HR - the answer to South Africa's challenges?
by Nic Dawes, editor Mail & Guardian
It is a truism that South Africa has a growth problem. With the exception of the half-decade leading up to the global financial crisis, our economy has been manifestly incapable of expanding at the rate that is needed seriously to dent unemployment and reduce inequality.
On the other hand, our education and healthcare systems have been incapable of producing the kind of people who can address the demands of a fast-changing world of work.
And in the face of this widening crisis, we have a policy elite that is fixated on fighting narrow ideological bat- tles at the expense of meaningful change.
We can talk about wages and labour regulations in 31 flavours. We can spend hours on the minutiae of immigration rules, and CCMA procedures. But when it comes to the concrete actions that individuals, com- panies, government, and indeed the wider culture require to move forward, we too often retreat into a kind of handwringing despair.
Why is this relevant to a survey of the best employers in South Africa? Quite simply because the workplace in organisations small and large, in blue chip companies and NGOs, is where the economy happens.
We are all now taught to think of HR as a strategic priority, deserving of serious board level attention, but that may still be putting it too narrowly. In fact, employment practices go to the heart of our most crucial economic policy dilemmas, and indeed of our evolving social compact.
How best do we make transformation – that very big word that we use so casually – a catalyst for growth and opportunity, for reimagining the horizons of national possibility, rather than a compliance checklist run by management consultants?
How do we address the deepening health and education deficits that not only erode productivity, but limit the realisation of our full human capacity?
How do business, labour, and government learn to stop carving up political and economic benefits, and to start sharing the sacrifices that are needed to break this country out of its slumberous trend growth line, and onto a new path?
These are exactly the kinds of questions that the best employers are answering every day, building capacity for sustainable growth within their own organisations, in their markets, and ultimately in the economy broadly.
It is no exaggeration to say that the employment relationship, in all its dimensions, is critical to the re- solution of South Africa’s growth problem, and with it, in a virtuous circle, the crisis of human capacity that all employers face. Many of the solutions are in this book. We need the courage, and the clarity of vision, to implement them.
“The Mail & Guardian and the CRF Institute have entered into a partnership to promote the results of the Best Employers survey. By partnering with the CRF the M&G hopes to highlight the importance of excellent people management services. Managing people, including those that are already in an organisation, as well as those looking to find work, plays a vital role in the creation of a strong and equitable society. The value of this function in the modern organisation as well as in society as a whole cannot be undervalued and through this partnership we hope to highlight the way forward for all organisations, not just those that have made the grade this year.” – Ben Kelly, Special Projects Editor, Mail & Guardian
Nic Dawes
Nic was born in Cape Town and finished his schooling in Canada. He studied Science and later English literature at UCT before attending graduate school in the US on a Fulbright Scholarship. After a stint as Cape Business Editor, and political columnist at the now-defunct broadsheet ThisDay, he joined the Mail & Guardian in 2004 as associate editor, focusing on public policy and economics. He was also involved in the Mail & Gaurdian’s investigations, and has won several awards for that work.
He was appointed Editor-in-Chief in June 2009.