BUSINESS
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the ability of businesses and institutions
to execute their core functions is
incapacitated, then our society begins to
collapse.
We can ignore this, or we can do
something about it. We chose the latter.
Understanding that B-BBEE is
in fact a necessity to the long-term
sustainability of our country, has
enabled us to position ourselves — from
a regional developmental view — as
an important cog in our society’s well-
being.
Then there is the more human
element to engagement: My own,
and the experience of some of my
employees, being physically involved
in our initiatives; that is, in contributing
time not money. Interacting with
students within our shareholders’
programmes and interacting with their
employees — people whose motivation
and excitement are simply about
educating and uplifting others — is
inspiring.
I invite everyone to get personally
involved; to create an enabling
environment where they can personally
contribute to meaningful social change
in their country. Social change that
will have a positive impact on future
generations. ■
well-known and influential South African
trusts: Ma Afrika Tikkun Endowment
Trust and Simanye Trust.
This wasn’t a business alignment
where we sought a shareholder in our
same sector that we could collaborate
with and add scale to. It was an
alignment of values.
Fortunately, we found a shareholder
whose mandate, strategy, and focus
were consistent with the values that
underpin our CSR and development
ethos, both locally and worldwide,
namely education and employability.
They are not an active operational
business partner. They are, for all intents
and purposes, our social investment
arm, focused on holistically nurturing
and skilling underprivileged people from
‘cradle to career’, to quote Afrika Tikkun’s
slogan.
And because social responsibility
is their specialisation, whereas ours is
automation and information technology,
it makes sense for them to run the
operational aspects of our social
investments.
This leaves us to focus on those
aspects that ensure our business
remains healthy at a strategic and
operational level, while simultaneously
creating a longer-term sustainability —
the benefits of which will be seen now
and in the future.
But it goes further than that.
Because our shareholders’ focus on
cradle-to-career development entails
finding appropriate jobs for their alumni,
their ear is firmly to the ground, listening
to what markets are identifying as
national skills shortages.
At the moment, the two most glaring
areas of skills shortages in South Africa
are in accounting and in engineering,
with the country’s labour force not
having adequate numbers of suitably
skilled workers to meet the demand in
these areas.
In responding to this, our shareholder
initiatives would almost certainly have
a positive impact on improving the
availability of engineers in the market,
and a company like Rockwell Automation
would obviously benefit from that.
But not just our company — society
as a whole. Because if there is a serious
lack of skilled people, to the point where
Barry Elliott, managing director of Rockwell
Automation South Africa.
NOVEMBER 2018
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