Impact of Recent Legislation on Businesses- Skills Development Act [1]
1 THE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT ACT
Purpose of the Skills Development Act
• Develops the skills of people in South Africa in order to improve productivity.
• Invests in education and training of workers.
• Improves the chances of getting a job for previously disadvantaged people
• Encourages workers to participate in learning programmes.
• Redresses imbalances of the past through education and training
• Encourages businesses to improve the skills of their workers.
• Improves the chances of getting a job for previously disadvantaged people.
Impact of the SDA on business
Positives/Advantages
• Trains employees to improve productivity in the workplace.
• Promotes self-employment and black entrepreneurship Increases the return on investment in education and training.
• Business could become globally more competitive.
• Increases the number of skilled employees in areas where these skills are scarce.
• Encourages on-going skills development and learning to sustain the improvement of skills development.
• Improves employment opportunities and labour movement of workers from previously disadvantaged groups.
• Workplace discrimination can be addressed through training.
• Workplace is used as an active learning environment where employees can gain practical job experience
• BBBEE-compliant businesses can improve their products/service delivery as they employ more skilled workers.
AND/OR Negative/Disadvantages
• Increases cost as the process requires a large amount of paper work.
• Implementation of the SDA can be difficult to monitor and control.
• Skills programmes may not always address training needs of employees.
• Skills Development Levy could be an extra burden to financially struggling businesses.
• It may be monitored and controlled by government departments that do not have education and training as their key priorities.
• The SETAs may not be well organised and many courses offered by companies may not have unit standards that relate to the course content.
• Many service providers that offer training services are that not SAQA accredited.
• Many businesses may not support this government initiative.
• Employees are expected to attend learnerships during work hours which could affect the production process/productivity.
• Costly for businesses to employ a person to implement, manage and control learnerships.
• The time and money spent on improving employee skills is wasted if they leave the business.
Discriminatory actions according to the SDA
• Preventing employees from signing for a learnership due to their age or position in the workplace.
• Unfair development of skills and training to certain employees.
• Developing a workplace skills plan which exclusively caters for certain race/gender.
• Prioritising only senior management for training and skills development programmes.