off
29 March 2007
The job hunting exercise as we traditionally know it is set to take a new
shape when the long-awaited national employment database starts functioning on
1 April.
Labour Department Director-General Vanguard Mkosana told Members of
Parliament on Tuesday that the Public Employment Services of South Africa
(PESSA) � a free service mechanism linking employer to job seeker � would be
open for the unemployed in all provinces to register.
While the system is expected to start in a small way, it is set to contain
millions of names at the Labour centres, mobile units, and multi-purpose
centres by the time it is officially launched around October later this
year.
Not only employers will be able to look at the type of available skills they
will be looking for, potential employees will also use the system to look for
vacancies.
"When fully up and running at later stages, the system is expected to be
able to record when an individual vacates their post. This of course will be
made possible by both employers and workers who will report vacancies to be
entered in the database," Doctor Mkosana said.
To facilitate the functioning of the system, officials of the 129 Labour
Centres countrywide are already being trained professionals to assist
enquirers.
Home Affairs and South African Revenue Services' databases would be useful
in capturing and updating an individual's CV, while also searching for new
organisations for data purposes.
Not only employment vacancies, but skills training opportunities and social
development projects will be available in the database when it is fully
functional.
The department hopes that at a later stage, individuals' details will be
available for a year after which they would be placed into an archive.
But personal information about applicants will remain confidential, with
access available only to internal users.
The system will also be able to clearly reflect when an employee has been
retrenched and is currently out of work.
A brief background and explanation of services that the system will provide
follows.
Director-General's introductory remarks on the PESSA project
When we started working on the development of the Integrated Employment
Services System Project in June 2006, little did we know that we were embarking
on such an enormous project.
Even when we identified the elements of the three phases, we still
understood that phase 1 was to cover registration of work seekers and
opportunities as well as provide job matching services.
It was only when we engaged the relevant stakeholders, particularly
provinces and Labour Centres that we realised that for the system to be
integrated with integrity and to provide a comprehensive service, a lot more
was required.
The many consultation meetings and workshops got us to understand that the
Employment Services System was not just an Information Technology (IT) system,
but that what we were developing was an Employment Services business process
with an IT system to support it.
The Employment Services System that we developed is to provide the following
(6) services:
1. Registration Services
Registration Services includes the registration of individuals, employers,
opportunities and training providers. The registration of individuals includes
the development of a skills profile where the person's qualifications and
experience are recorded according to the Organising Framework of Occupation
(OFO).
2. Career Guidance and Counselling Services
Career Guidance and Counselling includes guiding individuals to career
fields based on the individual's interest profile; providing career and labour
market information and counselling.
3. Recruitment and Selection Services
Recruitment and selection services include the proactive identification of
opportunities through networking with stakeholders, the matching of individuals
to opportunities, recruitment and selection for a particular opportunity, and
placement.
4. Skills Development Services
Skills Development Services include developing the Provincial Implementation
Plans, identifying scarce and critical skills, registering training courses
with the National Skills Fund, Allocating funding for Skills Development,
selecting training providers, contracting training providers, monitoring
training, processing training provider claims and scheduling assessments at
Indlela.
5. Information Services
Information services include producing information brochures/pamphlets and
packages and advocacy.
6. Special Services
Special services include services provided for special interest groups,
including services for people with disabilities, retrenched employees and
ex-offenders.
The IT system being developed in 3 phases is to support the 6 services (the
SBS team will speak to this).
The implementation of phase 1 is to be rolled out from 2 April 2007. The
rollout process is planned for the period April to September 2007.
This will start with the training of 45 identified trainers and
co-ordinators. These trainers and co-ordinators will be removed from their
normal responsibilities for the 2007/8 financial year. The 10 co-ordinators
will be placed in the 10 provincial offices in order to provide support to the
provincial implementation teams and their respective Labour Centres. The
national co-ordinator will meet with the provincial co-ordinators and will
facilitate meetings to share best practice and trouble shooting at fortnightly
intervals
Service Providers have been appointed to prepare operations manuals for the
six services. The supply chain process has led to the delay in the appointment
of Service Providers to develop training manuals and to train the trainers.
The national implementation and the communication plans have been drawn up.
These will be followed by the provincial implementation plans (to include
training plans for the users)
Roll out plan to be included.
Enquiries:
Zolisa Sigabi
Cell: 082 906 3878
Issued by: Department of Labour
29 March 2007
