Page 19 - CAO 25th Ann Coffee Table Book

including the eThekwini Metro, who were publicising bursaries and employment opportunities. Since the career fair was during the school vacation, it was pleasing to see a large number of parents attending with their children.
In 2013, an agreed upon performance management system was developed and introduced with great success. It is still in use today. Tangible results of this ongoing process are the decrease in staff absenteeism and the increase in individual outputs with new benchmarks. Average processing times were markedly reduced. Shortcomings in procedures were identified and refined to enable the CAO to work smarter. Regular workshops were held with supervisors.
A process of ongoing dialogue with institutional stakeholders was launched. These meetings focused on service delivery, meeting the needs of members, new innovations, institutional requirements and challenges. The outcomes of these meetings resulted in the presentation of short, high impact serviceability sessions with staff, reviewing institutional reports and including those that provided valuable information for institutional applicant recruitment planning, institutional academic planning, teaching and learning in the classroom and admissions research projects.
Applicants benefitted from the CAO’s Facebook and Twitter presence. These social media platforms allowed a bi-directional conversation in real time between applicants and the CAO. Close attention was paid to the operability of the interdependent system modules that work together to form the applicant, institution and information platform,which is the backbone of the CAO operation.
Regular system stress test exercises were introduced to identify areas in the system where changes would bring about tangible benefits such as, among others, the Reporting System, where the statistical and applicant information reports were enhanced to reduce the system overheads required to generate the complex reports. The Document System was enhanced to allow institutions access to specific document types of their choosing. The need for human intervention
Bursary recipients at the User Group Meeting held in April 2013
Address by CEO George van der Ross at the 2014 AGM at Coastlands Hotel on the Ridge
Keynote address by Prof. Graham Bloch at the 2014 AGM at Coastlands Hotel on the Ridge
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