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South African HR Professional Body Celebrates 30th Anniversary with 30 Achievements in Taking the HR Profession Forward

In this article, the CEO of the SA Board for People Practices (SABPP), Marius Meyer, reflects on his first year in the office. In celebrating the 30th anniversary of SABPP this year, he highlights 30 major achievements over the last year in raising HR standards, and outlines key priorities over the next 30 months.

by Marius Meyer

Marius Meyer is CEO of the SA Board for People Practices. More information about SABPP is available on http://www.sabpp.co.za/. He can be followed on Twitter @MariusSABPP

The HR professional body and learning quality assurance body for South Africa, the SA Board for People Practices (SABPP), is 30 years old this year. Last year, immediately after I was appointed as CEO, I decided to engage with more than 2 000 HR professionals in stakeholder forums in all nine provinces, including liaising with several HR and other professionals in other countries. These stakeholder sessions helped me to answer the following key questions needed for developing a new strategy for SABPP:

• What are the needs and expectations of HR professionals?
• How should we change our strategy in elevating the HR profession?
• How can we raise the standard of HR work and the impact of the profession on society?
• Who do we need to engage with to take HR to the next level?
• What should be our top priorities over the short to medium term?

In this article, I will answer these questions based on the feedback I received from the market. While we have implemented significant changes over the last year, no other change signifies our commitment to change and transformation more than the SABPP rebranding. SABPP started the year 2012 with a new brand, following an intensive six-month rebranding process. We are at the early stages of implementing our new strategy, and the new brand sends a clear message that we want to reach out to the HR community, not only with the new brand, but also with our expanded resources for service delivery. The logo as image for the new brand moving forward from the 1982 brand is as shown below:

Making the transition from the previous logo that was traditional and stern to depict mainly our professional registration and quality assurance roles, the new brand represents a modern, vibrant and dynamic look and feel to illustrate the new role and strategy of SABPP. However, SABPP has still ensured that the new brand integrates its two major roles, which are quality assurance of learning according to our SAQA mandate as an ETQA, and also the standard-setting role of the HR professional body. The tagline “setting HR standards” encompasses both the professional body and learning quality assurance roles of SABPP. In terms of our new growth model, the “SA” now represents a stronger focus on Southern Africa as a region in view of the increased interest from HR professionals in neighbouring countries such as Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland. In time, and building on relationships currently being established, the “SA” may even constitute sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, we are celebrating our South African focus, but extending our footprint much wider, while also being mindful of a growing number of South African expatriates and other professionals continuing to do excellent HR work throughout the world. »

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