Learnerships provide a lifeline for people with disabilities (PWDs), but the perceived challenges associated with implementing such programmes puts corporates off, leaving few opportunities for PWDs to grow and even fewer opportunities for businesses to achieve their B-BBEE targets.
This is according to Beth Cook, CEO of Progression, one of the country’s leading disability management service providers. Progression promotes economic and social equality for the most marginalised South Africans through inclusive solutions, and sees first-hand how big business is struggling with learnerships.
“In a country overwhelmed by severe skills shortages and spiralling unemployment rates, learnerships have never been more critical. They promote access to education and training by allowing individuals to gain valuable skills and work experience, while obtaining an accredited qualification. However, despite these social benefits – and the advantages to companies looking to meet their B-BBEE goals – too many corporates are discouraged from implementing learnerships,” Cook explains.
Some of the biggest challenges come from the learners themselves. Cook says poverty and desperation drive able-bodied candidates to fake disabilities with falsified doctors’ notes to get onto learnerships. These factors also often prompt PWDs to simultaneously register on multiple learnerships to cash in on several stipends at the same time.
“These are the kinds of learner challenges that deter businesses from implementing learnerships. In such cases, organisations benefit from working with a third party to verify doctors’ notes and learnership registrations for authenticity,” she adds.
On the other side of the learnership coin is interacting with the various roleplayers, like the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), and other companies in the case of hosted learnerships.
“Businesses dealing with the various SETAs often complain about slow or downed systems, slow response times, and unrealistic deadlines. They also battle to find hosted learnership opportunities – which most corporates prefer – as there are not a lot of these options available in the current marketplace. Working with other businesses to set up, fund and co-ordinate hosted learnerships is often seen as a major stumbling block,” Cook says.
Progression is tackling these two challenges head-on by dealing with the SETAs on behalf of companies, sparing them the trouble. The firm has also established its own employment hubs to deal with the lack of available relevant work experience for learnerships in the country.
There are six Progression Employment Hubs in total, covering web design and development; payroll; sewing; furniture manufacture; vegetable farming; and ceramics.
Companies are invited to work with Progression to fund those hubs that are most appropriate to their businesses as part of their Enterprise and/or Supplier Development initiatives.
Cook says this puts corporates in the driver’s seat of their learnership initiatives, leading to a better chance of learner absorption and ensuring a more successful outcome for all parties involved.
“When companies are involved in this way, the chances for success are greater. That being said, learnerships should never be an afterthought, and should always be included as part of a comprehensive B-BBEE strategy from the beginning. That is the one responsibility that does lie with corporates. We help businesses develop and implement such strategies for a sustainable, integrated approach to workplace transformation,” Cook concludes.
Over the past 20 years, Progression has trained more than 10 000 people with disabilities and helped more than 6 000 people with disabilities find employment. It has also engaged with and consulted to more than 1 200 companies around issues of transformation, diversity and skills development and implemented more than 1 200 projects in these fields, valued at R240 000 000.
