Companies in South Africa bemoan the shortage of affirmative action candidates for management level, yet only 44% of respondents to the recent employment equity survey, have a retention strategy in place for these employees, a survey published by Deloitte & Touche Human Capital Corporation has found.
This apparent contradiction is among the most revealing results of the survey, which also shows promising trends in the progress towards implementation of employment equity, Deloitte & Touche said on Tuesday.
The previous survey published in 2002 showed a disappointingly slow movement of blacks, Indians and coloureds into top and senior management, with white representation still increasing, the company said.
This year, the trend has clearly been reversed, with blacks, coloureds and Indians moving increasingly into senior management and professionally qualified/mid-management levels while numbers of whites in these positions have decreased. The same movement for black and coloureds is visible at top management level, except that here both Indians and whites show declining numbers.
“Last year we speculated that the slowness of the transition could be due to the policy adopted by many companies of training their own people up from within the organisation rather than competing for scarce resources available externally. Responses from participating organisations would show this to have been the case,” said survey manager, Terry Brindle.
“As a result we also see a marked increase this year in the numbers of companies achieving the numerical goals as set out in their last employment equity plans and affirmative action objectives.”
It also appears from the survey that companies are realising that for their employment equity strategies to be successful, staff must have buy-in. Consequently, 54% of respondents view cultural diversity programmes as an essential business imperative.
Some 89% of respondents have had feedback from employees on their perceptions of the employment equity process and 78% of organisations’ employees have either undergone or will undergo diversity training to help them deal with diversity. Almost three- quarters (73%) of cultural diversity programmes in organisations are ongoing interventions.
“It is clear that whatever the initiative, whether it be in making employment equity strategy a top business priority, implementing training and development for affirmative action candidates or introducing cultural diversity programmes, a key factor for success is the involvement and commitment of the CEO,” commented Brindle.
“Scarcity of affirmative action candidates remains a problem, particularly at management level and in the areas of sales/marketing, information technology and finance. As a result, ‘poaching’ is still common, with 63% of respondents being victims,” she said. – I-Net Bridge