Experience in engaging with key business and external partners across all levels (especially at senior levels)
• Stakeholder management experience
• Experience in leading high-level negotiations with unions
• Project management experience
• Ability to travel regularly

Skills

• Influencing and negotiation skills
• Strong co-ordination, prioritisation, organisational and planning skills
• Excellent interpersonal, communication and networking skills across all levels
• Results orientated, pro-active and deadline driven
• High stress tolerance
• Strong quality and client service orientation
• Dealing with confidentiality
• Report writing skills
• Ability to ‘think-out-of-the-box’ / lateral thinking
• High initiative/self-starter/proactive and anticipate requirements
• Professionalism, excellent judgement, use of discretion and problem-solving abilities
• Ability to work and make decisions independently
• Computer literate (Excel, Word and PowerPoint)
• Analytical skills

Core Competencies

• Cultivates innovation - Contributing through others
• Customer focus - Contributing through others
• Drives results - Contributing through others
• Collaborates - Contributing through others
• Being resilient - Contributing through others