Employment Equity: Strategies for creating a Diverse Workforce
Operationally speaking, the need for diversity stems not only from being in line with contemporary best practices in the HR sphere of labour-related matters, but forms a baseline for compliance with Employment Equity legislation.
Diversity is present when differences in culture, race, ethnicity, language, nationality and religion are represented within a cluster of people. Traditionally speaking, different businesses have different norms, views, behavioural tendencies and value systems based on the composition of their management structures, leadership pinnacles, organisational culture and staff compliment. The greater the diversity of agents that conduct your business, the higher the degree of multiformity and the higher success of dealing with complex, interpersonal and operational challenges.
Operationally speaking, the need for diversity stems not only from being in line with contemporary best practices in the HR sphere of labour-related matters, but forms a baseline for compliance with Employment Equity legislation. As the reporting season for LabourNet Transformation: Employment Equity: Strategies for creating a Diverse Workforce Copyright LabourNet Group submission of the EEA2 and EEA4 has now opened, employers should be asking themselves how to go about operationalising their affirmative action measures that further diversify across occupational levels. By examining the key areas that deal with staff turnover, and obtaining positive results from (supposedly) existing staff-related company practices, value can be obtained incrementally by aligning these practices to pre-defined Employment Equity Strategies.
Considering a fully detailed Skills Development Strategy should be part of contemporary businesses, little focus gets placed on formalising Succession Plans per department or business unit, despite the logical need of having the key and critical skills in your organisation be defined, and linked to employees who possess them. By breaking down and defining clusters of key competencies (gained through qualifications and industry experience) and interpersonal requirements (soft skills, such as Diversity and Conflict Management) we run a substantially reduced risk of losing these key staff members in the event of unforeseen circumstances, competitors’ talent poaching initiatives and regular staff attrition. Consider actively formalising Succession Plans, which draw on the upskilling of your previously disadvantaged staff, so as to avoid future diversity gaps.
Fundamentally; creating a diverse workforce requires a lengthy amount of input and visionary thinking, focusing on the overall future of the business as opposed to meeting specified numerical goals. Unfortunately, the business processes responsible for furthering this agenda don’t speak to another as effectively as required. The first strategic solution is therefore simple; adopt a “back to basics” approach, have your recruitment functions liaise with your BEE drivers, so that your Staff Development structures can be applied to the right people.
This article was sponsored by LabourNet Nelspruit. For more information on Employment Equity strategies, please contact Jurgen du Plessis on 082 826 1833 or email jurgen@labournet.com.
