How in touch are you with your employees?

With the realities of today's workforce being remote or hybrid, staying in touch with your employees and understanding their needs and what motivates them has become increasingly important. Employee well-being is strategic to retaining your talent.

At Tugela People, we have a remote-first policy, with employees attending the office when they feel the need to be in a more formal work environment or engage with other colleagues.

Maintaining regular communication and interaction is critical. We ensure regular professional and social contact with our employees with activities like weekly teams coffee mornings, respective groups on teams and quarterly companywide get-togethers. In addition, every month, we run a spotlight feature on a team member. This month we had the pleasure of learning more about our colleague Jeremy Mohamed, one of our HRIS Consultants within the professional services division who provide implementation support and consulting on the Sage People HR System.

What is your background?

I've spent the vast majority of my nearly 20 years in HR within internal HR departments. I've worked as a generalist and also in payroll and recruitment. Over that time, I've naturally gravitated toward the systems and process side of HR. In my experience, it's an often-overlooked area of expertise when it comes to resourcing an HR department. So over the years, during my time working in HR, when I demonstrated system skills, my superiors quickly took advantage of them! Often my HR colleagues have wished to focus on the more subjective, human touch side of HR, whereas I feel more comfortable with the objective, technical side of things which is just as important. I prefer to deal with complex system problems rather than tricky people problems!

What inspired you to join Tugela People?

There are a whole host of reasons why I felt like Tugela People would be the best fit for my future career, but to name a few:

1. My desire to work with other HR Systems enthusiasts (or geeks!). In my previous roles, I have often been the outlier and stand-alone go-to person for everything system-related. But to develop my career further in this field, I felt it was incredibly important not only to work on a day-to-day basis with people of a similar mindset but with others with extensive experience I could learn from.
2. The company itself is a very attractive proposition for someone like me. It's smaller than anywhere else I've worked before, so it offers that close-knit team feel. But on the other hand, the systems we are implementing are big and industry-leading. e.g. the Sage People HR System.
3. I love learning new systems, getting them to work at their optimum and then educating others on how to do the same. People really appreciate that. Here I get to do that all day, every day.

How has your journey with the company been so far?

I'm relatively early in my journey, as I've not long since joined the company. But when my friends and formal colleagues have asked me how the new job is going, I respond by saying that I am in my element! I'm getting to spend time learning this new HR system which has powerful functionality (it's certainly better than anything I've used before). There's lots of work to get stuck into, and I am incredibly motivated to get accredited and become as productive as possible as soon as I can.

How do you envision your future with the company?

My goal in the immediate term is to become a fully functioning HRIS Consultant and to perform this role at an optimal level. I recently passed my Sage People Core Implementation certification (in just two weeks, which is apparently a company record!) and am working towards the HCM Implementation Consultant certification.

But longer term, it has been made clear that there is substantial potential and scope for further growth, perhaps towards lead consultant. But there are also lateral opportunities in this growing field. For example, I have a background in payroll, so there's scope to utilise these skills on the systems side., especially as organisations look for more seamless people processes and seek solutions that work smoothly across the whole employee life cycle.

Aside from work, what else do you do, and what inspires you?

I like doing online learning for fun! I've just finished a music composition course and have recently started an orchestration and instrumentation course. I'm going to learn ProTools next  (music production), so who knows, there may be a publishing deal for me in the future! I'm also part of an outdoors group and am waiting to train to become a walk leader. I spend many hours exploring the local countryside with my chocolate Labrador, Arnold.