Building a Talent Pipeline with a Strategically Aligned Bursary Programme. By Dr John Eliastam

For many sectors, the Bursary component of Skills Development on the B-BBEE scorecard represents a substantial quantum of spend, with significant potential benefits for the organisation and high-impact transformation programmes. Yet, this seems to be the component of Skills Development expenditure where businesses struggle to find a compelling ROI on what is a significant financial investment. We believe that we have a solution to this challenge.

We live in a rapidly changing world, where innovation and disruption haven't just become the norm – they are predictors of business success. Innovation is a product of human imagination and ingenuity, which means that it depends on hiring and retaining the right people. Organisations will either be at the forefront of disruptive change in their industries or find themselves constantly reacting to it and trying to play catch-up. To avoid this, organisations need to move beyond the operational focus of people management into a strategic and forward-looking mode.

Many skills development companies don't offer compelling solutions in this area because the constraints around bursaries don't offer the scope to earn much revenue; they prefer to focus on the proverbial cash-cows of learnerships.

We believe that every component of Skills Development is important and should be harnessed to deliver maximum commercial benefit for the organisation and maximum impact in the arena of transformation. The bursary component of skills development spend can be leveraged to produce a strong talent pipeline.

Achieving this with bursaries requires aligning the answers to a number of questions:

1. What are the core strategic challenges and objectives of the business? We are specialists at creating alignment between business strategy and transformation and ensuring that commercial value is created as well as impact in transformation.
2. What skills does the business need to acquire and retain to achieve these? Our team of specialists will work with you to identify the critical skills that your business needs to thrive.
3. How does the Employment Equity Plan of the business speak to this? Too often, Employment Equity Plans are treated as a compliance check-box exercise. We will work with you to align your Employment Equity Plan with your business's strategic human resources plan.
4. How can the organisation's bursary spend be used to acquire critical skills and enable their Employment Equity goals? We will assist you in building a bursary programme that builds the human capital of your business, with all the necessary documents for compliance and programme management.
5. What is a realistic timeframe for implementation? Our project managers will work with you to develop a plan to implement your bursary programme, with clearly defined timelines and deliverables.

There is a final issue that needs attention: what kind of values should prospective bursary candidates have? This is often overlooked in these programmes but is a critical factor in determining success. It is important to select candidates who embody the organisation's values and who align with its desired culture, if a bursary programme will deliver talented staff that your organisation can retain – and wants to retain. Sometimes the smartest candidates may also be the most toxic and harmful to team dynamics.

If all of these factors are taken into account when crafting a bursary programme, it can deliver significant long-term benefits for your organisation's human capital. We at LEAP would love to be part of helping you to achieve that success.

About Dr John Eliastam, LEAP Group General Manager