Christine Leonardi
27 November 2007
opinion
Johannesburg — SA FACES huge challenges as the world shifts from a buyer to seller's market for labour. For the 24-million unskilled South Africans, surviving in this new labour market will be impossible.
The playing field has been levelled; all the rules have changed and no one can afford to be selective in a tight new market that requires an entirely new set of skills. This means all South Africans need to start making difficult, sweeping changes to everything we do.
However, SA is running out of time to be proactive. Done perfectly, it will take up to 10 years before we see real results. And, the longer we stall, the more difficult transformation will be.
"SA no longer has the luxury to take things step by step. The rest of the world is not standing still to give you a chance to put things in place for the next phase," says Canadian HR expert, Prof Linda Duxbury.
She says that on some level SA is not acknowledging the critical transition from a buyer's to seller's market for labour. In SA, a discussion about organisations hiring people because of race overshadows the fact that they are not hiring people because of skills sets.
"In a buyer's market, the state could get away with legislation affirmatively promoting certain groups of people. However, a seller's market does not look at gender, ethnicity or race; only skills -- whether you can do the work," Duxbury says. "I would be distressed if SA's leaders fiddle while SA falls; because the real issue in SA is education. The way out of poverty is through education. Instead of talking about legislation about who to hire, first make sure everybody has the skills."
She says that the new labour market is all about education. "All the mineral resources in the world won't do you any good, if you don't have a skilled labour force to exploit it."
SA is a rich country, but not when it comes to human capital. Research shows that almost 50% of the population does not have a Grade 6 level of education. This means half of the population cannot read or write.
"Organisations can train people for specific skills; but not basic skills, like reading and writing. Companies can only overlay specific job skills onto people who can read and write," says Duxbury.
She points out that most employers across the globe expect employees to have essential basic skills. People must know how to read and write, know the basic rules of grammar; how to read something critically; write a response; answer the phone; take a message and how to behave toward other people. They also need basic arithmetic and technology skills.
However, SA's unskilled population needs to understand that they cannot be turned into skilled workers overnight. Education takes time.
"It takes nine months to have a baby. You can't rush the cycle. Similarly, it takes 12 to 15 years to equip someone with the basic skills set required to make a positive contribution to the economy ," says Duxbury.
EDUCATION Minister Naledi Pandor agrees. "Equalising education provision and outcomes in a deeply unequal society is a complex and often frustrating challenge. Deep transformation in a big system takes a long time," she told an international gathering of educators in December last year. "Errors have been made and their consequences have had to be faced and repaired. Much has been achieved, but we are eager to achieve more."
In addressing public concerns about the quality of public education, the South African government trained 80 master maths and science teachers by September 2006 to increase the number of African children passing mathematics and science, succeeding at tertiary institutions and successfully taking on the scientific fields.
In addition, the government announced plans to:
Publisher and facilitating editor of Tribute magazine Tlhopheho Modise notes that the government needs to seriously consider what skills matric students can offer a knowledge-intensive economy after 12 years of schooling.
"Education should teach people how to learn," notes Duxbury. It is becoming increasingly popular to employ knowledge workers, because they have the ability to learn the things they don't know. For example, when a big Canadian oil company can't find a petroleum engineer, it hires a mining engineer. A person with basic engineering skills has the ability to learn the other specific skills required.
However, "education does not necessarily have to involve a tertiary degree", she notes. "In the last two decades, pushing children into university had more status. As a result, tradesmen, like electricians and plumbers, are now in short supply.
"The difference between education in Africa and the developed world is that education in the developed world is a given; a right people don't have to pay for. In some European countries, people don't even pay for tertiary education."
Education in Canada, for example, is free; but compulsory. All Canadians, including members of employment equity groups, must attend school until the age of 17. Duxbury notes that education goes out to the Canadian aboriginals who prefer not to live in industrial areas.
"SA has the resources to legislate education. The right thing to do is for someone to be brave enough to say: People have to stay in school. It is free. It is the law," says Duxbury.
Leading global executive recruitment firm SpencerStuart's Chris van Melle Kamp notes that SA will be able to compete on the global stage only if it transforms its working environment. SA needs to:
SA's skilled professionals leave because they feel unappreciated.
In comparison to Africa, SA is doing phenomenally well, notes Duxbury. "But don't be complacent. It is not the rest of Africa that will come in and steal SA's skilled labour. The developed world, including Canada, recruits skilled South Africans; not people with a grade 3 level education and no skills.
"In a seller's market for labour all the rules have changed. It is all about getting and keeping people."
Van Melle Kamp says that economies across the globe have skills shortages in the engineering, sales, accounting, teaching, banking and medical fields. Moreover, the world's fastest growing economies in Asia don't have enough senior leaders and managers."
As a result, countries are developing aggressive human capital attraction, retention and development strategies to maintain their competitive edge. "They offer highly mobile, well-educated and trained people in high political or social risk countries, including SA, better living conditions, more money and better career opportunities," Van Melle Kamp says. "The social and environmental risk associated with HIV/AIDS in SA also negatively affects the country's current and future skills base."
Duxbury adds: "The developed world is profoundly short of skilled workers in the health-care sector in particular -- an area in which SA is losing most of its key people."
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