Econet Wireless Zimbabwe (Econet) won the 2022 LinkedIn ‘Learning Champion Award’ for Sub Saharan Africa in recognition of its outstanding organiSational learning and development programmes.
The telecommunications and technology giant bagged the award at the 2022 LinkedIn Talent Awards recently held in South Africa.
The awards are said to be a celebration of talent management teams across the world that are innovating and moving the entire industry forward.
Econet – which also won the LinkedIn award for the company with the Best Learning Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2021 – was represented at the 2022 awards by Rosseweater Zhou-Usayi, the company’s chief human resources officer, and by Econet’s head of talent and organisational development, Calvin Nhari.
Econet participated in the awards along with a host of other leading companies on the continent, including telecom operators MTN and Safaricom, Tiger Brands, Standard Bank and Nedbank, among many others.
Every year the LinkedIn data and insights team analyses the performance, results and impact of organisations utilising LinkedIn Talents Solutions in Africa and it uses the data to assess the performance of participating organizations.
Commenting soon after receiving the award, Zhou-Usayi said: “As a company our vision is to create a digitally connected future that leaves no African behind.
“As such we continue to invest in transforming how we deliver services to our customers, and a big part of that involves transforming the skills and capabilities of our people in a digitally transformative global space, and especially so for our industry.”
She said the LinkedIn award – which recognises companies that have shown transformative progress in the learning and development of their employees by investing in capability development – was a “humbling step forward in transforming our learning culture”, particularly at a time when the skills landscape and the demands of everyday work are continuously changing.
“I congratulate our entire Econet Wireless Zimbabwe team for the LinkedIn Learning Champion - Sub-Saharan Africa Award.
“The award demonstrates the tenacity that the team has shown in developing themselves and uplifting their skills,” Zhou-Usayi said.
She added that the investments and strategic partnerships that Econet had made with organizations such as LinkedIn and Ericson, equip the company’s employees impactfully, with the cutting-edge skills and capabilities that the company needs in order to continue to make “relevant innovations that meet dynamic customer needs in an increasingly complex and competitive world”.
Speaking after receiving the award, Nhari congratulated his company and its staff for bagging the award.
“A big congratulations to our business and to the diligent learners at Econet!
“We are honoured to receive the LinkedIn Learning Champion - Sub-Saharan Africa Award on their behalf.
“I believe it is imperative for every organization to pursue a culture of lifelong learning, one that supports learning throughout the talent value chain, and Econet Wireless has been enthusiastically driving that learning culture,” Nhari said, adding that receiving the recognition was a significant milestone for Econet Wireless Zimbabwe because it reflected the company’s efforts to “drive continuous learning to keep up with global trends as we navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)”.
Zhou-Usayi earlier commended Econet staff and its leadership teams for embracing the transformative advancements made by the company in learning throughout the Covid pandemic period.
“While the company invested in digital learning platforms during the pandemic, to encourage staff and teams to continue to productively develop their skills, the company retained those digital platforms, and these have become a big part of their new normal,” she said, adding that the company had since launched a learning campaign, dubbed the ‘iLearn: Ndinodzidza: Ngiyafunda’ campaign, where staff are challenged to ‘Learn, Grow and Become’ through participation in various internal learning activities, in which they are eligible to win different learning prizes.