Senior company officials have confirmed that a shortage of skills has been one of the most costly and troublesome issues affecting the management of South African businesses in the past two years.
This was a finding of a recent Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) survey, which included a cross-section of 40 businesses recruiting skilled labour in Gauteng.
CDE director Ann Bernstein said: “To confront the full reality of our skills crisis we have to face the fact that South African education and training is in deep trouble. Fixing this will take a generation. But the question no one wants to deal with is: What do we do in the meantime?”
Bernstein said some findings of the survey provided immediate options for addressing the skills crisis, such as “the speedy restoration of the apprentice system, opening up of immigration and a government re-think on the pressures for employment equity”.
Nearly half — 19 — of the businesses surveyed were in manufacturing, with the remainder spread across mining, retail and services.
“The companies were asked what percentage of their staff fell into the category of ‘scarce skills’. Two-thirds responded that more than half of their staff could be described in this way,” said the CDE.
The survey found that formal technical qualifications are not the only qualities in short supply. “For the majority of businesses the greatest shortfall is in experience and breadth of judgement, as well as people and social skills.
“The shortages felt by business are occurring in an increasingly competitive global skills market, where pressures are exacerbated by emigration, ageing and promotion of skilled staff. Moreover, government’s insistence on ambitious transformation goals is constricting the skills market further, driving competition for skilled black staff in a situation where whites — the largest available pool of skilled people — are no longer freely employable.”
Difficulties reported in recruiting skilled black staff included problems of poaching, along with the salary premium required to retain skilled black personnel. These suggest the skills shortage is being driven, in part, by the unintended consequences of empowerment policies, said the researchers.