Three hundred a year: why we set ourselves a target

We spend our working lives asking clients to set targets. A level to reach, a share of profit to commit, a number of learners to absorb into jobs, a date by which a plan must be submitted. It would be strange, and a little dishonest, if we did not hold ourselves to the same discipline. So we have set ourselves two targets of our own, every year: to place 300 young South Africans in meaningful work, and to build one computer lab in a township school.

I want to explain why we chose them, what we mean by them and what we have learnt about the difference between a target that counts and one that only scores.

Why a consultancy should have a target at all

BS Vision is a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor, 100% Black-owned and 50% Black women-owned. Those facts matter to our clients, because spend with us is recognised at our level. But a certificate describes what we are. It does not say what we do with the position we are in.

Advisers carry a particular risk. It is possible to become very good at explaining how other people should transform while asking very little of yourself. Our clients see that quickly. When we sit with a board and recommend a multi-year youth programme, the natural question is: do you do this yourselves? I would rather the answer were a number than a sentiment.

A target also disciplines our advice. If we are placing young people ourselves, we learn first-hand what makes a placement work and what makes it fail. We cannot recommend a model we have not been willing to run.

A commitment you do not count is a wish. We would rather be measured.

Why young people, and why 300

South Africa's youth unemployment figures are familiar enough to every reader that I will not repeat them here. Behind them is a simple trap. Employers ask for experience; young people cannot get experience without a job. Every year that a young person spends outside work makes the next application harder.

The way out of that trap is a first real job, with someone who expects good work and helps the young person learn to deliver it. That is what we mean by meaningful work. Not a seat in a room and a stipend, but real tasks, a supervisor with time to supervise and skills that a second employer will value.

We reach our 300 through several routes: the Youth Employment Service, learnerships, internships and graduate programmes. The number is large enough to stretch us and small enough to do properly. We would rather place 300 people well than claim a larger number we could not stand behind.

Placement for points, and placement for people

This is where I want to be candid, because it applies to our clients as much as to us.

The Codes reward youth work generously. The Youth Employment Service, which gives unemployed young people twelve months of work experience, can lift a measured entity by up to two B-BBEE levels when it doubles its YES target and meets the absorption requirement. Skills development, a priority element worth 20 points, carries up to 5 bonus points for absorbing Black learners from learnerships, apprenticeships and internships into jobs. Those are powerful incentives, and they are there for a good reason.

But there is a version of youth employment that is designed around the certificate rather than the person. The placements are created to meet a number, the young people are given little to do, and at the end of the year they leave with a certificate of completion and nothing to go to. The business gets its levels. The young person gets twelve months on a CV and a return to the queue.

I do not think that is good enough, and I do not think it serves the business either. Each year of placements that leads nowhere has to be bought again the next year, at full cost, with nothing carried forward.

The case for absorption

Absorption, keeping a learner or a YES youth on as an employee when the programme ends, is the point at which a placement becomes a career. It is also where the scorecard and the person finally want the same thing.

The businesses that absorb well usually decide to do so at the start, not at the end. In practice that means a few deliberate choices:

• Place young people where you have real vacancies coming, not where there is spare desk space.
• Give each one a named supervisor, and make supervision part of that person's job rather than a favour.
• Budget for absorption in the year you start the programme, so the decision is not left to whoever holds the budget twelve months later.
• Track each young person through the year, so that by month nine you know who you intend to keep and what they still need to learn.

Not every placement will end in a job at the same company, and it should not have to. A young person who leaves with real skills, a good reference and the confidence of having done the work is far better placed than one who leaves with a certificate alone. But absorption should be the plan, not the exception.

A computer lab, every year

Our second commitment looks further ahead. Every year we build one computer lab in a township school, to help learners and teachers make the move to AI.

The reasoning is the same as for our youth work. The young people we place in five or ten years' time are in school today. Many of them will enter a workplace where using AI tools well is an ordinary expectation, and a learner who first meets a computer at their first job starts that job behind. A lab will not close that gap on its own. But it gives learners somewhere to start and teachers somewhere to teach, and it is a concrete thing we can deliver, visit and be held to, one school at a time.

What we ask of ourselves, and of you

Three hundred placements and one lab a year will not change the country on their own. We know that. But targets are how organisations decide what they are serious about, and these are ours. We will measure them in the same way we ask our clients to measure theirs: not only how many young people started, but how many are still working, and where.

If your business runs a youth programme, or is thinking about one, I would ask one question of it: a year from now, where will these young people be? If the honest answer is "back where they started", there is a better design available, and it usually costs less over time. We would be glad to help you build it. Write to us at sales@bsvision.co.za.