BEE Partner, South Africa Economy Watch

3. Support meritocracy

Local companies coming from a previously isolated and uncompetitive economy that now find themselves competing with the world’s best need to develop a culture of recruiting and retaining the best brains available. They also have to consistently reinvest in their human capital. Global players such as Unilever, Shell, Toyota, SABMiller and the Fortune 500-listed organisations, which are pretty well entrenched in the global arena, have a larger pool of talent available to them because of the size of their operations and global reach. For home-grown South African organisations, the competition for human capital intensifies, as the brightest stars either emigrate or join the global players, who can give them access to their new employer’s global network.

True meritocracy consistently recruits new talent into the organisation. However, because of the mismanagement of the country’s stock of human capital, not only is the pool of talent dwindling, but the country can hardly be said to be immigrant friendly, a situation that may well deteriorate in real terms once Japan and other Asian countries seriously take to the global labour market in order to feed their own economic development.

Yet meritocracy is more than the recruitment of the right people. Sun Tzu said, ‘Regard your soldiers as children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look upon them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.’ Unfortunately, most South African business organisations have had a culture of reactive obligation thrust upon them. This has been brought about by the mismanagement of affirmative action and black economic empowerment. An unemotional, carefully crafted strategy that can benefit the country from a global perspective, whilst simultaneously redressing the imbalances of the past, has not been formulated. Despite these obstacles, the new breed of South African manager has to learn to cultivate his or her people through training and, where possible, by searching for ways to practise meritocracy within the unsatisfactory guidelines provided by government.

4. Create a culture of lifetime learning in the workplace

Given that firms are doing business in what is popularly known as the knowledge economy, with knowledge being an asset for many business organisations, the new breed of manager should create an environment in which people are encouraged to strengthen their knowledge, skills and experience. This will enable them to create new and better value for their organisation, and, ultimately, for their customers. In order to become more competitive, companies need to create a strong knowledge base, which can constantly be improved. The new breed of manager has to recognise a number of key factors related to the integration of the lifetime learning concept in the strategic development of his or her company:

• In any transformation process, re-education is often a critical factor in ensuring that employee skills can play a positive role in successful transformation.
• There is more to the education of employees than sending people on training courses. Whilst employee learning can indeed play a powerful role in any transformation process, learning has to (a) be integrated with the goals, values and strategic direction of the company, and (b) be managed to ensure that each employee obtains as much value from the process as possible in terms of the potential contribution made to his or her employer. Because the business environment is constantly changing atgreat speed and global competition is intensifying, the knowledgerequired by employees also changes. The need for updated information is fast becoming critical as more and more companies grapple with their competitors. In today’s fast-paced work environment, the time available for a formal approach to learning is diminishing. The new breed of manager will therefore have to pay particular attention to technology-driven learning environments.

Part of the knowledge requirement is the need for company employees to have the proper depth and breadth of experience. An employee has to have not only the correct core skills pertaining to the job he or she does, but also a good understanding of the other key disciplines in the company, and in the business in general. Furthermore, the new breed of manager has to inculcate in his or her people a real sense of how global forces and global competition affect them and their company, and to try to identify the risks and opportunities that are emerging on a global scale. Obviously a company can only do so much with the resources it has. However, establishing a properly guided training and development strategy is going to be vital in developing the calibre of workforce capable of competing with rival workforces.

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