2012 - What a year!

After quite a busy 2011, all Treetops Team members enjoyed a well-deserved Christmas break. When we returned on the 9th of January, we knew we were in for a busy year and spent the first week planning, connecting, strategising and up-skilling ourselves. This annual Teach-in is an opportunity for us to attend to and service our team spirit and cohesion.

Nothing prepared us for what was about to happen. It is hard to believe that since the 16th of January to middle of February (at time of writing) we feel as if we’ve already put in 3 months into 2012 and that we are positively in mid-April.

We are very appreciative of our new clients, the projects we’re involved in and the people we deal with. We at Treetops are blessed in many ways. Some of our greatest blessings are the following members who joined the Treetops Team:

Our new interns: Gabrielle van Niekerk – qualified at the University of the North West and Raeesa Mahomed – is busy with her Masters in Industrial Psychology through the University of Pretoria. The energy and enthusiasm of youth brings a renewed vibrancy to the office.

New Team Members and Independent Contractors:
SanMarie Marais is going to be more involved this year. She is an exceptional Industrial Psychologist with great HR corporate experience and her gentle assertiveness just adds a special dimension to the team.

Madaleen Claassen (Prof) is still active in the Academic environment and lectures at Business School. She brings with her wisdom, quality and a positive energy (to be expected after 11 Comrades Marathons).

Miana Spies is an experienced Psychometrist and with her background in Research Psychology, brings an ability to organise and structure not only reports, but also projects.

Lizelle van Graan embodies quality, precision and dedication.

Miana and Lizelle have been quite a team for a number of years and now they’re part of our team.

Ann Turner is helping out in KZN. She brings experience in leadership development, performance management and executive coaching.

Alene Edson has qualified as a Psychometrist and has become a fully fledged team member. She is doing great work with Truworths in Cape Town. Her growth since joining the team as an intern has been wonderful!

A trend that we’ve noticed with our clients, and will also be the focus of our work this year, is that the training arena has changed (forever). People now are partnered by HR and their immediate managers on a learning journey. The main responsibility for outcomes lie with the individual. Key to this is a thorough Assessment and Development Centre to identify individual development needs and talent.

Teams and organisations also appreciate the importance of Strategic Team Alignment and this is an area where Tsietsi Molebatsi is active and passionate about. Key to this is some organisational research in terms of readiness for change and culture surveys.

My own personal focus will be on taking the company forward after our extensive re-engineering efforts of last year. I personally enjoy the coaching practice and hopefully will have more opportunities to present Flawless Consulting 1: Contracting and Flawless Consulting 2: Discovery. These two programmes are key to any individual who wants to have their expertise used at a higher level within their organisation.

More than 20 years ago when we started the company we said ‘we want to make the difference that makes the difference”. We believe we’ve had exceptional partners on this journey (our oldest clients with a more than 20-year history VWSA, Aurecon SA (Pty) Ltd and BMWSA and many others).

We were blessed by these partnerships, but look at 2012 as potentially the ‘best year ever’. We are excited about the inherent possibilities and keen for what awaits us on the horizon.