Barloworld Equipment aims to develop South African youngsters

Barloworld Equipment opened its doors to another intake of graduates for its progressive graduate development programme on March 8.

This year’s group comprises one male and nine female graduates from across Barloworld Equipment’s southern African territories.

The two-year, work-integrated programme was launched in January 2016 with the aim of developing and nurturing the company’s future leaders.

Emmy Leeka, Barloworld Equipment’s southern Africa CEO, said, “We believe that accessing collective wisdom is pivotal and our investment in the programme is built around just that in order to provide graduates with opportunities to become experts in their chosen fields and future leaders in our industry.

“The programme also seeks to maintain a predominately female intake year-on-year in line with the company’s 40/20 strategy, which seeks to grow the number of female leaders and employees to 40 per cent of the workforce by 2020.”

The programme exposes the graduates to all the company’s key operational areas, giving them an in-depth understanding of the workings of each of Barlow’s business units. The programme comprises work rotation, technical training, personal development and mentorship.

Each graduate is assigned an engineer as a mentor, who provides expert advice and guidance as they gain organisational knowledge and learn about Barloworld Equipment’s operations, processes, policies and culture.

Barloworld Equipment’s human resources acting executive head, Tebogo Mathe, gave words of encouragement to the graduates.

“The workplace is not an easy place. It is up to you to make it fun, exciting and educational at the same time. Make the most of this opportunity you have now because it is up to you to define your career. We look to you as the future leaders of this organisation.”

The programme aims to train and develop graduates to meet Barloworld Equipment’s specific leadership needs and build the talent that will take the company forward. Barloworld Equipment strives to attract and retain southern Africa’s top graduates so that it can build and grow its specialist skills pipeline.

The 2018 graduates will complete their programme in 2020. The company has been at the forefront of training engineering and other graduates since 1979 and remains committed to playing its part in reducing the massive skills shortage in the engineering, mining and technical sectors, particularly at the top leadership level.

Barloworld Equipment will begin recruiting graduates for its 2019 group from April 2018. Application forms are available on Barloworld Equipment’s website. Applications can be made online or applicants can send their forms to graduate@barloworld-equipment.com.