Investing in learnerships is a no-brainer, really

WITH South Africa’s unemployment rate at a high, learnerships are necessary to help build a competent work force and are key to boosting an organisation’s broad-based black economic empowerment levels.

The government has made skills development a priority element of the B-BBEE scorecard and is encouraging companies to put employees through learnerships in a bid to upgrade their work force.

Companies registered with their Sector Education and Training Authority (Seta) which train in accordance with their Workplace Skills Plan can claim back up to 70% of the portion of their Skills Development Levy paid over to the South African Revenue Service every year.

In addition, learnerships help businesses benefit from tax rebates, which is a great advantage.

Organisations should start seeing the advantages of learnership programmes. They’re not only integral to talent management and development, but a great way to boost B-BEE levels.

ilearn has partnered with Air Traffic Navigation Services (experts in air traffic control), Altech Netstar (pioneers in vehicle tracking and recovery), as well as Bata South Africa (global footwear manufacturer and retailer) to demonstrate commitment to increasing the number of employed disabled workers in the country through learnerships.

A learnership is a vocational training and educational programme that links structured learning with work experience to obtain a registered qualification.

It combines theory and workplace practice in a qualification that is recognised by the National Qualification Framework.

Skills development is necessary to boost employment levels in a number of scarce skills areas, and a learnership can help plug this gap.

Skills development is a priority element of the BB-BEE scorecard and businesses that achieve less than a 40% minimum threshold of skills development points are penalised on their overall rating.

A learnership provides companies with the opportunity to claim eight points, provided it invests 6% of its payroll on training people of colour.

Further, if employers enlist 2.5% of employees in learnerships, the organisation will earn four points and gain an additional four points if the trained work force is made up of 2.5% black unemployed learners.

There are an additional four points if the organisation trains black disabled employees and the business can claim an additional five bonus points if it’s able to permanently employ the previously unemployed learners at the end of the learnership programme.

Skills development through learnerships is an imperative for B-BBEE score levels and therefore highly beneficial for South African organisations. It also helps to cultivate and develop a talented and highly competent work force, so it’s important to invest wisely in relevant and quality learnerships.

How a learnership will benefit the business:

Helps to build an effective work force.

Connects learning to career paths.

Develops skills among job seekers and future employees. Improves B-BBEE scores.

Manages the talent pipeline.

Learnerships are an effective strategy to ensure that businesses are empowered by a relevant skills base over the long term. And the bonus is – they are work-based and delivered on site.

Richard Rayne is the chief executive officer of ilearn, a learning solutions-based business.