Training

Grade 12 learners receive career guidance from YWP

WISA YWP, in collaboration with the Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (Borda) and Umgeni Water YWP, has started a career guidance and mentoring initiative for grade 12 pupils of township schools in Pietermaritzburg.

By Sbusiso Khuboni and Ntokozo Zwane

The initiative provides a platform for sharing career advice, training, motivation and employment opportunities in the water sector. It was supposed to be a one-day event where about 600 Grade 12 learners from three schools – Ikusaselihle High, Nsikayethu Comprehensive Secondary and KwaPata High – would attend at a community hall. Covid-19, however, forced the team to explore other options.

YWP decided to record a 30-minute video that was circulated to the three schools, together with drawstring bags and stationery packs. A few weeks later, YWP revisited the schools to garner feedback from teachers about the initiative.

It was decided that a physical event, where the YWP/Borda team engaged directly with the learners, would be more impactful. The team visited Ikusaselihle High School, where they shared their own personal experiences with studying further after school, mentioned bursary options, as well as career paths in the water industry. They motivated and inspired students to find ways to study further.

There are further plans to visit more schools in the upcoming months.

The business case for soft skills

Seventeen years ago, I started a management training and consulting company – essentially a soft skills people development company. While we had reasonable reach into the training market, we encountered resistance around the impact of our workshops on return of investment (ROI). By Antony Jennings, Zifundise Training and Consulting

Iremember a conversation with a managing director, who told me that soft skills training was a complete waste of time and money. I subsequently sent him some research results around the impact of people skills training, yet I don’t think he even read it.

Today, much of my work focuses on organisational culture change and employee engagement; routinely, the reasons for a toxic or weak organisational culture are directly linked to the behaviours and attitudes of team leaders and managers at every level. In fact, employee engagement is at an all-time low for precisely those reasons.

An article on the subject, from Bellevue University in the US, stated that soft skills are ‘fuzzy things’. “Where hard skills have tangible requirements and noticeable business outcomes, soft skills are more difficult to evaluate and quantify.” It’s easy to recognise if an employee knows how to operate an arc welder or use Photoshop; it is more difficult with soft skills. Despite this difficulty, organisations are convinced that soft skills are critical for business success.

Soft skills benefits

Soft skills are both an important part of an employee’s toolkit and essential for organisations to meet their business goals. The benefits of effective soft skills in an organisation include: • creating agile organisations • developing innovative companies • making the best places to work • building the most admired companies. Futurist and author Jacob Morgan says, “I never liked the phrase ‘soft skills’. To me, it implies that things like communication, empathy, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence are less valuable and less tangible than things like reading, math, and science. It’s these human soft skills that ultimately distinguish us from machines.”

The digital age and Covid-19 pandemic demand a change in mindset and a change in attitude towards the way we humanise our workplaces. The focus on soft skills is not yet the norm, but it is getting attention as never before.