"Innovative alternatives to retrenchment do exist and they can negate the devastating consequences for the individual, as well as for the company, of removing employees from the system," said Tim Smeeton, MD of the PMI.
The alternatives included enrolling employees otherwise targeted for retrenchment on learnership programmes through the Sector Education and Training Authorities for which more than adequate government funding already existed, Smeeton said.
The SA Revenue Service also provided tax rebates for such learnerships, he added. Flexible working hours, allowing fewer jobs to be spread across the greatest possible number of employees would also help to avoid retrenchment, Smeeton said.
"Industry should also be looking to spread fewer jobs across a broader affected workforce, without creating unemployment."
Smeeton added that employers, employees, trade unions, and government simply had to put aside their preferred agendas to deal effectively with a national crisis.
"As many as 40 000 jobs could be lost in South Africa by the end of June this year, with workers from the automotive, financial and mining sectors bearing the immediate brunt of the crisis and joining the ranks of the unemployed, a significant proportion of which would be youth."
Smeeton said the notion of permanent contracts with the full set of traditional benefits as the "first and only prize" for employment had to shift.
"Key priorities should be employee retention, focusing on alternatives to retrenchment; skills and human capital development; and opening up new work experience opportunities, especially for first time work-seekers."
This would go a long way in developing South Africa's already stunted national human capital resource base.
"In departing from traditional employment practices, temporary employment arrangements allow employers to re-skill or retrain staff and redeploy them to other areas of the organisation where they are needed.
"Employee skills are expanded and the skills pool of the business is developed," Smeeton said. Temporary employment environments also made possible greater flexibility in terms of working hours and rotation and gave first time work-seekers an opportunity to enter the job market, he said.
Source: Sapa
Published courtesy of
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