Business commends the progress made this year, but says that the current trajectory and pace of change is insufficient to make the shifts needed to transform the South African workforce at more senior levels.

Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) has responded to the 2016 Annual Employment Equity Report, which was released earlier today. This is the 17th annual report released by the Commission for Employment Equity, and covers key indicators on workforce demographic composition. The theme for this year’s report is “Real Transformation Makes Business Sense”.

“BUSA, wholeheartedly endorses the theme of this year’s report. Unless we take meaningful steps so that our workforce reflects the broad demographics of our society at every level, we will miss the opportunity to leverage the full human resource potential that South Africa has to offer”, stated BUSA CEO, Tanya Cohen.

BUSA noted that the 2016 Report demonstrates that significant progress has been made over time at junior and middle management and professional levels, however, the current trajectory and pace of change at more senior management levels is insufficient to achieve broad demographic representivity.

“The time has come to move beyond administrative compliance into substantial action”, stated Cohen. To this end, BUSA indicated that while the report is very useful in terms of quantifying progress over the reporting period, it would be even more helpful if it provided longer term analysis as to what progress has been made and what can be learnt from the past two decades.

BUSA indicated that it saw Employment Equity, together with skills development, as a critical enabler of transformation that would be required to secure inclusive growth and employment into the future. To this end, BUSA indicated that it was committed to working with the Department of Labour and the Commission for Employment Equity, as well as Organised Labour to find systemic and sustainable solutions that would accelerate transformation within the workforce.