Why should business be training

Learnerships, the “Silver bullet” when it comes to learning as it teaches you the actual job not just the theory of the job

BBBEE Points

Any expenditure associated with a Learnership will count towards the Expenditure Skills Development points.

There are also other points associated with the headcount of Learners on a Learnership

This is important to those companies whose income is linked to having to secure points in a B-BBEE Scorecard.

Seta Funding

A business must pay 1% p.a. Skills Development Levy (SDL) of its permanent payroll headcount to it relevant SETA.

This is in effect a “Training tax” and big chunk of this 1% can be claimed back through grants providing it is spent on specific areas, which include Learnerships.

In other words, the business has already paid for the training, it may as well do something for the expenditure.

This is important to those companies who want 

to maximise their training expenditure.

Tax Rebates

There are two tax incentives that can apply to Learners on Learnerships.

The Employment Tax Incentive (ETI) Scheme aimed at the “Youth” of South Africa (This can keep labour costs to as low as R 1000 per month for twelve months).

The Learnership Incentive Rebate which allows privately owned business to pay significantly less tax on their profits.

This is important to those companies who wish to avoid paying as little profit tax to SARS as possible

Labour Relations Act (LRA)

When hiring temporary labour, it has become increasingly riskier to hire people for a period longer than 90 days unless it can be shown they are on a project and only that project.

Staff that have been hired on a temporary basis and who have exceeded the 90 days under certain conditions can claim the rights of a permanent employee.

This means the Temporary Labour Broker has to keep recycling the labour every 90 days to avoid this and each time the new hire needs to be inducted and taught the activity.

An alternative is to make use of Learners on a Learnership who have a specific twelve-month contract and can be let go at the end of the contract.

This is important to those companies who want to avoid Labour Relations Act issues with their temporary staff.

Building Competence

There is clear evidence that the more someone is trained for a job the better they can do

Occupational training is like doing a mini-apprenticeship each year.

The activities of the training are designed by industry to teach the relevant skills.

Learnerships are accredited with SAQA and the learners get a National Certificate when they complete the training.

This is important to companies who wanted to grow the overall competence of their staff in order to get them to deliver a quality service.

Source of Labour

In times of tough economic conditions, businesses try to keep their headcount as low as possible. When someone leaves, Learnerships can be a low-cost labour option to augment the labour force as they are paid a stipend and not a salary.

Unemployed Learnerships can also be a valuable source of talent and can significantly reduce your recruitment costs.

This is important to companies who are under pressure to deliver their services but want to keep their permanent headcount down.