BEE is box-ticking rather than equity says Gobodo

Nonkululeko Gobodo's company SizweNtsalubaGobodo, with its 55 partners and more than 1,000 staff, is the largest national black-owned accounting firm, and the fifth-largest in SA.

The private sector in particular was lagging on employment equity strategies, Gobodo said last week. "I've met some from big companies, too, who don't have the skills you'd expect - people who were put in a position with a title, but without the support to learn; to grow into serious business people. The country loses if that's all we do."

Speaking in an interview, Gobodo said the "frustratingly slow" progress of transformation could be blamed partly on the way employment equity was implemented. She also said a change in focus was needed to improve the parlous unemployment situation in the country.

According to Statistics SA's quarterly labour force survey at the end of last month, unemployment had risen to its highest level since the third quarter of last year. The expanded unemployment rate, which includes those who have given up looking for work, stands at 37% of a potential labour force of 18.4m people.

"I'd rather see us commit to the skilling of people rather than concentrating on numbers. There's a tendency in some companies to tick boxes," said Gobodo.

Labour market analyst from Adcorp, Loane Sharpe, called this a "welcome critique" of SA's affirmative action laws, which he said focused on quotas rather than substance. Sharpe said the pay gap between blacks and whites was, on average, slowly but steadily shrinking, yet none of the affirmative action targets took this into account.

Gobodo said she was concerned at the lack of support for African women leaders: "You cannot have programmes that do not have support systems for the people you are targeting to empower."

Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge