Vodacom invests in employee leadership across Africa
Vodacom, in partnership with the Wits Business School, saw twenty-four employees graduate from the Vodacom Advanced Executive Programme.
The 2010 intake for the employee development programme included representatives from four other African offices for the first time, entrenching Vodacom’s commitment to grow leaders across the African continent.
“The VAEP programme is an important development tool for us, especially since it gives our top employees from our African businesses the opportunity to visit Vodafone operations around the world to extract the top global innovative thinking. They return to South Africa and develop business case proposals which could be applied to our African operations. This makes the programme exciting for their own development, but the cross-boundary collaboration also carries enormous benefits for Vodacom,” says Mpho Nkeli, Chief Human Resources Officer at Vodacom.
This annual programme has been running since 2003 and is designed to reward talented employees by offering them the opportunity to take part in an educational programme to improve their business and innovation skills for the benefit of Vodacom and their future careers.
“The aim of the programme is to contribute towards strengthening our business, to actively create an environment for our people to excel beyond our innovation borders and to grow Vodacom leaders across the continent,” adds Nkeli.
Employees who are invited to join the programme are expected to attend lectures on multiple modules covering everything from finance, accounting and economics. The course offers both theoretical and practical experience.
“One of the most important elements of the course is the Janus Project, where participants analyse an international organisation of their choice in an integrated case study and extract learning points of global solutions whiles remaining locally relevant for future consideration by Vodacom,” says Nkeli.
This programme allows Vodacom to always be a step ahead of its competitors by promoting strategic thinking and innovation amongst its employees. The suggestions, research and findings that are developed from this programme are carefully analysed and considered by Vodacom’s executive team.
“The VAEP programme ensures that our employees always strive for excellence and are always looking for ways to be creative, dynamic and innovative,” says Nkeli.
VAEP continues to be a success and it allows Vodacom employees to work in a positive and challenging environment.
“VAEP allows us to retain and attracts the best employees in the market. The programme also offers us the opportunity to identify and build future leaders of Vodacom,” concludes Nkeli.
VAEP is aligned with a high calibre of reputable leadership programmes and has also been customized to meet multidimensional industry and global standards. It has recently been enhanced with a Telecoms Mini MBA, whilst providing a diverse learning approach.