Somehow, there are many organisations that still don't know what a Workplace Skills Plan is.
The deadline for submitting your organisation’s Workplace Skills Plan (WSP) is looming, but so many companies still don’t have a clue what that even is. Any company that has a total annual staff payroll of more than R500 000 is required to pay a skills levy and, should companies meet the necessary skills development legislative requirements, they are eligible to claim up to 60 percent of their skills development levy back from their specific SETA (Skills Education Training Authorities).
In an era where the Fourth Industrial Revolution is top of mind and the panic about the skills that will be required in future is very much real, companies should be taking their WSPs a lot more seriously.
The submission deadline for WSP/ATR 2020/21 information is 30 April 2020.
In order to qualify for the aforementioned rebates, organisations must annually submit annual training reports (ATR) that will be checked against their last WSP.
“The submission of both these reports need to reflect the education, training and development activities an organisation has undertaken to show progress from the previous years’ WSP,” says Melissa van Aswegen, ETQA Manager at The Skills Development Corporation.
“Points are then awarded towards a company’s B-BBEE Scorecard and organisations can claim from the skills development levy.”
The first thing to do before in order to compile a WSP is to do a skills audit, which identifies the current state of employees’ knowledge and skills and compare that with skills that will be needed in the immediate, short and long-term so that you can determine which skills necessarily need to be developed in accordance with company policies and budgets.
You then have to figure out how you are going to execute the plan by finding a reliable training partner that will provide the skills you need. Many people have said it is often best to look for a company that can customise and develop training programs that structured and developed to cater to the specific needs that you have identified.
