Page 1
Nicky Moses joined Accenture in September 2011 to take over the role of HR director and Enterprise lead. Her portfolio is extremely broad, covering not only overall responsibility for ensuring that Accenture has the critical skills it needs in South Africa and Botswana, but also for the support services such as marketing, legal, finance, research, and facilities and services management. It’s a large role, but it’s one that, in a sense, she has been building up to over a career spanning more than a decade.
Moses graduated from the University of the Western Cape with a Bachelor of Commerce Honours in industrial psychology. She started her career in a high-energy, target-driven recruitment company, and then joined the corporate world where she has held positions with The Foschini Retail Group, Vodacom and Hatch, a global engineering consultancy. At the latter company, as HR director and associate, she became the first woman to sit on the executive committee and board for the Africa region, and played a pivotal role in positioning HR as a strategic function for the Africa business as a whole.
Looking at her new role within Accenture, Moses is invigorated by the many possibilities. She believes that the key challenge is the shortage of skills and retention of key skills. “There’s truly a global war for talent,” she says. “For a professional services company like Accenture, getting the right skills in place and retaining them is absolutely vital.”
When it comes to overcoming the problem, Moses is clear that the first step is for HR to align closely with the business in order to properly understand what the needs are. “Then I advocate a multi-pronged approach to building the right skills profile and retaining them—fundamentally as a business you either have to buy or build the skills you need,” she says. “Many of the skills we need are niche, we therefore need to continue investing in our people: development and organic growth are far more realistic and sustainable in the longer term than buying skills.”
Looking more broadly, Moses argues that the skills shortage constitutes a national crisis. “We need to team with key stakeholders to address the skills development dilemma, especially amongst the youth, in doing so a number of socio-economic challenges will also be addressed.
In her spare time, Moses is a keen reader of business and personal development books. She’s a proponent of holistic living, and takes care to give herself time to replenish since her profession can be emotionally demanding. Exercise whether at gym or through gardening, plays a key role in achieving this balance, and she is a member of Run/Walk for Life.
Moses believes in giving back to the community and is involved in several initiatives. “Giving young people positive role models is essential,” she adds. She sits on the board of the African Academy, a non-profit organisation focused on technical training. She acts as an advisor to the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Athlone, Cape Town, where she grew up.
Moses is a member of the Institute of People Management and HR Future, and forms part of the HR Director’s Forum co-ordinated by the Executive Global Network. She is a member of a Thought Leadership Dialogue on Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.