Employment

Two years after first opening its virtual doors, TransUnion’s Global Capability Centre (GCC) Africa continues to create jobs, despite the current local challenges of load-shedding and a constrained local economy.

Employees must be managed in such a way that it will enhance efficiency and profitability, which implies creating and implementing regulated standards of behaviour. Anja Hartman talks about how to turn nonperforming employees into productive team members.

South African youth are disproportionately represented amongst the country’s unemployed, and even graduates of tertiary education are not immune to this struggle to enter and make their way in the modern world of work. 

Canada-based tech start-up, CostCertified, has announced the opening of their new headquarters in Cape Town’s city centre. Providing a first-of-its-kind cost estimating software for the residential construction industry, CostCertified joins over 550 firms in Africa’s Silicon Valley.

In the first quarter of 2022, Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) revealed that the unemployment rate increased to 63.9% for people aged 15-24 years old. On the other hand, unemployment stood at 42.1% for the 25-34 age group, prompting government to find ways to combat youth unemployment. 

The cost of looking for a job creates a barrier for many job seekers. However, a recent announcement by the South African government, could see these costs cut for job seekers.

South Africa's unemployment rate has hit a record high of 35.3% - the highest level since Statistics South Africa's first Quarterly Labour Force Survey in 2008. What this means is that 7.9-million people remain jobless. So, how do we, as a country, rectify this?

As youth unemployment worsens in South Africa, 500 youth from the Western Cape have been offered internship opportunities by the provincial government. 

Both employers and prospective employees feel the pain of the recruitment process.  Job searches are often tense, drawn out and exhausting.  Both sides can benefit from a quicker, more accurate and less costly match. 

The effects of the pandemic on employees around the world are real. In the US, more than 24 million people resigned between April and September 2021 in search of better pay, new challenges and greater flexibility. In the UK, the rate of resignation has reached its highest level in over a decade and employers are complaining that they are battling to recruit and retain staff.

Digital talent in Africa leads the pack in looking to change jobs in the near future for better career opportunities: 73 percent will switch roles to advance their careers, compared to 63 percent globally. Career advancement is the main driver for technology employees to move jobs, according to the findings of a Decoding the Digital Talent Challenge report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and The Network, a global alliance of recruitment websites.

It is expected that by 2025, 85 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines, while 97 million new roles may emerge that are more adapted. This is according to the Future of Jobs Report 2020 released by the World Economic Forum.

The job market today is a network-driven environment and is highly competitive by nature, submitting applications- landing an interview and simply landing the job is a scarcity and the expectation for it to be that simple, is quite frankly, unrealistic.

The challenges associated with finding employment are probably more daunting to first time job seekers, who do not know the jobsearch landscape and don?t know what to expect, but the search should be treated as a
journey, not a series of attempts.

Engineers, managers, teachers, legal staff and skilled trades are the hardest
positions to fill. Despite the high number of graduates each year, young
people are struggling to secure employment because they don't have the
skills required by employers.

The concept of cross-border employment is growing in popularity as skills shortages continue to plague the country but many businesses and individuals are unaware of the legalities surrounding foreign workers. Manpower MD, Peter Winn talks about the intricacies of moving and employing staff globally.