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Leazill brings wealth of experience to SAEON HR
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The Human Resources (HR) function within SAEON is changing ...
A new HR Practitioner has been appointed to centralise the previously decentralised function into a single entity based at SAEON’s National Office in Pretoria.
Leazill Peenze joined SAEON in May this year and has already started taking up the HR reins and drawing them neatly together. Before, HR for the SAEON nodes was undertaken by the node hosts:
- South African National Parks (SANParks) for the Ndlovu Node;
- South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) for the Fynbos Node;
- South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) for the Egagasini Node; and
- South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) for the Elwandle Node.
Once all the HR systems have been transferred from the host organisations and consolidated into SAEON’s own HR systems, it will take considerable pressure off SAEON’s node managers and researchers, Leazill says.
“I need to enable the node managers, researchers and education outreach officers to focus on their work unencumbered by HR issues,” she says. “For that I will need to make HR processes such as performance review and appraisal as concise and uncomplicated as possible.”
Relocation process
She explains that the relocation process is less complicated in the case of the Elwandle and Egagasini nodes as their node hosts are NRF facilities, which means that the structural HR backbone is already in place. Her first challenge is to get those two nodes on board in the near future, followed by Ndlovu and Fynbos.
Her work will involve travelling across the country to visit the SAEON nodes. She has already visited the Egagasini and Fynbos nodes in Cape Town and Elwandle Node in Grahamstown to discuss the transformation process with the node managers. “Each of the nodes has been set up in its own different way,” Leazill explains, “and because of that each one has a distinct character and focus.”
Involvement in corporate programmes
At the NRF’s corporate HR meeting at the end of June, Leazill had the opportunity to meet other HR officers throughout the organisation. Patrick Thompson, the NRF’s Group Executive: HR & Stakeholder Relations, has already involved the newcomer in a number of corporate programmes. These include assisting with the sourcing of various recruitment tools that can be used at all facilities including the National Zoo, training and development at the NRF’s National Office as well as the second phase of the roll-out of the NRF values.
Leazill hopes that this interaction will strengthen SAEON HR’s ties with corporate NRF and will also enable her to establish good working relationships with her peers throughout the organisation.
Leazill says that she would like to introduce an induction process for SAEON staff members to acquaint them with the network and its operations. As part of the programme they will be shown the latest SAEON audio-visual material to give them a holistic picture of the organisation.
Thorough grounding in HR
Describing herself as a people’s person, SAEON’s new HR Practitioner recounts that she stumbled upon HR quite by chance. In the career counselling office at her school she saw a poster with information on personnel management which she found interesting. She subsequently enrolled for a National Diploma in Personnel Management without really knowing what she was letting herself in for.
Her first year at the Technikon consisted of a thorough grounding in subjects such as psychology. In her second year she got to grips with actual human resources – including labour law, industrial relations and training. “This ignited a spark in me that confirmed I was on the right track,” she says.
After completing her diploma course cum laude, Leazill went on to study for a B.Tech degree in Human Resources Management. She received a bursary for outstanding academic achievement from the Technikon Pretoria, as well as several awards including academic honorary colours.
Leazill enrolled at Rand Afrikaans University (now part of the University of Johannesburg) to study part time towards a B Com Honours in Employment Relations. Deliberately choosing subjects she hadn’t encountered before to broaden her range of expertise, she found her studies very dynamic.
Training, recruitment and payroll
Her first position in HR was as a training officer at Nissan South Africa. She was involved in management development for white-collar and particularly blue-collar workers, which included training in management skills, presentation skills and report writing.
After eight years at Nissan, she joined the University of Pretoria where she ran the recruitment office for academic and non-academic staff as well as contractors. She also became involved in the student exchange programme, which she enjoyed as it brought a different perspective to her work.
She joined Leo Haese BMW in 2006 to learn more about payroll, the one area in HR that she had not yet been exposed to before. When her position was transformed to deal exclusively with the financial side of the payroll, she decided to move on.
Managing HR throughout SAEON's distributed network
Leazill says that she joined SAEON for two reasons, the first being the opportunity to be fully involved in HR once more, managing a wide range of functions. Secondly, she confesses to being a person who loves nature and the wide outdoors. “I thoroughly enjoy working with people who are active in the natural environment,” she admits.
