We began this section with the following objectives:
- Find a more cost-effective way to integrate the human capital development strategies of an employer with its strategic business vision.
- Develop a framework for measuring the impact of government policies on both social transformation and the value-add required by business.
- Develop a framework for holistically measuring the value-add of employee well-being to corporate productivity.
We then looked at how employers could create an environment to help employees meet their most basic human needs. In so doing, we built links between the workplace and broader societal commitments instead of deferring to policymakers’ incentives or penalties to encourage participation.
Finally, we demonstrated how the aggregated picture can be integrated into a company’s shortterm and long-term strategic plan.
By framing the workplace within this broader context, we moved our objectives closer to our well-being vision for the future. We conclude this section by summing up the commercial benefits of getting the linkages between diversity and inclusion, gender equality, and transformation in the workplace right.
When organisations set their strategies, they look at the environment in which they operate and make decisions that will best ensure their success. These decisions often involve contributing to a sustainable business environment that will ultimately affect their own success.
Our approach to integrated planning
Our approach to establishing an inclusive development framework for the workplace rests on the following assumptions:
- Organisational culture is crucial to driving integrated workplace strategies. Appropriate diversity interventions that encourage employee engagement, acceptance and participation will better enable success. Seeing culture as a catalyst for innovation in the workplace rather than a ‘nice-to-have’ enables employers to tap into both business and employee needs within and outside the workplace.
- Diversity and inclusion improve the bottom line by removing barriers to open participation by employees with different socio-economic backgrounds, experiences and cultures. This also helps to form a vital link between the workplace and society.
- The current debate on gender equality merits special recognition.
- The transformation of the workplace offers a virtuous framework for a well-being corporation.
Our point of departure is that government policy objectives and directives will not necessarily be expressed in workplace policy. It’s also not clear whether government policy will have the desired outcomes. We therefore have to assess our strategy for integrating various workplace imperatives and programmes with the policy chain of planning objectives we have identified.
What, then, are the essential attributes of integrated planning, and how will the various programmes discussed in this segment?
We suggest that questions of diversity and inclusion, gender representation, culture and socio-economic transformation cannot be resolved without a framework that interprets and implements these policies, and unlocks the enormous value embedded in them. What’s needed is a critical reflection on transformation in the workplace, and clearer guidelines on how to implement policies.
This concluding chapter responds to missing links in the policy chain by using skills development as one example of how integrated programmes can be implemented across transformation scorecards while aligning with corporate strategy.
Integrated planning: the case of skills development
Our starting point is from the perspective of the people corporate. We assume that corporates require competent people who are properly skilled in order for it to function optimally. Competence and skills are assumed to be determined from qualifications and experience as a base, and assessments as a confirming or selecting indicator. Employers have long used educational qualifications as a signal of general aptitude and reliability.
1. Strategic SETA compliance
To qualify for training grants from the Skills Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) the organisation belongs to, it must compile a workplace skills plan. The SETAs manage these grants in line with the requirements of the Skills Development Act (No. 97 of 1998) and Skills Development Levies Act (No. 9 of 1999).
These workplace skills plans feed into the SETA Sector Skills Plan, which is critical to determining where to focus in addressing skills planning issues. The organisation is therefore the starting point of skills planning for the country in all sectors.
Workplace skills plans should be formulated with a view to investing in skills that enable the organisation to achieve its strategic objectives. The process of completing the plan should be a strategic one that includes input from across the business to determine the skills the company needs to achieve its strategic goals. However, it’s often relegated to being little more than a legislative requirement and does not focus on organisational development and future needs – despite training and development playing an important role in the organisation’s ability to achieve its objectives.
As a result, the aggregation of corporate submissions is therefore failing to sustainably change the country’s skills profile, and this will continue if no deliberate and concerted effort is made to overhaul the system.1 We will get true value from these plans only if they are developed for the benefit of the employer and employee.
2. The inverted learning matrix
Skills development spend targets have increased since the new BEE codes were gazetted on 1 October 2013, making it even more difficult for corporates to achieve BEE compliance. However, what we’re finding is that corporates are using their training budgets mainly to get skills development points on the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) scorecard. If they were to align their BEE strategies with their business plans, the BEE outcome would be a consequence of doing business, not a cost.
The learning matrix presented in the skills development pillar of the B-BBEE Act2 looks complex to implement and manage; however, if we invert it (Figure 3.9.1), we begin to see a number of guidelines that make it easier to understand.