Press Release

Global workplace assessment group, Saville Consulting today named renowned organisational psychologist Werner Barkhuizen head of its fledgling South African operation, in an announcement of a strong executive team to steer the growth of the company.

Group Chairman Professor Peter Saville said the management team comprised Barkhuizen, Managing Director, and Emile Bosman, Managing Consultant. Bosman is a distinguished consultant, who studied at the University of Stellenbosch.

Prof. Saville said the appointments were key to the company's vision of creating a new "gold standard" for workplace assessment.

"HR professionals want you to listen to their problems, and provide them with a solution not a product. So may people in our industry go and meet them with a bag of products which they can sell. Our approach is consultative. I don't believe that by ticking boxes you can evaluate a person or provide solutions for business. You have to consider that the needs of your client today are more sophisticated and the subtleties between roles are more refined," said, Prof. Saville.

Werner Barkhuizen says, "The changes we have identified in the demands of today's marketplace have encouraged us to develop a fresh generation of modern tools and solutions. These new tools will address the current changes in the employment arena and will be more insightful about people issues."

Barkhuizen has consulted in a multiplicity of organisational environments, ranging from listed and non listed entities in the consumer goods and chemical industries to the mining sectors.

In 2003, Barkhuizen founded Eknowvation, a business and organisational psychology consulting firm specialising in organisational optimisation and prior to that he was a consultant at SHL South Africa.

"There are an indefinite number of personality variables and a subtle difference make an enormous difference to the success of a person in their job. A good manager knows how to interpret these, but jobs are getting more complex and our industry needs to respond to this," Barkhuizen concludes.

Bosman comes with a wealth of experience in workplace assessments having worked in the 90's as Manager, Psychological Services for Kumba Resources, later as Organisational Development Manager for Frito Lay, the Food Division of PepsiCo and also as Senior Consultant for SHL, a British Consulting firm specialising in psychological assessments and corporate development.

In 2004, he left the corporate environment to create his own Performance Management Consultancy with a team of associated psychologists and related specialists. 

"We have an extensive international range of multi-dimensional tools of exceptional validity, for assessing people at work. Now we are able to provide local support to clients in South Africa who want to leverage our new psychometric technology to measure critical information for the enhancement of potential, more accurately and in less time," he said.