As South Africa marks Youth Month, the conversation around youth development, unemployment, skills shortages, and future-ready leadership has never been more critical. Sandi Richardson, HR executive at RCS, Justin Hughes, Openserve’s executive for HR operations, and Vanessa Gibb, the people business partner at PNET, urge for strategic investments in young talent.
According to RCS HR executive Sandi Richardson, youth development must be embedded into workforce and succession strategies from the ground up.
“To achieve this, we focus on early identification of potential. This involves creating clear career pathways from entry-level roles – such as those in our retail and call centre operations, and identifying individuals who demonstrate aptitude for growth, leadership potential and a proactive attitude towards learning,” she says.
“We also implement structured developmental programmes that are clearly linked to future leadership needs. This isn’t just about technical skills, it encompasses leadership training, exposure to various business units and coaching opportunities with current leaders.”
She notes the cost of not investing in youth development as both immediate and exponential, both for individual organisations and the broader economy.
“For organisations, it translates into higher recruitment costs, skills shortages, reduced innovation and a future leadership vacuum. Without a pipeline of fresh talent, organisations risk becoming stagnant, unable to innovate or adapt to evolving market demands. This directly impacts competitiveness and long-term sustainability,” she explains.
“When we don’t invest in youth development, we perpetuate the unemployment crisis that already affects our economy. High youth unemployment results in social inequality, reduces consumer spending power and can lead to increased social instability. For businesses operating in South Africa, this creates a less stable operating environment and a smaller talent pool to draw from in the future.”
Youth development must be strategic
She stresses that learnerships, internships, and graduate programmes must be designed with specific business objectives and talent gaps in mind from the onset.
“This requires a thorough analysis of current and future skill requirements across the organisation. So, we also integrate practical, on-the-job experience that directly contributes to business operations, ensuring that participants are not just learning theory but applying it in a real-world context.”
“Regular feedback loops with both participants and their managers are crucial to ensure the programme remains relevant and impactful. We maintain these continuous feedback loops to identify emerging skill needs. This ensures our programmes evolve with business requirements rather than being static.”
Sandi also cautions against unconscious biases that sideline young talent. “One common bias is the experience bias, where there’s an over-reliance on years of experience rather than demonstrated capability or potential. A similar bias is the junior role expectation one, where young talent might be pigeonholed into entry-level tasks, limiting their exposure to strategic work or leadership responsibilities. Another significant bias is educational prejudice, assuming that those without tertiary qualifications can’t handle complex work. And then there’s the digital native fallacy, assuming that because young people use technology, they inherently possess all digital business skills.”
She adds that RCS addresses these biases through diversity and inclusion training, structured talent reviews, and by encouraging leaders to focus on potential and demonstrated skills rather than solely on traditional experience metrics.
Openserve’s executive for HR operations Justin Hughes says youth unemployment is directly tied to South Africa’s economic resilience, and acknowledges young talent as essential for future-proofing the ICT sector.
“Skilled workers make up the majority of employees in telecommunications, reflecting the critical need to prioritise skills development and support an ecosystem of new, state-of-the-art technologies. The rapid evolution of technology means the efficacy of those skills reduces with every passing year. New thinking and skills capacity are critical to meeting the technological needs of consumers and businesses, and recently graduated youth help fulfil that need.”
Learnerships that matter
He explains how Openserve prioritises practical and relevant skills development through several initiatives.
“Our internship and learnership programmes are aimed specifically at graduates and unemployed youth, providing experiential learning and, where possible, an opportunity to become permanent members of the organisation,” he says.
“Driven by the need to learn, unlearn and relearn, the training balances innovative thinking with current technologies, creating professionals like network technicians who can not only identify and rectify network issues, but also respond to trends and incorporate them into network architectures and systems.”
By creating pathways to upskilling and employment opportunities, Justin believes young talent can contribute to overall sector growth and not just isolate change to a single organisation.
“Sector growth leads to youth upliftment and economic empowerment, which in turn can lead to the closing of the digital divide and ensure all citizens enjoy high-speed, quality connectivity. But more than that, any skills development initiative must reflect human values and qualities that help enable people to flourish and do their best work,” he adds.
“It is also important to determine the success of any skills development initiative. In addition to gauging learner experience. Openserve measures success by tracking skills development and knowledge transfer, with the ultimate return on investment calculated by performance against the organisation’s strategic goals and objectives, including our ESG policies.”
For Vanessa Gibb, the people business partner at PNET, the youth employment crisis reflects a disconnect between education and job readiness.
“The latest data from Stats SA shows that one in two youths are unemployed. Yet many organisations report difficulty filling a wide range of business, technical, engineering and management roles. This suggests that there is a mismatch between the skills that young job candidates have to offer and the roles available in the job market,” she says.
“One of the issues we have observed is that there are many young people with formal qualifications who don’t have much practical work experience. Many of these young people will not develop the skills they need to be productive members of tomorrow’s workforce unless they gain entry into the job market.”
With the shift towards AI, a changing society, and a complex business and work environment, Vanessa recognises that character traits and soft skills such as problem-solving, learning agility, resilience and adaptability are becoming more important.
“Employers benefit when they hire for these qualities, rather than focusing only on hard skills and relevant experience. Someone with a degree in genetics, for example, can demonstrate analytical thinking and discipline, skills that are valuable in many other roles. Their ability to reason, learn, and adapt may be more valuable than their domain expertise,” she adds.
“We don’t downplay the role of education and experience, but businesses can benefit from looking beyond the degree or certificate someone has. Emphasising growth and learning over perfection is essential.”
