Eskom South Africa is currently on a drive to expand its core and non-core business into Africa. Central to the success of this drive is finding the right people to make it happen. Technical expertise, while critical, is not sufficient to ensure success in an expat environment, especially in third world Africa The process of identifying expat potential requires a sophisticated approach of accessing the people intelligence information that resides in the organisation.
Skillbase Technologies has implemented the PeopleTree Talent Management system at Eskom which is the basis for embedding people intelligence in a company. One of the first opportunities that Eskom had to utilise the people intelligence platform that has been built was in the identification of potential expats.
Part of the exercise involved identifying the different roles that people would have to play in these new environments. Some would need to have an entrepreneurial profile in order to start a business from the ground up or turn around an existing failing business, and some would need to be technical experts while having an ability to transfer the necessary skills to the local employees.
In order to find people to fit these roles, it was first necessary for Skillbase Technologies to construct a talent profile of technical skills, experiences and competencies for each of these three functions. The company was able to utilise the existing list of technical skills, experiences, and competencies within Eskom to build the three talent profiles. The method of building the profiles involved conducting intensive interviews with a sample of Eskom and non-Eskom people with expat experience and comparing the findings to current literature and research on the subject. Once the talent profiles were constructed, another Skillbase Technologies software system, Portrait Writer, was used to describe the type of person who would fit each of the three roles.
Apart from the hard data that was acquired in building the talent profiles, a number of crucial psychological issues were identified to complete the picture. These included factors such as the psychological profile of the expat and his/her spouse, family circumstances and home office support requirements.
These findings correlated directly with the literature which validated the information gained from the participants. The final result of the exercise was more than Eskom had bargained for. Not only did they end up with three highly refined talent profiles for the three roles, but they were also provided with an extensive practical guide on every aspect of placing people on an expat assignment.
Armed with knowledge gained from this project, Eskom is now in a position to make calculated hiring decisions and contain the financial losses typically associated with foreign placements.
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