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In this episode, Njabulo Mashigo shares how deliberate culture work has helped make Vodacom South Africa the number one top employer in the country three years running, a first in that market. Njabulo is HR Executive Director at Vodacom South Africa, the largest market in the Vodafone Group, and describes herself as a people strategist and culture evangelist.

Across 24 years and three industries, from Unilever to South Africa’s National Treasury and the JSE to Heineken, she has developed a clear view that culture is not something that simply happens to an organization. It can be orchestrated, measured, and treated as a strategic asset. She and Andy open on the tension facing large companies right now, the pressure to keep growing while cutting costs, and why HR has a role on both sides of that without becoming the hangman.

Njabulo explains how her team documents the lived experiences of specific groups inside the business and turns that into an action plan, how they expanded their listening beyond the annual engagement survey, and how data on attrition revealed a leaking bucket problem with retaining women that attraction numbers had masked. She also shares Vodacom’s approach to AI, from early instincts to block the tools to running AI immersions in HR, why leader resistance is usually about confidence rather than unwillingness, and how their firelighters hold leadership accountable from the grassroots. Throughout, she makes a practical case for connecting people patterns directly to business results.

I hope you enjoy it! As always you can learn more and connect with me on my website (andystorch.com) or LinkedIn. And you can find my books – Own Your Career Own Your Life and Own Your Brand, Own Your Career – on Amazon.

Connect with Njabulo Mashigo: LinkedIn