For many businesses, managing and balancing the skills development component of their BBEEE scorecard is a costly and complex process. In fact, for many larger companies, the skills development target of 6% of total annual payroll is simply not achievable through training spend alone. One of the ways to reduce this cost while ensuring that you uplift and develop your employees within the business is through learnerships and skills programmes – for your OWN employees.
The benefits of employed learnerships are ample and far-reaching:
- By embarking on employed learnerships – whereby a business enrols their own employees in a formal learnership programme – the business can allocate the salaries of its employees placed on formal learnerships towards its annual skills spend target – for example a monthly salary of R20k would see R240 000 allocated against skills spend for the 12 months. In addition to this, you can also deduct the cost of every learnership – between R80 000 to R120 000 – from your taxable income, which is a significant additional tax benefit.
- Employees get to earn an income while learning new skills and gaining valuable workplace experience, to earn a recognised qualification, adding to their value and employability. It all translates into an improvement in morale, self-esteem, personal development, engagement and confidence from employees who feel valued and appreciated by their employer.
- For employers, employed learnerships raise current employee skill levels, and heightened skills lead to more productivity and more engaged employees. The more skilled and engaged your employees are, the more meaningful their contribution to the business’ competitiveness and culture. It also makes succession planning from within the business possible. Solid succession planning means continuity and sustainability of the business, client service and quality standards.
Need something short, sharp and highly focused?
Arising directly out of learnerships, shorter, focused skills programmes help businesses upskill their people in highly focused development efforts, after a particular skills need has been identified as part of the workplace skills planning process. The skills programme is also registered with the relevant SETA and certified through the NQF-based accreditation route.
Key benefits of skills programmes for your employees:
- Employers and training providers are able to structure a programme that meets the specific skills needs of the employer and employees, for a particular skill – think financial management for non-finance managers, customer service skills, conflict and change management and so on.
- A learner can learn a specific skill set based on unit standards in days or weeks depending on the number of unit standards covered, instead of having to complete an entire learnership, which typically takes one year or more. Training time is typically limited to around 2 days per month and the entire skills programme can be completed in 2-4 months. While they are much shorter than a learnership and highly focused, skills programmes can also culminate in an NQF qualification if the learner decides to pursue the remaining unit standards.
- Just like a learnership, skills programmes earn points that go towards the BBBEE score of the business, they are available to your own employed learners, the cost of which is also counted towards your annual skills spend target.
- Skills programmes are low impact in terms of employee productivity as there is little work time lost to training days, while having a high impact on efficiencies with skills learned that are immediately applicable in employee work roles.
SA Business School works with our clients to build a bespoke learning and development solution around the needs of the business and its human capital, capacities and budget allocations.
Talk to SA Business School to assist you to achieve full points on the skills development line item of your BBBEE scorecard, and make an invaluable contribution to laying powerful foundations for your people in meaningful, sustainable jobs and career paths.
Contact our Business Development Executives:
Gauteng: Cape Town
Chane Deneys Monroe Isaacs
074 230 9897 073 453 1590
