Programme Director
Heads of Departments
Employees of the Gauteng Provincial Government
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In our quest to become a globally-competitive city-region, the Gauteng Provincial Government travelled the length and breadth of the globe to study the various models of such regions. One of the main features of such regions is their highly-skilled and malleable workforce which is able to respond to the realities of a rapidly-changing global economy. We learnt that these city-regions, from Hong Kong to Sao Paolo, are powered by an educated labour force which is forever mutating to stay ahead of the competition. That is how they maintained their competitive edge and continued to grow and provide jobs for their populations.
In our province, we have always viewed the quality of human resources as a critical factor in the capacity of the government to deliver on its mandate. We believe that human resources are a cornerstone for the overall success of implementing government priorities. For, it does not matter how efficient and effective our policies are, if there are no qualified people to carry out the hard work of building a better Gauteng, that is as good as doing nothing.
That is why we are gathered here today for the Gauteng Province’s Human Resources Summit. We are here to share best practice; ideas and innovation which will help us harness our available skills in order to achieve our goals. This Summit will also help us develop new programmes to improve our talent attraction and skills retention capacity. So, in essence the Summit will help us assess what we have and devise means and ways of remedying where we have shortcomings.
We have identified challenges such as the shortage of skills as the single greatest impediment to service delivery, to the success of public infrastructure and private investment programmes. Even though extensive work has been done at the national level to identify occupational categories most affected by labour shortages and introducing initiatives to attract and retain staff in these areas, departments are not doing enough to introduce targeted interventions. As a result, skills shortages are continuing to constrain government’s delivery programmes.
There are challenges that departments are experiencing in recruiting and retaining employees with scarce skills and this is evident in the high vacancy and turnover rates within departments. For an example, our Department of Health has been struggling to get specialised skills such as theatre and Intensive Care Unit nurses.
We are also experiencing the same problem in areas of engineering and planning, artisan and technical, project management, quantity surveying, veterinary and agriculture, economic sciences, environmental management and social work.
To this end, the Gauteng Provincial Government has taken a conscious decision to stop using consultants and actually build in-house capacity, especially with regard to project management and quantity surveying.
We are becoming prudent. In this province, we want to hire people who can do the work and not depend on consultants. We believe that skills for infrastructure must be in-house. We have seen with some of our successful housing projects such as Cosmo City, Lufhereng and Chief Mogale that having our own employees with expertise as project leaders is working.
The Human Resources Development interventions by the Gauteng City-Region Academy (GCRA) are assisting the GPG employees by addressing gaps as are often outlined in the Workplace Skills Plans and through their Personal Development Plans as captured in their performance contracts and through career-pathing programmes. There are about 170 000 people employed by the Gauteng Provincial Government. In order to manage these huge numbers of employees it is important to have streamlined and standardised policies as well as sound strategies, systems and processes.
Programme Director,
While recruiting employees for the GPG departments, it is crucial that we identify all those occupational categories where there is a dire shortage and set targets for filling funded vacancies with all suitably qualified people. It is also important that we ensure continuous supply of human resources through a sound Succession and Retention Strategy. As the Gauteng Province, we have set ourselves a target of reducing vacancies to four months and even less. Currently, we have managed to reduce our vacancy rate by 6% and the target we had set ourselves was 5%. We are doing well in this area.
Furthermore, we are committed to job creation. We have put in place a number of interventions such as the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) and the Community Works Programme (CWP) to address this objective. Also, the GPG has a Youth Employment Strategy and a Jobs Fund in place which is intended for projects that will assist in the alleviation of unemployment, particularly of young people.
Most importantly, our government has a commitment to retain suitably qualified skills. There is an equal commitment to ensure professional growth of our employees so that economic growth can be accelerated through the participation of employees in all economic activities of this province. In this regard, more injection of money into the economy will lessen some pressures and allow for growth.
In all our recruitment endeavours, we want to achieve targets on the employment of women in Senior Management Services (SMS) positions as well as on Persons with Disabilities. Only four departments seem to be making progress in this area. The Gauteng Provincial Government has archived 42% employment of Women in Senior Management Positions. We are a leading province on this achievement. We have managed to employ 0.4% of People with Disabilities in the Senior Management Services category and 0.2% for levels 1-12. We are not very proud of this performance rate but continue to strive for improvement. We encourage those that are still lagging behind to come up with interventions in order to meet the 2% set target in this area. We hope to achieve the set 50% of the employment of women in the Senior Management echelon in the next financial year.
The finalisation of disciplinary processes should not be taking more than 3 months. There should be a strategy to ensure that completion of suspensions with full pay is actually finalised within 60 days. We should also measure the number of SMS members that are charged with misconduct, disciplined and/or discharged. The GPG should also develop a framework of appropriate sanctions ensuring consistent application of discipline across the GPG.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am quite pleased that we have this engagement with you today because numerous studies are pointing to a strong correlation between worker engagement and organisational productivity, performance and talent retention. It is clear that employee engagement is one of the top issues confronting HR decision-makers today.
To create productive employees, we have to accelerate improvements in the education foundation. To do this we have already started to pay more attention on early childhood development, the school system as well as adult basic education and training. We are beginning to turn the tide and you would know that in 2011 our province took the first place in matric result and this year we took the second place. We are now focusing on increasing the number of school leavers with matric exemption in maths, science and technology while ensuring that generic skills in language and literacy are substantially improved.
Programme Director,
In conclusion, much effort has gone into improving performance levels, but criticism about poor service delivery and inadequate responsiveness to the needs of the people remains.
In its report on the management of poor performance, the Public Service Commission concluded that the management of poor performance remains a key challenge in the Public Service. Factors that contribute to this include work culture issues, person-to-person mismatch, lack of skills, lack of performance standards, and a failure to implement the Performance Management and Development System (PMDS) properly.
Managers are generally unwilling to execute this responsibility despite the fact that they understand the rationale for managing poor performance. Furthermore, Heads of Departments were found to be too lenient on their managers by not holding them fully accountable for managing poor performance. In addition, HR divisions often fail line managers in that they do not take ownership for facilitating and monitoring the performance management process.
The Executive Council has come out strongly on this issue of consequential management. There has to be accountability for non-performance. Managers need to punish wrongdoing and instil discipline where necessary.
The Public Service needs men and women who are highly professional and efficient. This will require a shift in the way that human resources are managed. That shift begins here and with good planning will inevitably result in desired changes, so let us strive for better changes in the public service. Let us in the famous words of Mahatma Ghandi, be the change we want to see.
Dankie. Ngiyabonga.
