Rather than addressing the skills gaps to increase productivity within their employees, organisations in South Africa seem to have reluctantly adopted training merely to comply with the amendments to the Skills Development Act and the requirements of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) points, bemoans Gizelle McIntyre, Director of the Institute of People Development (IPD).
McIntyre argues that, while this might increase the application of skills in the workplace, the downside is that the focus and approach to skills development might be affected. “The concern is that people are being trained with the sole purpose of garnering 25 ‘magical’ points. This means that the training is often not based on the skills needed, according to a gap analysis, but rather on whichever training will achieve the most points, in the shortest time. Worse still, whichever training provider has the best ratings, rather than the best solutions, will be chosen as a compliance partner, rather than as a leader in skills development.”
She adds: “When will South Africa opt for a healthy skills development approach? The key is to employ skills development in order to foster better engaged workers, build people’s proficiencies and upskill the nation and not to gain some BBBEE points or a tick on your scorecard. This process is garnering some cynicism and a feeling of exhaustion amongst the believers of real skills development and transformation. Ironic, considering the points can still be gained with a focus on meeting real needs.”
McIntyre foresees a bad year to come for the skills development industry, as rumours abound that Skills Levy claims for discretionary grants might fall away or be limited to 10% and to using public entities.
“Too many corporations have made their Skills Levy claim their entire training budget. If the claims fall away, as expected, these businesses will have no source of funding left for skills development. Training departments are instructed to ‘find the money’ – but do we ask our accountants to find the money to cover their fees? Some offer 1% of an employee’s salary for training. Has anyone ever calculated what this equates to? If they had, they would have realised that not much can be done with that limited budget.”