2009 has ushered in a new set of companies to the Top 10 of the skills development ranking in the Top Empowerment Companies (TEC) survey. The shuffle brings support services company and black empowerment champion Adcorp Holdings into first place.
Kumba Iron Ore is the only company that has remained in the Top 10, though it was bumped from first place to eighth. Kumba and African Rainbow, both from the resources sector, took the top spots last year. Telkom and Faritec Holdings tumbled off the Top 10, leaving it without any ICT companies. Support services company Kelly joins the list in 9th place.
Other new additions to the top 10 are PPC, Truworths, Naspers, Allied Electronics and Netcare. Financial services companies Discovery Holdings and Glenrand MIB replace Mutual & Federal, Coronation Fund and African Bank.
Adcorp, with a permanent staff of 1 755 and almost 75 000 contract and temporary employees, is a people-intensive business. It has therefore needed a strategic skills development strategy, which it believes is crucial to its empowerment imperatives.
Werner Smith, head of Adcorp's group strategic research centre, says skills development has become a priority for the firm. "We believe you cannot get employment equity right if it isn't driven by skills development."
Smith says Adcorp takes a holistic approach to skills development that ranges from mentorship to setting out a career path, and even the self-actualisation of its staff.
The company has taken an approach to mentorship that is multitiered. Even at executive level, directors are not left out of mentorship arrangements. Learnership contracts are an important part of the firm's training strategy. The human resources department also conducts workshops and training programmes that emphasise personal development and employee wellness, says Smith. Empowerment within an organisation also ensures that staff have more confidence when they are promoted.
In the company's annual report, CEO Richard Pike says major infrastructure projects and the skills shortage bode well for skills development, job creation and poverty alleviation initiatives. Adcorp, he says, is well positioned to take advantage of these conditions due to its "unrivalled ability to search for talent, our ability to train talent and to navigate the skills development and learnership legislative and structural environments".
Pike is critical of government's skills policy, saying government initiatives, such as the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition, aim to get skills by training, development and importing people with high skills, but do not prevent talent from slipping out of SA.
Given the firm's stellar performance in skills development, perhaps it is time for government to start learning from private-sector successes.
