Creating Tomorrow’s Newsroom Leaders Today

By Jamaine Krige

FP&M Seta’s PK Naiker shares his lessons for the future with Media Management graduates at the fraycollege Into the Future conference.

NEW TALENT FOR NEWSROOM SUCCESS

Instead of just evaluating people by traditional measures, leaders and HR practitioners must get ahead of the talent curve by anticipating the future skills needed, not only to survive, but to thrive in the new media landscape. The media sector, like many other industries, is in transition; a transition that has been amplified and greatly accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Traditional leadership skills are not sufficient any more to weather an increasingly volatile, uncertain complex and ambiguous world – to survive, the industry must adapt.” This means considering new talent that will disrupt its organisation and identifying new capabilities that will enable success.

“The new normal has placed a great strain on all of us – to not simply survive in this challenging and complex business environment, but to marshall our energies, to think and plan ahead by creating leaders for an online future.” In this way, organisations, industries and societies can emerge with the greatest competitive advantage. Organisations must hone a new form of agility and identify areas to apply more resources and accelerate change. The best way to facilitate these processes is by creating leaders for an online future.

REDESIGNING THE NATURE OF WORK AND PROCESSES 

New behaviours, practices and norms are emerging at the frontline where the public and private sector are both required to deliver products and services while working remotely. Today’s discussions must revolve around the need for future talent to take the digitisation of the media further.

“Virtual work has gone mainstream and the myths about working from home have been debunked. We have learned that employees can be equally productive, if not more so, working entirely through technology.” Organisations must shift resources to areas where scale and skill matter. “This also means putting a laser focus on research and development for new services, including the delivery of news.”

“Virtual work has gone mainstream and the myths about working from home have been debunked. We have learned that employees can be equally productive, if not more so, working entirely through technology.”

ALL-ROUND DIGITISATION OF WORK PROCESSES

A ruthless focus on digitising the work experience and all other business processes is needed now more than ever before. “The rallying cry for ongoing digital has been around for more than a decade and the landscape is likely to change again at an exponential pace post Covid-19.” These processes have been accelerated due to the pandemic, but can only be sustained and furthered if people are given the right context and support. To work effectively from outside the office requires a digital mindset and the right technology, along with adequate organisational support. Every organisation must recognise a need to evolve and be able to quickly redeploy resources – accelerating, reskilling and upskilling agendas to ensure successful participation in the new normal.

THE NEW FACE OF WORKPLACE ENGAGEMENT

It’s not enough to just adapt to the way things are at the present. “Rather than just assuming that the way our teams are operating today is the ‘new normal’, we need new talent to take our work-from-home policies to a new level. We need to focus on the face of engagement,” Naiker explains. Many organisations will emerge from the pandemic with a need to revisit their employee value propositions (EVP), which he describes as ‘that social contract that employers have with the workforce’. “The workplace needs a new form of employee-employer relationship as the virtual connectivity continues.” The crisis underscored the benefits of having a more focused, flexible and aligned operating model with a rise in reconfiguring organisations.