AUTHOR: Not specified
PUBLICATION: The Citizen - Personal Finance
Why should young people, who often have no skills and no experience, be employed? The answer is that it contributes to growing talent, helps with work-force planning and diversity, finds unique skills and talents and increases adaptability and opportunities.
In March this year, Statistics SA announced that the unemployment rate fell to 32.7% in the last quarter of 2022 from 32.9% in the July-September 2022 period. Most of the unemployed are young people and although there is a lot of talk about the youth, not much happens. “Youth unemployment is one of the largest global challenges and is particularly high in South Africa as many young job seekers are excluded from the social networks as a result of living in a non-working household, being spatially isolated, or racial and gender issues,” said Yuneal Padayachy, member support executive at the Black Economic Empowerment Chamber. He said all sectors in the economy should employ young people for these reasons: Growing talent and work-force planning: One of the largest challenges entities face is succession planning. What happens when the current experienced workforce retires? Who will take their places?
“For example, an entity where an individual worked in the same position for 20 years and nobody really knows how he works but he always meets deadlines and gets the job done. Once this person leaves the entity or retires, there is a gap that needs to be filled, but nobody is in line to take over this position,” Padayachy said. “Entities must ensure that they remain competitive, as well as grow talent and plan for the future. That starts by investing in the youth.”
Workforce diversity: Young people in the working environment bring diversity was everyone is not the same age and has different views.
Unique skills and talents: Young people bring about a new way of thinking within the work environment by offering fresh, new ideas. “Technological advances are made on a daily basis and young people are quite tech savvy. In the work environment this can be effective and efficient.”
Adaptability: Padayachy said young people are also quite adaptable in workplace situations. “When change happens in the workplace or something new is introduced, employees must adapt to be successful."
Opportunities: “Providing an opportunity to a young person is the starting point of their career. This is where their journey starts to earn a living and often it is the starting point of changing a life,” said Padayachy. Padayachy said government and the private sector must both proactively find ways to mitigate high unemployment rates with a particular focus on youth. “I had the pleasure of being part of the Youth Employment Service (Y.E.S) initiative that tackles youth unemployment since inception. It is a key project introduced in 2018 to reduce youth unemployment.”
The Y.E.S Initiative provides for and institutes Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) recognition for Y.E.S measured entities and qualification criteria applicable to B-BBEE recognition for job creation. It also seeks to tackle the issue of unemployment and place black unemployed young people in jobs to gain experience. “This initiative aims to improve the grim employment outlook for young work seekers by offering a quality work experience over a period of 12 months. This in turn should improve their chances of finding a job or starting their own businesses,” Padayachy explained.
Only individuals who meet these criteria are eligible for participation under the Y.E.S initiative from a -BBEE perspective: they must be between the ages of 18 and 35 and meet the definition of “black people" as defined in the Broad-Based Black Economic Act as amended. “Among the B-BBEE recognition awarded, entities are also eligible to access the Employment Tax Incentive. The Y.E.S. initiative does not only offer benefits to the individual, as the entity will benefit too.” Padayachy said a commitment to an ongoing drop in unemployment figures means it is imperative to prioritise investing in youth with a particular focus on young black people.
Amendment to the Gazette