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Unbundling the complexity of discrimination and inequality requires more sophisticated approaches than just the creation of employment equity committees, developing a business case for employment, and conducting diversity management workshops, argues Shamila Singh.
Public debate and discourse in South Africa have been overshadowed by VUCA issues. These Volitile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambivalent issues include the economy, load shedding, geo-politics, crime and criminality, and other matters. But our society and countries face many other serious challenges.
Transformation issues are one of them, and there are signs that our society is becoming less cohesive and united. The transformation has indeed received scant attention, but fortunately, recent pronouncements by the Employment Equity Commission have kept the matter on the agenda.
Most media articles pronounce that coloureds and Indians are banned from employment in certain provinces without explaining the calculations that are used to determine the numeric representation according to the economic-active population. Government should have no illusion about the consternation that this is creating in certain quarters, to the point that it adds to a sense of combustibility in our society.
Fueling divisions
The essence of the media messages creates a discourse that fuels racial tensions and divisions. Reporting by the Commission of Employment Equity and media reports indicate that transformation is slow and there has been apathy, and malicious compliance.
It is so unfortunate that South Africans cannot have a more sophisticated and mature articulation of employment equity. There is a recklessness to portray an uneven representation of employment equity that is masked with negativity, and finger-pointing and showcases failure in South Africa's ability to embrace transformation and employment.
In this unchartered, turbulent, anarchic, and combustible (UTAC) era, can we also afford to add employment equity to the pot of failures alongside health, education, and now foreign policy? UTAC is a concept crafted by, and work done by myself and Chris Landsberg. Both the private and public sectors must share lessons and insights that can be used to catapult employment equity into new directions.
The Dynamics of numeric representation
The issue of representation in each province relates to the economically active population and so when we look at the phenomenon of representation within each province, we must be mindful of the demographic profile of each region. To explain that further, if we look at black, Indian, coloured, and white representation in the country we know that black South Africans are the majority. When we break that down at a provincial level, the spinoff effect is that blacks may be the largest population group in all provinces but may be unemployed or discouraged job-seekers.
The economically active population (EAP) demographic and age distribution may differ from that province's racial demographics. To develop employment equity plans, recruitment, and selection strategies, the workforce is drawn from the economically active population.
Organisations are required to set targets in accordance with the provincial and national economically active population. There may be good intentions to attract applicants from the provincial EAP pool; however, candidates from other provinces may be available to migrate.
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To accurately assess the labour market, HR professionals need to be able to do research and collate information to understand the state of the labour market nationally and provincially.
In South Africa, the quality of situational analysis is also limited by the extent to which it is possible to describe labour markets in quantitative terms adequately.
Without a Labour Market Information System, data must be gathered from different sources to determine the state of the labour market and to set targets.
In 2010, The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) initiated a Labour Market Information Project (LMIP) to spearhead research, create frameworks, to direct and develop DHET’s operational systems. The applied research from LMIP will contribute to the growth and development of the technical data architecture of the DHET's Labour Market Information System (LMIS). The LMIS, although in its infancy stage but once fully developed, will connect institutions for the exchange of data and information. The development of a Labour Market Information System will facilitate the analysis of labour market trends per sector.
But we are missing a more significant point here.
Eliminating barriers
The more serious issue is not a numeric representation but rather a focus on substantive equality by eliminating the barriers to employment equity, discrimination, exclusion, hate crimes, and deep-rooted prejudice that affect the people management ecosystem. The value of non-racialism should also remain a focus.
Social identity is complex, not static and stagnant. It is rather fluid and contextual. Individuals can experience discrimination based on multiple demographic dimensions, referred to as intersectionality.
Another insight is that bias, prejudice, and discrimination are multilayered and manifest at the individual, group, organisational and societal levels.
Everyone has the propensity to discriminate, but it is the access to power, networks, and information that creates privilege and exclusionary practices. Government must be careful here. It should lead by example in the right way.
Unbundling the complexity of discrimination and inequality requires more sophisticated approaches than just the creation of employment equity committees, developing a business case for employment, and conducting diversity management workshops.
Manifestations
The transformation has been slow, and the citizens of South Africa, from all racial backgrounds, feel marginalised, powerless, and desperate. These frustrations were magnified and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic in the widening of the poverty gap and Gini-coefficient. These feelings of helplessness, exclusion, and marginalisation will continue to exist. What is not needed is a feeling among some that their race groups are facing the short end of the stick.
There have been pockets of incidents that demonstrate dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Some notable incidents and statistics are the Fees Must Fall campaign, looting in 2021 in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal, hate speech, high levels of crime, discontentment with the state of the health system, the wage gap, the state of education, and high levels of unemployment.
What is needed is to recognise complexity, but above all to be solution-oriented. Here are just some suggested solutions.
More research is needed to understand the driving forces of inequity, unfair discrimination, and lack of transformation. There is a need to change the paradigm to make everyone responsible for transforming attitudes, values, behaviour, and ways of thinking that are exclusionary and perpetuate inequality.
Lessons should be gleaned from generic approaches, sector and organisation-specific strategies to better manage equity, inclusion, and diversity management.
The principles of managing equity, inclusions, and diversity management are generic, but there are sector nuances that must be considered in setting targets and developing strategies to contribute to the transformation process even though it may not be mandatory to comply.
Importantly, a good practice guideline for NGOs, SMEs, and the public sector should be crafted. In particular, the SMEs require a best practice guide to comply with the requirements of Chapter 2 on unfair discrimination of the Employment Equity Act (1998).
There is an urgent need to align with the standards developed by the Southern African Board for People Practices (SABPP, 2013) on HR Standards, Employment Equity & Diversity (Inclusion) Management, and Mentoring and Coaching.
Larger employers must develop an employment equity strategy and a five-year employment equity plan that is aligned with the business strategy. They can ignore the equity issue at their peril. It is bound to bite and haunt them in the future.
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Regular employment equity audits that identify the barriers to equity, inclusion, and diversity management should be conducted. Employment equity is also related to the contemporary issue of sustainability without equity, diversity, and inclusion, there is the potential for strained employment relationships, strikes, and protest that affects the productivity and performance of organisations.
The buck stops not at the head of HR. It is vital to ensure that management is held accountable for achieving equity, inclusion, and diversity by developing key performance indicators to measure performance at a division and department level.
Where HR and other sectors in organisations come in is to provide training to governance structures on employment equity, inclusion, and diversity management so that these structures are empowered to manage and provide oversight in this regard. Practice guidelines should be developed to operationalise equity at a departmental and organisational level.
Indeed, HR itself is in need of constant training. There is a need to provide training workshops on labour market information systems to HR, HR Committees, and unions to interpret labour supply and demand.
Finally, the functions of employment equity, learning and development, and performance management should be integrated because of the interdependencies of these functions to set and achieve substantive and numeric employment equity targets.
In short, all the challenges our society is facing notwithstanding, the transformation and equity issues should be put back on the policy and political agendas.
- Shamila Singh is an independent consultant, writer, and adviser on matters of Leadership, Strategy, Human Resources, and Change Management.
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