Companies can make a significant difference to the country’s frighteningly high unemployment statistics by getting involved in learnership programmes.
SA’s official unemployment rate is slightly over 27%, according to Statistics SA, but that only takes into account the number of people who are actively looking for work, not those who have never tried, or have given up looking for a job. Government is continually talking about job creation, but this is countered by a lack of skills for those jobs that are available.
This is where business can take matters into its own hands, says Bonita Brown, group corporate sales director at CTU Training. Learnerships provide companies with an opportunity to upskill both the unemployed and the employed, including their own staff, by funding their training, while at the same time improving their broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) ranking.
