JOB PROFILE: ORGANISATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS SPECIALIST

DBSA CONTEXT

The Development Bank of Southern Africa (“the Bank” or “the DBSA”) is a Development Finance Institution (“DFI”) owned by the Government of the Republic of South Africa (“the Shareholder”). The Bank is mandated with the primary purpose of promoting economic development and sustainable growth, human resource development and institutional capacity building, by mobilising financial and other resources from the national and international, private and public sectors for sustainable development projects and programmes in South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the wider African continent. For more information, please access the website at www.dbsa.org.

JOB INFORMATION
Job Title	Organisational Effectiveness Specialist	Job Category	Professional
Job Grade	TBC	Reports to	Head: Organisational Effectiveness
Division	Human Capital & Corporate Services	Business Unit	Organisational Effectiveness
Signature		Approved by	Group Executive: Human Capital & Corporate Services
Signature		Date Approved
Location	Midrand, Johannesburg	Employment Type	Permanent

PURPOSE OF THIS JOB

The Organisational Effectiveness Specialist is accountable for developing and implementing organisational effectiveness strategies, culture plans, performance management frameworks and change management methodologies, ensuring that these frameworks support the DBSA’s strategic objectives. The role is responsible for conducting and reporting on psychometric assessments in compliance with HPCSA requirements, providing evaluations and feedback to individuals, managers, and business units to enable evidence-based people decisions. The role drives the embedding of the DBSA’s intended organisational culture through targeted initiatives, diagnostics, and activation programmes that enhance employee engagement, capability, and organisational adaptability.

Functional Structure Overview

KEY PERFORMANCE AREAS

Organisation Effectiveness and Culture

Translate the OE strategy into tangible initiatives and processes that support organisation’s strategic objectives and goals.
Develop and implement culture and value alignment processes to improve cultural collaboration and the support of the DBSA mandate, strategy and goals.
Design and implement culture initiatives and activation programmes that strengthen employee connection to DBSA’s values, purpose, and ways of working, tracking uptake and impact.

Promote the integration of organisational effectiveness and change management across the business through stakeholder education, awareness, partnership and consultation.
Contribute to the development and continuous refinement of the DBSA Organisational Effectiveness and Culture Strategy, ensuring alignment with the Bank’s mandate, strategic priorities, and operating context.
Design and enable integrated culture strategies and plans, informed by organisational diagnostics, to embed desired values, behaviours, and ways of working.
Leverage culture surveys, engagement data, performance insights, and broader HC metrics to identify trends and generate actionable organisational insights.
Partner with business leaders to translate diagnostic findings into targeted interventions that enhance organisational effectiveness, employee engagement, and performance.
Serve as a trusted advisor to leadership by providing integrated OE insights that inform decision-making on organisational health and transformation priorities.

Organisation Design

Develop fit-for-purpose operating models, structures, frameworks, systems and metrics that are best fit between the organisation and its context that will deliver maximum agility, flexibility and responsiveness, now and going into the future.
Support the organisation to understand the current state and work towards an imagined or desired future state, identifying issues/constraints, opportunities, implications and effectively supporting and facilitating people, teams and the organisation through change putting the organisation on a suitable strategic trajectory.
Translate the organisation’s strategic intent and business goals into focused work units (divisions, clusters or units); day-to-day workflows and modes of working and the requisite levels of work with well-defined work roles with clear distribution of responsibilities, accountabilities and authority.
Integrate activities seamlessly between organisational units, teams and individuals, resulting in an integrated strategic thrust and response by the organisation.
Create greater economies of scale and cost efficiencies through effective workforce planning.
Enable optimal resource allocation and deployment.
Continuously review the organisational and divisional strategies, understand and provide guidance on the organisational/structural implications required to deliver the strategies.
Provide key advisory and support role to the Divisions/Units and Human Capital Team in the field of organisational diagnostics, organisational design and structures.

Performance and Talent Management

Initiate and facilitate initiatives to enhance a purpose driven culture through interventions based on effective application of performance management system, talent and succession management process and development plans.

Implement a performance management framework and embed processes for setting objectives, monitoring progress, and evaluating employee performance.
Drive performance management effectiveness by delivering diagnostic insights, supporting calibration, and ensuring alignment with organizational culture and strategy.
Implement processes to identify high‑potential employees and critical skills gaps to build leadership pipelines and ensure organisational continuity.
Provide accurate, timely insights on performance ratings, talent pools, and workforce readiness.

Psychometric Assessments and Reporting

Coordinate or administer, score, and interpret psychometric assessments for selection, development, and organisational diagnosis purposes in compliance with HPCSA guidelines and applicable legislation.
Provide psychometric assessment services to all employees including new entrants, ensuring structured onboarding feedback and development recommendations are communicated to the relevant business units.
Produce insightful psychometric evaluation reports that support evidence-based decision-making for selection, placement, succession, and individual development planning.
Provide structured feedback sessions to individuals and managers following assessments, ensuring findings are clearly explained and linked to practical development actions.

Maintain a psychometric assessment register and ensure all practices remain aligned with HPCSA ethical guidelines, test publisher requirements, and DBSA policy.

Coaching Coordination

Provide input into the design of mentoring and coaching frameworks aligned to OE, culture, and leadership priorities
Maintain and monitor alignment of coaching interventions to culture, leadership and transformation objectives.
Use insights from coaching outcomes to inform organisation-wide OE interventions.
Partner with Learning & Development / Talent functions for implementation and operations.

Change Management

Develop and implement change management methodologies / frameworks to adopt a structured approach to change management of various corporate initiatives/projects in the organisation.
Formulate change management approach(es) to evaluate the impact of the change(s) in the organisation.
Facilitate the conducting of impact analyses and readiness assessments, change characteristics assessment, stakeholder analysis (including key stakeholder tracking) and develop a customised strategy and approach for identified bank-wide initiatives/projects.
Provide the appropriate change management diagnostic tools to business to deliver each change initiative for their areas of responsibility means to ensure that the change is fully embedded as intended.

Work with business to create broad-scale and targeted internal-based communications, training strategies and associated materials with the aim of conducting briefings and/or communicating new initiatives and systems and drive change management.
Serve as a trusted advisor through integrated OE analytics, combining culture, engagement, performance, and workforce data to generate enterprise-level insights.

Project Management and Reporting

Participate in the design and deployment of broader Human Capital Projects, amongst others, in the area of Organisational Design, Performance Management, HC Systems, Talent Management, Learning & Development, Recruitment, etc. in terms of the correlation / integration / development and alignment of Remuneration & Benefits.

Prepare management proposals, presentations and reports for Human Capital, Divisions, Executive Committees, Boards & Stakeholders.

Perform other Human Capital duties as assigned.

Key Measurements of Outputs

Approved and successful implementation of organisational development and culture frameworks/strategies.
Approved and successful implementation of organisational design and structures.
Approved and successful implementation of change management methodology and tools for the DBSA.
Embedded espoused culture of the DBSA in the organisation
Quality of documents, presentations and reports.
Positive feedback from Business, Exco & Board Committees.
Clean audit.

INTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIP

*The list is not exhaustive

EXTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIP

*The list is not exhaustive

GE: Human Capital & Management Team
Executive Management & Heads
Audit
All Divisions
DBSA employees

External Service Providers
Private & Public Sector Entities

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

Minimum Qualification

A Masters Degree in Industrial Psychology and industrial psychologist designation.
Professional membership with the Health Professional Council of South Africa (HPCSA).

Minimum Experience

A minimum of 8 years’ relevant experience as a Senior Organisational /Effectiveness/Development Specialist or similar function.
Proven experience in a strategic HC advisory capacity, partnering with senior leadership to align human capital practices to organisational strategy.
Demonstrated experience in administering, scoring, interpreting, and reporting on psychometric assessments, including provision of individual and group feedback, in compliance with HPCSA guidelines.
Demonstrated experience in developing and implementing culture strategies and culture plans, with measurable impact on organisational culture and employee engagement.
Experience working with senior leadership in medium to large size companies.
Demonstrated experience of a similar role gained in a related industry preferably in the Banking/Financial Sector.
Demonstrated experience in leading culture and change management initiatives in an organisation.
Demonstrated knowledge and use of project management methodologies.
Good understanding of South African employment legislation.
Experience in preparing OE/OD reports and presentations for various stakeholders (Units, Divisions, Steering Committees, Exco and Board).

Desirable Requirements

Working knowledge of HC information systems (HC SAP SuccessFactors).
Broad generalist Human Capital experience spanning the full employee lifecycle, including talent, performance, and HC operations.
Proven experience in organisational design, job analysis, job evaluation and grading.
A Change Management certification.

COMPETENCIES

BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES

1. Customer Service Orientation

Tries to understand the underlying needs of customers and matches these needs to available or customized products and services.
Adapts processes and procedures to meet on-going customer needs.
Utilises the feedback received by customers, in order to develop new and/or improve existing services/ products that relate to their on-going needs.
Thinks of new ways to align offerings with future customer needs.

1. Self-Awareness and Self Control

Withholds effects of strong emotions in difficult situations.
Keeps functioning or responds constructively despite stress.
May apply special techniques or plan of time to manage emotions or stress.

1. Strategic and Innovative Thinking

Experiments with new approaches, tests scenarios, questions assumptions and challenges conventional thinking.
Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others, leveraging internal and external sources of information, to build incremental revenue and growth opportunities.

1. Driving Delivery of Results

Sets challenging goals that will have a significant impact on the business or support the organisational strategy.
Commits significant resources and/or time to ensure that challenging goals are achieved, while also taking action to mitigate risk.

1. Teamwork and Cooperation

Acts to promote a friendly climate and good morale and resolves conflicts.
Creates opportunities for cross-functional working.
Encourages others to network outside of their own team/department and learn from their experience.

TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES

Talent Management

Deep understanding of best practice on career and talent management.
Able to diagnose and address workforce planning issues and gaps.
Able to develop plans to resolve the most challenging gaps identified in talent forecasts.

Learning and Development

Ability to analyse training/learning and development needs.
Knowledge of key providers and able to liaise with them on provision, knowledge of policies and procedures and ability to advise managers and employees.
Encourages staff to develop and apply their skills.
Suggests to individuals ways of improving performance and competence.
Engages in development and career planning dialogues with employees.

Psychometric Assessment

Competent in the administration, scoring, and interpretation of a range of psychometric instruments across cognitive, personality, and competency domains, in full compliance with HPCSA ethical and professional guidelines.
Able to produce professional, insightful psychometric evaluation reports for selection, development, and succession purposes, translating technical findings into clear, actionable recommendations for decision-makers.
Skilled in delivering structured, empathetic assessment feedback to individuals at all levels of the organisation, including new employees; able to contextualise results and support development planning.
Knowledgeable in aggregate reporting of psychometric data to inform talent strategy, culture diagnostics, and organisational health indicators.

Coaching and Mentoring

Knowledgeable in the design and governance of formal mentoring and coaching frameworks, including programme architecture, matching methodologies, and multi-level rollout across diverse employee segments.
Able to identify, evaluate, and manage independent coaching and mentoring service providers, ensuring professional accreditation standards (e.g., ICF, COMENSA) and contractual performance are maintained.
Able to measure and report on coaching and mentoring programme effectiveness, using outcome and satisfaction data to demonstrate development impact and drive continuous improvement.

Reporting & Communication

Designs, reviews and improves reporting processes and provides guidance.
Leads production of complex environment reports, takes an editorial role, determines content and level of detail, and ensures consistent messaging and branding.
Is relied on by others to help them write complex technical and non-technical documents and briefs.
Can determine which aspects of this knowledge area need to be transferred to others in order to achieve organisational goals.
Coaches others and transfers communication skills and knowledge to others.
Able to communicate complex problems or concepts, by making them simple and understandable for others.
Adapts language to the level of the audience in order to ensure that the message has a positive impact and is interesting to the audience.
Is articulate, demonstrates a wide range of vocabulary, and is confident when talking to large/high level audiences

Business Acumen

Reviews own actions against the organisation's strategic plan; includes the big picture when considering possible opportunities or projects or thinks about long-term applications of current activities.
Understands the projected direction of the industry and how changes might impact the organisation.
Deep understanding of commercial drivers and can take decisions based on an assessment of alternatives concerning complex business situations.
Deep understanding of DBSA economic priorities and how they can be implemented to meet DBSA's strategic objectives.
Deep understanding of DBSA's core sector role in achieving DBSA's strategic objectives.
Deep understanding of the need to coordinate efforts with many government entities, private sector, community groups and individuals to ensure effective implementation of new policies and regulations.

Project Management

Ability to plan, initiate, execute, control and close projects related to a relevant function as well as to track and manage resources, timelines, costs, deliverables and performance, and implement contingency plans if necessary, to ensure projects are successfully.
Defines, plans and manages large and/or strategic projects, including those with a high degree of technical complexity, with impacts across the organisation and/or with national implications.
Assembles and leads diverse and multi-disciplinary teams, ensuring maximum effective resource utilisation.
Successfully manages substantial project budgets and reports directly to senior managers on the progress and results of projects.
Identifies complex issues that need escalation and proposes appropriate corrective actions.

Strategic Planning

Ability to analyse business trends, implications and options to devise holistic and long-term strategic plans as well as execute the required change is essential to meet DBSA's objectives and future goals.
Develops long-term objectives, strategies, and goals. Orients to longer terms than day-to-day activities; determines long-term issues, problems or opportunities. Develops and establishes broad scale, longer-term objectives, goals, or special projects (e.g., affecting a department, several departments or DBSA).
Develops a business strategy; assesses and links short-term, day-to-day tasks in the context of long-term business strategies or a long-term perspective; considers whether short-term goals will meet long-term objectives.
Ability to analyse complex economic trends and their impact on organisational strategy.

Solutions Focused

Identifies complex problems based on a broad range of factors, many of which are ambiguous or difficult to define.
While remaining guided by organisational values, identifies optimal solutions, thinking first in terms of possible approaches and flexibilities in the system vs. blind adherence to rules or procedures.
Evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of solutions after they have been implemented and identifies needed changes.

Presentation Skills

Understands how to present objectives in a compelling manner and maintain the interest of the audience.
Knows how to deliver presentations appropriately (e.g., maintaining eye contact, the appropriate use of hand gestures, etc.) and at the correct pace.
Knows how to clarify and confirm people’s feelings, concerns and needs.

*The KPA’s, competencies and relationships listed in this document, are not exhaustive, and the incumbent will be expected to undertake additional duties within their capacity to meet the needs of business and/or the business unit.

Organisational Effectiveness Specialist

Skills