Tag: YouthEmployment

For South African retailers and e-tailers, Black Friday marks the start of an extended period of high demand. November sales are followed by festive-season shopping, year-end bonuses and increased spending. This pressure often continues into January. The impact of increased demand extends across the entire retail operation.

Employment and entrepreneurship can seem worlds apart. However, the same skill set can help young people succeed in either. For young people eager to enter the world of work after years of schooling and studying, the choices can seem exciting yet overwhelming. Should you join a company in an entry-level role and work your way up? Or should you take a leap and start your own business? Whether you have a boss or are the boss, either path can mark the start of something big.

A recent survey, The Great Retirement, found that 51% of the global workforce is expected to retire or leave within five years. For South African Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) already struggling with skills shortages, this could place additional pressure on business continuity, productivity and growth. Moreover, more than 60% of South African businesses already cite skills gaps as a barrier to progress.

Every employer needs a reliable supply of people who can serve customers, support growth and develop into tomorrow's experienced workforce. At the same time, millions of young South Africans are ready to work, learn and contribute, yet many remain disconnected from opportunities that could help them build careers and gain experience. For employers, this represents one of the country's greatest untapped talent opportunities.

Most entry-level hiring in South African retail and quick-service restaurants still begins with a CV. That first step removes the majority of people who could perform well in these roles. As a result, employers reporting difficulty filling store-level vacancies are working with a far smaller pool than they think.

During my time working at South African Breweries (SAB), I watched young graduates arrive on the factory floor holding hard-earned chemistry degrees. They possessed brilliant theoretical minds. They understood molecular bonds and complex reactions on paper. Yet, when a critical machine on the production line broke down, those degrees often could not get the line moving again.

The world of work is changing faster than our education systems can track, which means preparing for a single career or a fixed set of skills is, paradoxically, one of the least effective strategies a young person can adopt today. The most important shift is to think about careers as journeys rather than destinations.

South Africa is entering what I call a leadership blackout, a slow but unmistakable dimming of the leadership pipeline that many organisations have not yet fully acknowledged. What makes this moment so unusual is that the crisis is not being driven by a lack of talent. It is being driven by a lack of desire.

We know where the jobs are, and we know our young people are eager to work. So why aren’t we connecting the dots? South Africa has 200,000 agricultural jobs waiting to be filled. We also have a thriving Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector. This sector includes call centres, customer service, data processing and back-office administration. It can absorb entry-level workers at scale.

Graduating from university and securing your first job or internship is an exciting milestone. After years of assignments, exams and long nights of studying, entering the working world creates new opportunities to learn, grow and apply your qualifications in practice.