A tangible commitment to helping solve South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis has just earned IQbusiness its level 1 B-BBEE points.
IQbusiness, the largest independent management and technology consulting firm in South Africa, achieved level 1 in their B-BBEE points and their long-term partnership with the Youth Employment Service (YES), a business-driven NPO (with no government funding) that works to tackle South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis, contributed significantly to this milestone.
Since being founded just over two and a half years ago, YES has worked with more than 1,621 South African companies to create more than 62,000 work experiences with no government funding. This has seen R3.5 billion being ploughed into communities and the economy through youth wallets.
IQbusiness’ commitment to helping solve the youth employment challenges in South Africa has seen the company paying 162 youth salaries through three programmes run through this alliance.Since 2019, these unemployed, but talented, young people have been taken in by IQbusiness, with 20% of the youth being placed via YES’s implementation partner, Yoga4Alex, as readers and administrators.
The majority of the uptake by IQbusiness (80%) were placed internally as consultants. The youth retention for all three programmes stands at 100%, making this an extremely successful job-creation partnership. The reason for this is testament to IQbusiness’ robust recruitment process, ensuring job and skill/interest matching. This means that not only are the young people learning while at the company, they are also thriving.
Adam Craker, CEO of IQbusiness explains: “Our partnership with YES is aligned with our purpose to grow people, grow business, grow Africa. With the highest youth and general unemployment in the world, how can we or other companies in South Africa ignore the call to partner with YES and to play our part? Our Level 1 B-BBEE certification is testament that doing good is good for business.”
Vaunn Kelly, acting co-CEO of YES, praised IQbusiness for their commitment to creating employment opportunities in an economy facing huge challenges.“IQbusiness’ jobs numbers have contributed to making a real difference to so many young people out there, we have just surpassed the 62,000 employed youth milestone.”
However, Kelly re-iterated that we need more businesses like IQbusiness to join the movement.“The release of Quarterly Labour Force Survey stats for the second quarter of 2021 are devastating with the unemployment rate of youth between 15-34 years at 58.5%. The work we do is critical – now more than ever.”
Kelly said businesses of all sizes have found YES to be a cost-effective, high-impact way of delivering work experiences through its broad-based transformation approach. More than 650 B-BBEE level ups have already been awarded to organisations that provide these crucial first work experiences.
YES offers South African businesses a way to improve their B-BBEE levels almost immediately after registering, over and above the standard B-BBEE scorecard elements, while driving societal upliftment through youth employment. Companies that create a target number of work experiences can benefit with a B-BBEE rating increase of one, or even two, full levels almost immediately in their first year of participation.
“Being active in B-BBEE and having a high rating is not only crucial for doing business. It is a marker that indicates to your market, your investors, and your employees that you are serious about micro and macro transformation. It shows you are a responsible corporate citizen who is actively participating in rebuilding South Africa into a country that works for all,” concludes Kelly.
