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Take advantage of BEE

Yes BEE sucks.  It sucks for everyone. Black people think it sucks because they get the job, but they don't get the work. For white people it sucks because they feel that they are discriminated against because of their skin colour. For businesses it sucks because they may have to employ incompetent people in order to improve their BEE scoreboard. 

It seems that nobody is really winning with this BEE thing, well with the exception of tenderpreneurs and their beneficiaries as well as their white counterparts that are getting lucrative government business.

My stance on BEE, well what I think about BEE is not really the point I am trying to convey, so for this entire article I will remain an objective observer.

Most companies hire black people because they want to contribute to the transformation of this country, note the sarcasm in this statement.  But who are companies?  Companies are nothing more than the people that manage them. The people that manage companies are probably the same people that hide behind their computer screens and throw shade at the government.  

Yet their greed and maybe their business sense forces them to comply with government policies.  It can be argued that the benefits that companies procure from complying with BEE far exceeds the cost of compliance ie. Hiring incompetent people. 

With all that said why not take advantage of BEE.   When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade and that’s what companies think they are doing, but are they really?  There are short term benefits to be derived from BEE compliance but in the long run the future of the business will be compromised.  Growth of the company will be stagnant as they are sitting on a huge bill of incompetent staff. 

I think there is no black person naïve enough to not know that they were hired by virtue of being black if it is a BEE position.  They get thrown in the deep end and are expected to swim.  As expected because of their lack of training they may drown.  This fails the purpose of BEE in that is feeds the stereotype that black people may be incompetent and further prove that BEE just doesn’t work.

The point that I am trying to get across is that transparency is very important in business. I think that when complying with BEE businesses should be very honest with their new hires. They should communicate with them the fact that they were hired to promote transformation. They should then implement additional skills training. 

They should only allocate tasks fitting the particular individual skills and be outright honest with the person that they will only be given additional responsibility once they prove that they are capable of handling the task.  Additional mentoring and monitoring should also be implemented.   

This process will be very costly at the onset, but I think the long term efficiencies to be achieved far exceed the cost. 

I am not saying that BEE is right, but it is what it is, so make the most of it. 

Disclaimer:  BEE in this article refers to employment equity, not every form of BEE.

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