Talent is the new oil -- why SA is running on empty

“Talent is the new oil and demand far outstrips supply,” executive search firm Heldrick & Struggles, in partnership with the Economist intelligence unit, noted in its Global Talent Index released late last year. But South Africa is getting it wrong if it wants to become globally competitive.

Although 40% of South Africans are unemployed and 200 000 graduates cannot find work (that figure has risen from 60 000 in 2004), according to Stats SA, the country has a crippling skills shortage. Poor management, restrictive quotas and crime are fuelling a new brain drain of South Africans of all races.

Bev Riemer, a management trainer for Astro Tech, observes: “Nowadays in the workforce we have Generation X; they have no loyalty and only stay in a company as long as they can learn and, within two years, if they are no longer learning, they move. Staff are demanding that managers coach, develop and empower. Once the manager stops doing that competent staff become vulnerable to head hunters.”

Riemer says many South African companies stick to the old belief that if they pay more they will get better performance from staff, when surveys keep showing that is not a primary motivator for talented people.

Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel hinted at the problem when he observed: “We need to recognise the importance of pushing our limits, of identifying and testing new relationships, of finding causal linkages between economic outcomes and inputs of less clear, social and political origin.”

What he and the government have failed to do is to find ways to breed talent and keep it in South Africa. Conversely, with harsh immigration laws and rampant xenophobia, we have failed to harness the talent that comes here.

The World Bank’s Investment Climate Survey in December 2006 showed that South Africa trains only 44,6% of skilled workers, compared with 77,3% of skilled workers receiving ongoing training in Brazil, 69,1% in China, 55% in India and 78,9% in Poland.

Compare this with Ireland: it was indebted 20 years ago and is now the second richest country in the world.

In the 1960s, Ireland started paying more attention to quality education, including free university tuition for Irish citizens. Ireland now has the finest education in the European Union. In early March the Irish government, in a report from its Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, said an additional half-a-million workers (it presently has 1,8-million workers) will need to progress by “at least” one level of educational attainment above their current highest level by 2020. It intends boosting its workforce by 50%, including admitting 360 000 foreign workers. In South Africa getting a school pass is a major achievement, never mind doubling degrees.

In 2004 when the European Union admitted 10 more members, some countries closed their doors — Ireland welcomed them and it has paid off. Over the past two years, according to Dublin’s Economic and Social Research Institute, migrant workers added two percentage points to Ireland’s gross domestic product. And yet in South Africa, where we desperately need doctors, for example, those who are foreign-born have endless hurdles to overcome to try to find employment here.

While affirmative action, employment equity and broad-based black economic empowerment were important initially to push greater representation in all sectors, its continuation is now entrenching mediocrity and penalising excellence. For South African or foreign born whites, coloureds or Indians it is better to seek a higher paying job abroad in a country with less crime than stay and battle to find work or advance here.

Quotas mean that many of the paler skinned battle to find work even if they have the qualifications. Management trainer Nic Gildenhuys says the engineer-to-project value ratio is at the lowest level in our history and one of the lowest in the world — it means that large infrastructural projects are in danger of not being completed safely or properly.

He notes, too, that in 1994 it was predicted that South Africa would need 235 000 managers by 2000 — but that was at a growth rate of 1% to 2% — with existing economic growth of above 4%, the economy has been unable to grow good managers fast enough.

Quotas were important in the early days to ensure companies were forced to show greater equity in employment, as it is, however, those who have benefitted most are black males, women and the disabled have seen scant improvement in their position, with women at top levels of the economy narrowing instead of expanding. But despite that, the ethic has been entrenched what we need now is excellence to push further development of women in the workplace. Ongoing quotas with regard to black people in the workplace are in many instances retarding development instead of advancing it and with black people forming more than 90% of the population and many of the wealthiest and most powerful figures of the economy black it is difficult to understand why we still need such quotas. The only quota I would still argue for is that which promotes the disabled in employment in South Africa.

As an example, emails have been flying between the right in South Africa. They have done the math, or rather one old Communist has and he has found that ThoughtLeader has more than 70% white males, nine percent black males and seven percent women as contributors. Who the rest are is anyone’s guess. His theory is that we need to push for greater equity among those on ThoughtLeader. Now in my brief experience, the women on ThoughtLeader are more than capable of holding their own against the men. They consistently rank among the most popular. I have no idea what the racial breakdown among women is and nor do I care. Bottom line: this is a fora of ideas, to introduce quotas into the origination and sharing of ideas is fascism. It would isolate some great thinkers and promote some who the rest of you would never read.

The day ThoughtLeader introduces a quota to advance women I will leave it. I don’t want anyone’s favours. As a journalist and a woman the extent of discrimination I have experienced is considerable, it’s par for the course being a woman, but what it has done is make me more determined to prove those who think women are inferior are wrong, I work harder than they and take more risks. It’s worth it because in the end I can hold up my head and say because of them I have advanced – because of and not despite, because their small-mindedness pushed me to achieve and be more than I believed I could be.

But there are other ways we discourage success. Universities that insist on teaching theory instead of practical skills devalue degrees. CEO of Tsogo Sun, Jabu Mabuza, last year told young accounting graduates that a human resources director told him “that HR people are spoilt for choice when they seek to appoint someone. There are so many people looking for work. He said that having a degree doesn’t mean you can do the job; all that it says is that a person can complete an assignment. There is more to work than donning a gown and saying I graduated.”

Tshidi Mokgabudi, a director of KPMG and this country’s first black woman CA, obtained a list from the president’s office of unemployed graduates. She interviewed dozens of hopefuls with degrees in advanced tax, accounting and finance, but most failed the interview.

In a report to deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka she noted: “It is not enough to just have a degree, people have to have life skills to get jobs. There were many that, despite having a degree, were not work-ready and lacked the soft skills of interpersonal communication, comprehension, listening ability, assertiveness or self esteem. Almost uniformly the graduates spoke of sacrifices often made by single mothers to send them to university.”

Mabuza warned students, too, that “your belief that you will be discriminated against because you are black/female/Jewish/Muslim/disabled/a white male can lead to your own fears realising themselves, not because of the discrimination of others, but because of your own negative self-programming. I have learnt that profits are derived from relationships, and not from transactions.”

Although South Africa is in a high economic growth phase at present, it cannot be sustained unless we find mechanisms to keep the best qualified.

Let’s use rugby as an example of why our most gifted are leaving: the chaotic management of the South African Rugby Union has done nothing to inspire confidence, nor have reports that in this proclaimed non-racial land, rugby will become a strictly quota sport. This is despite the fact that in 13 years of democracy the government has done nothing about building rugby fields in township schools and that, regardless of colour, rugby is a game for the elite — those lucky enough to go to schools with rugby fields.

What about quotas? Demagogues would have us believe that despite the aforementioned flaws in policy, this is to promote rugby and boost black players among rugby teams. If you’re white and are a talented player then best you join Percy Montgomery, Victor Matfield, Butch James, John Smit, Gary Botha, Ashwin Willemse and Jake White — and those who went before them — in boosting the fortunes of foreign teams.

Demanding quotas of the Springboks — but curiously not demanding greater diversity in Bafana Bafana — is a little like demanding that Ireland should have had 25% of its national team foreign born, indeed Central European, because that’s the percentage Central Europeans now make up of the Irish population.

Over and above that, with the end of a bitter civil war with Northern Ireland, to be equitable a third of the team should be from Northern Ireland and at least a third should be Protestant and not Catholic. After all, such integration is necessary to demonstrate fairness and an honest desire to reconcile a nation, doesn’t it?

There are no borders for the talented anymore and this is seen not just in sport, but in everything from the financial-services sector (with a premium globally on accountants) to engineers and technical specialists ranging from welders to plumbers, teachers, doctors and nurses.

While many countries are going out of their way to win back their most talented from foreign climes or attempting to keep them at home, South Africa is notable by its disinterest.

In China, as an example, Chinese expatriates who return after studying or working abroad are called “sea turtles.” Time magazine reports that “some mainland citizens feel slighted by the government’s initiative to counter brain drain by luring back successful emigrants. Enticements include freedom from the red tape of household registration, preferential employment access and privileged university admission for former expats’ children.”

Japan, long sensitive to the importance of the supremely gifted, has a system where the exceptional, from basket weavers to lacquer artists and sumo wrestlers, are made Living National Treasures. This prestigious award ensures their income and cost of the goods they produce rises, but, too, the government pays them stipends to continue their specialisation.

Poor management practices are also driving gifted South Africans out; often incompetent managers or organisations obsessed with hierarchy — a concept that is outdated — are encouraging those who might not leave to opt for a more forward-thinking multinational or foreign enterprise.

US management guru Des Dearlove says that today’s new leader manages “in a consensus-seeking manner. Instead of seeing leadership as synonymous with dictatorship, this view is of leadership as a more subtle and humane art.”

South Africa can sneer at those who join the chicken run, or it can learn from the French example, a Time magazine writer recently noted: “Strikes and street demonstrations have become an integral part of French life” — the same is true of South Africa. Indepdendent Democrat leader, Patricia de Lille asked the number of protests in South Africa last year (2006 to 2007) in parliament and was told it was 9 446 compared to 10 763 in 2005 to 2006.

The Time writer observed that ongoing strikes were “the product of the same economic malaise that has led hundreds of thousands of young and talented French citizens to leave France and seek success abroad. France has the slowest growing large economy in Europe, the fastest-rising public debt in Western Europe over the past ten years and its 22% youth unemployment rate is one of the highest on the continent.”

At the moment South Africa appears successful — despite massive crime and unemployment — but how long until the façade slips?