Creating a workplace that works for all

Building an effective, fulfilling work environment helps to shape an organisation that adds value for its staff, its customers and the community where it operates, writes Catia Teixeira, Group Executive Head of Human Capital for Multichoice Africa Holdings.

A people-centric workplace culture can be the foundation of an organisation that truly improves people’s lives – within the organisation, but also among customers and the broader society.

Often, it is leaders, and their management style that shape the workplace experience of our people.

In this context, leadership development programmes can be invaluable, helping to develop the next generation of young leaders. Talent should be developed at every level of a business, but it is also true that when you invest in leaders, there is a cascading effect, as they communicate your values and goals throughout the business. 

A people-conscious organisation cannot take anything for granted. Even if it is setting benchmarks within its sector, and attracting the right people, all of that can change overnight. Attracting, growing and retaining the best people requires constant effort. The organisation must work to ensure it consistently offers leading levels of remuneration, benefits and rewards.

Change is inevitable, whether it’s a corporate takeover, economic fluctuations or social upheaval. Part of looking after your people must involve constant, systematic communication, explaining how any major changes will impact them within the business.   

The way I see it, it’s about ensuring that people are comfortable and confident, and it’s an ongoing process.

Care, connect, create

Of course, every staff member is unique. A caring business must be inclusive of every type of person, their culture, their tastes and their preferences. That means encouraging diversity at all levels, striving to listen to employee concerns and engaging constantly.

Career paths should be tailored to meet the aspirations of every individual staff member. But this cannot be done through generic hierarchy plotting. It needs to show concern that the individual may fully realise their hopes and dreams within the organisation.

Managing careers may require a range of sophisticated systems, including digital channels, artificial intelligence, and deep data analytics. However, one cannot lose sight of the fact that people all have the need to be heard, valued and appreciated. 

This is why it takes a particular type of person to be an HR practitioner.

A certain type of person

An HR professional must inspire trust from their colleagues, and make them feel that they are being taken care of. They must be good listeners, who can provide empathy and support, while still providing useful, relevant information in an honest way. 

When employees have problems, they come to us. We must ensure we treat them with the kindness they deserve, so that they feel respected and heard. We must see ourselves in the people we work with.

On the organisational level, a successful HR function amplify this human empathy using data and digital tools.

At Multichoice Africa, throughout an employee’s time with us, we engage, and we gather feedback – through surveys, monthly company Teams sessions, townhalls, as well as individual and group interviews. 

We consolidate the feedback into data, which allows us to understand issues as they arise, and address them in real time.  

Building culture

HR plays a major role in growing organisational culture. But any multinational, or pan-African business must also take into account the culture of their host country. Nonetheless, there are many universal values that transcend borders and bind people together.  

For MultiChoice Africa, our wide network and shared culture can also facilitate a varied, fulfilling pan-African career path for our team members. These opportunities offer personal growth for the people concerned as they earn transfers and promotions into new roles, but they also enrich specific markets with fresh ideas from different cultures. 

Another component of staff satisfaction is giving them a chance to be directly involved in giving back to their communities. HR and corporate affairs can play an incredible role here, facilitating community outreach events, fundraising initiatives or visits to schools, shelters or retirement homes, where staff can offer practical support.

To unlock their full potential, any business operating in Africa must also be an inclusive, diverse organisation. At MultiChoice, we focus on gender diversity at the highest level, through women’s leadership programmes, helping to grow the next generation of women managers in our business. 

Ultimately, businesses can only achieve their goals through their people. In many ways, a business is its people.

Human engagement ensures that people are fulfilled in their work. When they’re fulfilled, they will give their very best in growing an organisation that sees itself in the customers it serves and the society it is helping to build.

An organisation that sees the people of its country as an asset, will grow and deliver impact, to become a valuable asset to the country it serves.

Building an effective, fulfilling work environment helps

Championing safe digital spaces for all

Today, entertainment platforms are almost always digital. Unfortunately, that seamless digital efficiency comes with risks. That means leading digital content providers must now also be cybersecurity experts, to ensure safe, secure entertainment for their subscribers, writes MultiChoice Chief Technology Officer Sabelo Mwali.

Africa has embraced digital technology as by far the most effective channel for commerce, financial services, networking, and entertainment. This has enabled our continent to leapfrog several sector developmental stages and to become global leaders in many of these fields.

MultiChoice works in several of these spaces, through offerings like our satellite and streaming video platforms, interactive entertainment, and our payment platforms. Given the vulnerability of these channels to cybercrimes such as content piracy, fraud, and identity theft, we also recognise our responsibility to protect our users and our content.

The key is to balance the delivery of access with robust security. As a Pan-African entertainment provider with a deep understanding of the continent’s challenges and opportunities, we believe we are well-positioned to champion safe digital spaces for African needs.

The eternal challenge

Cybersecurity is an eternal challenge for any technology business. To address this, we are constantly evolving measures to ensure that we keep our data – and our environment – secure. Security has a compliance and a systems-defense component, and both require ever-evolving technology.  

Fighting cybercriminals and digital piracy syndicates is a kind of technology arms race; with tech teams trying to anticipate attacks, thinking in the same way hackers do – identifying vulnerabilities and then addressing them. 

As a content business, one of our main focus areas will always be the fight against content piracy, in collaboration with Partners Against Piracy and our colleagues at cybersecurity leaders Irdeto. Our content is often targeted, but increasingly, we take the fight to the pirates. 

Piracy destroys the livelihoods of film and TV professionals across the continent. Technology is our most powerful tool in addressing it – by deploying back- and front-end content protection, watermarking, take-down requests, law-enforcement engagement, and other methods. 

Payment solutions

MultiChoice has also long been an innovator in the payments space, having built a Pan-African network of subscribers, support offices, and payment partners. In a brave recent move, we have leveraged this network to launch a proprietary digital payment platform – Moment – to make payments as easy, right across the continent.  

This kind of payment solution also requires a robust security infrastructure. To this end, Moment allows users to track every transaction, making it easy to onboard and authenticate payment providers, as well as to scale and integrate bulk payments.

Our pan-African entertainment ecosystem reached 14,5 million households with 47,839 hours of live sports broadcasting hours last year, 1,029 in-house productions, and 5,340 hours of local content – increasingly in the form of over-the-top (OTT) streamed content.

To protect this content – and our users – Irdeto’s TraceMark embeds unique forensic watermarks into every stream, enabling 24/7 monitoring and identification of pirate operations. Irdeto DRM ensures only authorised users access premium content, while its cybersecurity solutions protect infrastructure and credentials from infiltration.

These tools are complemented by Harmonic platforms that provide scalable, cloud-native media processing. Together, these solutions have an 85-90% success rate in identifying and disrupting piracy, significantly reducing revenue leakage for creators, rights holders, and production staff.

Where we deploy technology to fight content piracy through PAP or Irdeto, we are protecting careers and the right of film professionals to earn a living from their work.

AI with a human touch

In the production space, we are seeing generative AI have a growing influence – though we are careful that it is always deployed in ways that will enhance the deeply human tradition of storytelling. 

AI will even have a role in how we produce content on our SuperSport platforms over time. For instance, highlights packages can now be edited together in real time, while a match is still in progress. 

All of these tech innovations come with ethical and governance considerations. For us, it’s about the human factor – considering our customers; considering our staff. 

Nowhere are cost-of-living concerns more important than in Africa. Fortunately, tech advances are also enabling us to offer greater value for our subscribers.

Here is an example. In a developed market, a subscriber might stay on the same postpaid subscription product for decades. But in the African environment, a customer’s financial position can change drastically from one month to the next.  

To cater to the needs of these subscribers, MultiChoice has launched a short-term subscription package in our Ugandan market. This package allows customers to buy a DStv subscription for a period as short as seven days. This “micro-subscriptions” product is being embraced by many of our customers in the heart of Africa. It’s likely to see wider adoption if initial uptake is anything to go by. 

Technology, after all, must be used to serve the needs of people. Africa is the home of this kind of frugal innovation. It is a privilege to support our customers through technology in this way.

For our subscribers, as well as the film and TV professionals who rely on the MultiChoice ecosystem for their livelihood, innovation is not just nice to have – it’s a survival mechanism. 

To encourage this kind of life-changing creative technology innovation in our region, MultiChoice also sponsors regular hackathon events on the continent, partnering with universities on AI solutions to industry challenges.  

It’s about encouraging our youth to customise technology to Africa’s needs.  Ultimately, we’re using technology to create safe, secure digital spaces, where our people can see themselves in the content they love.

Today, entertainment platforms are almost always digital.