economy Archives

by Anusha Mariemuthu

Are you shifting paradigms, changing behaviour, and making valuable long-term strategic contributions to the economy or are you just transacting on your scorecard on an operational level to achieve the required points in your organisation?

Is your organisation a good corporate citizen who continuously contributes towards South Africa’s progress as a country, economically and socially through empowering communities, small businesses, individuals and creating jobs?

Companies must understand that economic transformation is a national economic priority, and that B-BBEE (Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment) is every South African corporates’ responsibility.

A company’s transformation initiatives at a high level needs to focus on the below broad areas

Ownership : Ensuring that equity are made available to black communities and assisting them access financing/ funding to fund their equity.
Skills Development : Empowerment through education and creating opportunities for previously disadvantaged employees and youth, through accelerated skills development programmes (learnerships, apprenticeships, internships, bursaries and employment opportunities).
Employment Equity: Employees must be afforded the opportunity to advance their knowledge, skills and abilities in order to be promoted. This process should be linked back to Talent Management and Succession Planning and not tokenism. Employment Equity and your employees should be viewed an integral element of a company’s overall transformation strategy for the removal of the economic legacies of structural inequality.
Procurement : Procuring goods and services from South African black-owned enterprises, who are EME’s and QSEs while working with them to develop their businesses.
Responsible sourcing: According to the International Chamber of Commerce is “a voluntary commitment by companies to take into account social and environmental considerations when managing their relationships with suppliers”.
Small business Development and Communities : Investing in communities, in black entrepreneurs and in projects that support small business growth and development thereby stimulating economic growth

So how do we start doing this?

Before you even begin this journey, chose a good change management model , like ADKAR to enable your business transformation to take place.

The first step is to establish a B-BBEE related Organisational Transformation Strategy, that is aligned to your business Strategy. Talk to business through their Profit and Loss (P and L) and show them how transformation makes good business sense. Below is a high level view of how this journey in your business should look like. Create a road map for a successful Transformation journey , by showing people how to make this transition as a company together.

Shared Vision: Within your company, co-create and establish a Shared Vision for an organisational transformation related to B-BBEE.
Establish leadership over the process and ensure ownership, responsibility and accountability is in place so that your people can make this happen.
Knowledge is powerful and an enabler: Create capacity in the Leadership and support functions by sharing information and ensuring that they acquire the required level of knowledge and skills to be able to implement the organisational transformation vision (Use Change management programmes, like ADKAR to achieve this).
Ensure Ownership is shared by key individuals in strategic positions across the business by ensuring that they have B-BBEE related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and that these individuals cascade responsibility into their respective areas in order to ensure accountability can be held.
Good Governance: Align all related operational governance which will empower and enable all related business managers to support the implement the organisational transformation process. Create an effective monitoring, measurement and reporting structure to ensure accurate visibility is achieved and maintained allowing for effective performance management over the process, show progress on the B-BBEE objectives and to manage the associated risk.
Ensure the transformed organisation is maintained through periodic assessments of the levels of compliance with the Compliance Framework and the progress of the company’s B-BBEE Score.

Lastly, keep your people informed (through townhalls, performance reviews, newsletters), get feedback and tell them how this journey is proceeding. This will keep them engaged and energised to make it a success. Make B-BBEE Transformation part of your company DNA.

More importantly, keep the passion.

Anusha Mariemuthu is a passionate, seasoned Transformation and Human Resources professional with a myriad of experience that spans across all pillars of the scorecard. For more information on our B-BBEE consultancy services, contact us here.

by Alex Kinmont

A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a guaranteed amount of money given to every person regardless of whether they have a job or not. As a form of social security, this could help alleviate poverty and improve quality of life.

The idea of unconditional cash payments is a recent one, brought about as a response to the rise of technology and the fear that machines will take our jobs. Many highly successful entrepreneurs, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg, have discussed the idea of a UBI as a potentially necessary answer to the growing problem of poverty and the risks of machines replacing low-skilled jobs.

There is no set definition for a UBI. How much money, to who, from who and how often are undefined. As a new idea not formally implemented, these are all still things which can be debated.

Getting money without working, of course, is controversial.

At first, a UBI sounds impossible. Who would bother working if they got given free money each month? And how could a government afford it? In the context of South Africa in particular, we can hardly afford to provide running water and service delivery, let alone cash payouts.

So, here comes the first hurdle. Where would the money come from?

When Notre Dame burnt down on the 15^th April this year, nearly R14 billion was donated by the world’s elite within days of the disaster, enough to feed over 2 million South Africans for an entire year.

The fire at Notre Dame did more than just burn an historical monument. It served as striking evidence that there is more than enough money out there to drastically, if not fully, close the wealth gap and feed millions. Wealth is simply held by too few.

So what if the world’s 1% were made to pay the UBI bill?

via GIPHY

There is something to be said about the idea of a maximum income allowance, after which a person has to donate their excess to welfare. Imagine if the world cared as much about people who are starving as they did about a building?

70 year old Bernard Arnault, whose family owns LVMH (a.k.a. Louis Vuitton), gave $226 million to Notre Dame. That’s over R3 billion from one family donated in a day.

Should people really be allowed to have more money than they can possibly spend?

So what is to be said then, of the argument that no one is going to want to work if their bills are not dependent on it?

Those against a UBI say it will let people be lazy and be enormously expensive. They argue it would crash our economy. Without reason to work, will anyone work? This is a valid point especially when one considers less attractive jobs, such as those which involve strenuous physical labour.

At the same time, a UBI could provide the platform needed for millions of people to think further and follow their entrepreneurial dreams. Will this opportunity for innovation and future work outweigh the cost of those who decide to work? Who knows what could come of that freedom?

Those for UBI say it will allow people to focus more on their well-being and fight their way out of poverty, as well as having a safety net to allow for taking chances in innovation and business. Mark Zuckerburg said himself that he was able to risk focusing all his attention and investments on Facebook because of the financial stability he had from his father.

via GIPHY

Will a UBI let people stop working and crash the economy? Or will it cultivate innovation?

Perhaps instead of calling it a UBI we should call it improved social welfare. The specifics around a UBI need to be carefully determined and will differ by region and country. This will influence whether a UBI collapses the workforce or inspires it. Free money to everyone, including the wealthy, is likely unrealistic. But what about better distribution of wealth to those under the poverty line, who have been unable to find a job?

The result would be the same sized workforce but a better standard of living for the unemployed.

The burning of Notre Dame proves that a UBI is possible if we just learn to share. So is it reasonable to demand that the ultra-wealthy pay the bill?

economy

B-BBEE: Is Your Strategy Transactional or Transformational?

What Notre Dame Tells Us About Global Wealth