Barriers to effective workplace skills development in the electrical sector.
Loading...
Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Electrical contractors are evolving though a challenging phase in the maturing
democratic South Africa. Government has allocated funding and has mandated
skills development to the Sector Educational and Training Authorities (SETA),
however, this strategy has lost its focus. With the golden thread lost in the maze of
institutional bureaucracy. Implementation strategies at government and industry
level should overlap each other, compliment and reinforce one another and form
the core of South Africa’s Skills Development Strategy. Whilst it is true that there is
a severe skills shortage in all technical fields, the reasons behind these shortages
is not clear. The aim of this study was to determine what challenges electrical
contractors in KwaZulu-Natal faced that prevented the development of skills in the
industry. The lack of actual sector skills intelligence transfer from industry to
government departments resulted in incorrect statistics of the electrical contracting
sector. The objective of distributing the survey to all electrical contractors that were
registered with the Electrical Contractors Association SA (ECA SA) in KwaZulu-
Natal Durban and surrounding areas including Richards Bay was to conduct a
study amongst the total population and then establish a simple random sample. An
electronic questionnaire was mailed to all contractors registered with the ECA SA
KwaZulu-Natal. A total of 540 respondents viewed the survey and 269 completed
it. This translates to a 50% completion rate. It has been proven that 58% of
electrical contractors were training electricians. Further analysis revealed that
there was a relationship between the age of a business and the man hours
invested in training. Older businesses conducted more training. There was also a
relationship between the number of man hours invested in training and the number
of qualified electricians employed. The greater the man hours of training the larger
the number of qualified electricians employed. Whilst there was no relationship
between man hours invested in training and accessing SETA funding, electrical
contractors believed that the full reimbursement for training would accelerate the
skills development processes.
Description
Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.
Keywords
Career development--South Africa., Electricians--South Africa., Employees--Training of--South Africa., Theses--Management studies.