Ensure BEE benchmarks are respected - and kept

S'bu Manqele, business director: the Switch Group, argues that the industry needs to make a more concerted effort to develop talent, and attract and train previously disadvantaged individuals. He also maintains that companies supporting the industry should pay more attention to BEE credentials when tendering for work.

To ensure real transformation of the branding, design and advertising industry will require a far greater commitment than we're currently seeing. While everyone acknowledges its value and importance, few companies have gone beyond this in ensuring active BEE. Too many still rely on other players to attract and impart skills to young, up-and-coming black creatives and client-relationship personnel - and subsequently poach this new talent when their training is complete. As such, instead of all actively growing and contributing to the skills pool within the industry, we compete aggressively for the limited resources available, discouraging loyalty and real career development - an exercise which is completely counter-productive. This, in turn, results in young, less-experienced individuals rising to levels for which they are not yet ready.

Missed opportunities

The advertising industry is, thus, to my mind, effectively missing out on an incredible opportunity. As a sector that thrives on creativity as its chief commodity, we cannot afford to exclude potential “creatives”, either by choice or through general apathy. We should rather be working together to ensure that all the children of our country - no matter where they are born or educated - have the same opportunities and are equally aware of the fantastic array of careers available in our industry. This commitment needs to extend beyond the type of effective awareness campaigns we so carefully tailor for our clients, and have its foundation in active and meaningful training. As an industry we therefore need to budget for, and provide internships and on-the-job training to, suitable BEE candidates on an ongoing basis.

While the above approach would do much to bring us closer to reaching the BEE benchmarks that the government has set for the industry, I believe that external companies making use of our services have a critical role in ensuring that these benchmarks are kept. One can argue that the industry has been so sluggish in its transformation efforts because the BEE requirements stipulated in numerous tenders are clearly not “requirements”, as demonstrated by the non-BEE-compliance of companies often awarded the work. Until such time as tenders are only awarded to agencies that demonstrate real empowerment, no real transformation incentives - with economic consequences - will be set, and this lack of external commitment to real transformation will continue to be mirrored internally by the industry.

We can't afford lip-service

It would, therefore, seem to be time for advertising agencies - and their clients - to start to have a meaningful conversation about how to work together to transform the industry and make it truly accessible to all South Africans. While this will go a long way in partnering with government and big business to meet our country's growth objectives, it also makes economic sense. FMCG companies, like Unilever, invested a lot of talent-development time for the industry to have a good pool of marketers. This benefited both companies and employees. We can no longer afford to pay lip-service to BEE benchmarks.

We need to respect these, act upon them, and encourage our clients to hold us accountable to these commitments. In this way we will not only enrich the industry exponentially, but also ensure that it remains sustainable and acts responsibly in the context of BEE. It is obvious that an industry with limited resources (talent) will not perform at its best.