African, Indian and coloured employees are moving increasingly into senior management positions in South Africa, a recent employment equity survey has revealed.
The study, conducted by Deloitte & Touche Human Capital Corporation, showed ”promising” trends in implementing employment equity, and a reversal of slow movement in 2002. The survey questioned 54 companies, ranging from small
businesses to large corporations across various sectors, on employment equity.
The company said in a statement that Africans, coloureds and Indians were moving into senior management and professionally qualified/mid-management levels, while the number of white employees in these positions had decreased.
The same movement for African and coloured workers was evident at top management level, although in that category both Indians and whites showed 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,” survey manager Terry Brindle said.
”Responses from participating organisations would show this to have been the case.
”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 EE (employment equity) plans and AA (affirmative action) objectives,” she said.
The survey found that 54% of respondents viewed cultural diversity programmes as an essential business imperative.
In addition, 89% of respondents had received feedback from employees on their perceptions of the EE process and 78% of organisations’ employees had either undergone or would undergo training to help them deal with diversity.
Almost three-quarters of cultural diversity programmes in organisations were on-going. It also showed that while companies bemoaned a shortage of affirmative action candidates for management level, only 44% of respondents had a retention strategy in place for AA employees.
”Scarcity of AA candidates remains a problem, particularly at management level and in the areas of sales/marketing, information technology and finance,” Brindle said.
”As a result ‘poaching’ is still common, with 63% of respondents being victims,” she said. – Sapa