Employment equity is an important part of the skills acquisition and hiring landscape in South Africa. The aim behind EE is to help ensure that a more equitable spread of economic opportunity is provided to all.

However, South African law is clear that EE alone cannot form the sole basis for hiring practices. In and of itself, EE is empty and short-sighted if it is not accompanied by aligned skills development efforts.

By implementing carefully thought-out EE skills hiring methodologies, you can achieve true transformation that is meaningful and valuable to not only the individual and the country, but to your organisation as well.

Let us review ways in which your organisation can successfully align skills with EE to achieve sustainable transformation.

Arguably the most critical aspect of aligning skills development with EE lies in proper planning. This starts with the proper identification of short, medium and long-term EE goals for your organisation. It is necessary to ensure that your EE goals are in alignment with the requirements as laid out in the EE Act and its amendments. This includes identifying which positions or levels within the organisation you need to ensure transformation takes place.

Before you can align your EE goals with your skills development plans, you need to identify which skills are needed to fill out the positions that require transformation. This might require consultation with HR professionals, who can help you conduct a thorough and detailed skills analysis. Then, it is necessary to draw up clearly defined, detailed job descriptions. Once this is achieved, the process of aligning skills development with EE can truly begin.

If you are planning to train up EE candidates to take on new roles, then it is vital that you have a clearly defined budget for skills development. An HR expert well-versed in EE should help you figure out what an appropriate sum might be as well as how it should be spent.

In some cases, you might be able to hire EE candidates directly into the desired position and find that they are already skilled and competent enough to fulfil the job with excellence. However, in most cases, transformation requires providing training and upskilling. Identifying capable candidates with potential allows you to begin identifying which skills they lack, which is crucial for determining what kind of training they will require.

With the right EE candidates selected and the necessary training budget in place, you can begin rolling out your skills development initiatives to upskill the EE candidate so that they can sustainably step into the role in question. Through this, you have managed to ensure that you not only meet your EE targets but have also secured the right kinds of skills that will enhance your organisation and contribute to its success.