In South Africa, and Africa as a whole, where mandatory skills are in short supply, the transferral of skills and knowledge is essential.
Not only does that make business sense, according to Shilpa Yohannan, the head of human resources for Africa at Wipro, but it’s important to keep up with technology trends and create a sufficient pool of employees who will take South Africa further.
“The changes that technology bring and the evolution of technology warrants that every business adapt to it. And that’s why an employee, in any business, needs to be able to adapt to that change. Therefore, you need to keep refreshing your skills set.
“Every company needs to look at their talent-management programmes and at how you get your workforce to adapt to this evolution of technology,” says Yohannan.
And the most effective way of doing this is through internships and mentoring.
“It makes good business sense to continuously have a knowledge-management system in place because there’s always a chance that someone will leave and you will lose that skill.
“But can the transfer of skills be 100 percent? It’s not practically possible because at the end of the day, people are just human beings.
“How much somebody transfers skills and how much someone is able to absorb new skills is very subjective.
“My subordinate might not be interested in doing any kind of skills transfer because in their mind they might want to work from 9-5, do their job and move on.
“So how do you transfer skills to someone who doesn’t want to do anything extra?
“Or you might have an employee who does not believe in coaching and mentoring anybody. Someone may be brilliant in coding or as an IT professional, but ask them to teach somebody and they might not want to do it,” she says.
With that said, Yohannan says there is a lot to be done to reduce risk, and having systems in place in a business is a necessity.
“You can’t have three people leave the company and then be stranded.
“Retaining information and crucial skills also requires a refreshed outlook on internships.
“A lot of people shy away from internships because they see them as part of a CSI (corporate social investment) programme.
“That’s not how Wipro envision internship programmes. They are completely owned by business here.
“HR drives it at first but after that we let business be the drivers, aligning the programme with business, allowing the business team to interview their own prospective candidates, to create the curriculum for training, give input as to what kind of training programmes are needed based on what kind of skills they will require etc.
“They are involved in every part of the process,” says Yohannan.
If HR systems focus on current and future employees, strategies of retaining skills fall at the forefront and therefore mentorships and internships are looked at with a critical eye.
“Training is important. Because you can’t have a bunch of people at the lower end of the pyramid who are available, but when you go higher up, it is very difficult to get that skill.
“And to tackle this challenge, every company should have their own plans in terms of how they want to constantly develop people.
“Technology is advancing and skills across the business need to be refreshed and developed all the time, otherwise trade advancements remain stagnant,” she says.
THE STAR