MultiChoice is Africa’s leading entertainment company, with its platforms – DStv, GOtv, Showmax and DStv Now – acting as an entertainment hub for millions of people across 50 countries. In 2020, MultiChoice had a total subscriber base of approximately 20.1 million viewers throughout Africa. MultiChoice is one of the fastest-growing pay-TV operators in the world.
MultiChoice maintains deep roots in the countries where its customers live, creating thousands of jobs and investing heavily in Africa’s film and TV industry, as well as contributing to the economies of the countries where it operates. MultiChoice not only invests in its customers, but in its employees’ capabilities. One of the group’s strategic pillars focuses on employee development; building the skills necessary to sustain operational excellence.
Multichoice believes that to maintain its position as Africa’s leading video entertainment company, it must continue to enrich lives and create opportunities to develop skills, diversity and talent – especially within its own business. Through training, bursaries and mentorship, MultiChoice invests in growing its employees’ skills and expertise.
With that in mind, MultiChoice sought to implement a programme to help leaders and managers build leadership capability and develop their full potential within the organisation’s ecosystem.
TTRO took a blended learning approach to unlocking managers’ talent, structuring e-learning modules across three pillars: leading self, leading people, and leading the organisation.
The purpose of these modules was to holistically merge the functional and interpersonal aspects of managing a team, creating a personalised learner journey to best prepare leaders for the MultiChoice workplace.
The modules were not only aimed at managers working their way up the ranks from within the organisation, but also at easing new managers at MultiChoice into their leadership roles.
TTRO assisted MultiChoice Africa in two ways:
Using its dedicated team of learning experience designers (who have been working with MultiChoice for many years), TTRO developed a blended learning solution named Management Essentials. This solution consisted of a series of MultiChoice specific e-learning modules, focusing on building knowledge about the MultiChoice landscape for leaders as well as foundational leadership skills.
Additionally, the Management Essentials programme was concluded with a two-day workshop that consolidated and applied skills learnt through scenario-based learning where delegates are being assigned a team to manage throughout the workshop.
Feedback from workshop delegates was overwhelmingly positive, with responses including:
“The learning material was awesome, easy to understand and made the whole learning process very interesting.”
“The facilitator was very engaging and the producer was very helpful and on track! In terms of learning expectations, I clearly understood the courses was actively involved in the sessions.”
“Training was well executed the roleplaying gave a lot of insight in how to deal with difficult situations.”
“The sessions really had great impact on my outlook as a manager.”
“The workshop exceeded my expectations. It was very practical, enlightening and interesting.”
TTRO and partner DUJA then assisted MultiChoice with rolling out the programme to over 500 managers across MultiChoice’s 13 primary markets in Africa, including Portuguese-speaking territories. This, because of COVID, was done virtually.
Over 500 managers went through the initial training, helping them grow into their roles at MultiChoice, preparing them for the challenges and responsibilities of leadership.
Chris Brownbill, senior specialist: learning and development at MultiChoice Africa Holdings (MAH), said, “What a fantastic series of sessions. You had the likes of general managers and the heads of countries for MultiChoice in those sessions. Even they took something out of the sessions, and they had been leading people for many years. The overall comments were that it was great.”
“Employee engagement scores increased around the time we were rolling out the Management Essentials programme. So if there was an initial measurement that could indicate line managers implementing certain parts of the programme, the employee engagement score is one way of gauging that success. Something positive must have happened during that time.”
TTRO’s dedicated MultiChoice team delivered a successful Management Essentials programme, another triumphant endeavour of the partnership between the two organisations.
Chris Brownbill said, “Before we partnered with TTRO, we had training that was inconsistent, for lack of a better word. There was no real set curriculum across countries – there was nothing that was truly cohesive. TTRO was tasked with putting together a learning strategy and creating a learning curriculum, which finally gave us structure and deliberate development goals to be able to achieve certain things that weren’t in place in the business.
“TTRO does more than just deliver quality content: it’s a company with a real knowledge of and background in the business of learning. They develop content with a purpose. Having that very structured approach and that deliberate design and development across multiple programmes has helped us achieve what we needed to achieve, especially when it came to Management Essentials.”
Thabi Manyike, senior manager: learning and development for MAH, added, “For me, when it comes to TTRO, the phrase is ‘trusted advisor’. TTRO is consistently able to translate our vision into actionable items that are well received. Because of our close, long-standing relationship, we know that TTRO is going to deliver solutions that are easily implementable and that we know will be a success. They have our best interests at heart. My experience with TTRO is that they are transparent and always willing to help.”
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Author: Rob Ewart