EOH Work Readiness Initiative - Narrative Reports 2014 - 2015 Aug. 2014 | Page 35

INTERIM NARRATIVE REPORT FROM EOH

PAUL SERFONTEIN (MANAGER)
Paul is the national manager for a division of EOH
called Infrastructure Deployment Operations (IDO). They
implement new cabling infrastructure including LAN
connectivity, IT configuration and installation. Once they
set up the new infrastructure, Field Support Services
(see Jaun Rust interview), maintains and supports it.
The nature of this work is repetitive, project based and
comes with detailed work instructions. The structured
nature of this environment makes it easier to include
interns and learners on-site which makes them suitable
to host learnership programmes.
“Anything out there as soon as you learn it in class,
its actually dated in the environment already. I support
this initiative very much because they are getting that
experience. They know what actually happens, why its so
important to do incident management on calls. Thereafter
why are soft skills so important. Communication wins
90% of your work ethic for instance. So we try and
teach and coach the learners as much as possible on
soft skills, so that when they are in the field, its how you
portray yourself and the professionalism that’s coming
out from there.
All our employees that are in the field, that is EOH. The
end-user doesn’t always interact with us as managers,
so those people are our assets, an