Page 18 - SAMRC Annual Report 2023-24

the recipients of SAMRC scholarships and research
grants. What needs to be done going forward
is training black independent health science
investigators who may, in due course, assume
leadership positions in the health research space at
the SAMRC as well as elsewhere in the country. To this
end, we are currently focusing on the establishment
of a bespoke, multi-dimensional health science
leadership development programme.
As the SAMRC is increasingly meeting or
approaching its Transformation targets, we are
concomitantly expanding our focus on inclusion: our
organisational effort and practices to ensure that
groups or individuals with different backgrounds are
culturally and socially accepted and welcomed. In
this regard, self-awareness (the conscious knowledge
of one’s characters, feelings and motives) has been
underscored as a critical introspective approach
to foster creativity, self-management, decision-
making, learning, growth and leadership. These
capacities are also vital for meeting our strategic
goals, especially the generation of new knowledge,
the translation of our research into interventions that
benefit the South African population and increasing
the pool of health scientists in the country. The upgraded indoor and outdoor meeting
spaces at the Ridge Road campus in Durban.
Highlights from the past year

Listening and Consultation and exercise equipment was installed in the
The SAMRC continued to facilitate engagement gardens to promote healthy lifestyles. In Pretoria,
on general Transformation matters through our key concerns were identified, and responses are
Transformation Forum. We have also organised now in the planning phase.
opportunities to engage on specific issues, such as
revamping SAMRC campuses to create new indoor A working group set up to mark the United Nations
and outdoor spaces for meetings and discussion, International Day for People with Disabilities 2023
identification of hidden barriers to personal progress, successfully implemented a range of activities
unconscious bias and accommodations for people related to employee and public education, as well
with disabilities. The conversations conducted have as concrete action to accommodate people with
given valuable insight to the Transformation team disabilities.
and directly informed our Transformation agenda.
Self-awareness
Creating Environments that For several years the Human Resources department
Support Creativity and Inclusion has provided opportunities for employees to identify
We initiated Environmental Committees at our their personality type to strengthen self-awareness.
Ridge Road and Pretoria campuses, which were The tool being used is the Enneagram, which is
instrumental in identifying key concerns and setting widely used in the business sector internationally.
priorities for action. Under the auspices of the Ridge Evaluations show that the experience is highly
Road Environmental Committee, new indoor and rated and impactful, and consequently, over the
outdoor meeting spaces were created for meetings, past year we have escalated the pace of the rollout

16 SAMRC ANNUAL REPOR T 2023-24