e r 2 - Umgeni Water

Chapter| Human Resources Plan12.3.1 Development and Advancement of Women EmployeesIt is intended to develop and advance women employees in the organisation, and increase the womencomplement over the next five years from 26% to 31% (Figure 12.3). Higher targets are set for the more skilledworkforce categories as indicated below.• Top Management + Senior Management: In the combined levels of Top and Senior Management, it is plannedto increase the women complement: from 37% women to 39% women.• In the Professionally qualified and experienced specialists and mid-management + Skilled technical andacademically qualified workers, junior management, supervisors, foremen, and superintendents, it is plannedto increase the women complement: from 34% women to 39% women.• In the combined levels of Semi-skilled and discretionary decision making + Unskilled and defined decisionmaking, it is planned to increase the women complement: from 6% women to 9% women.12.4 Training programmesStaff skills development is essential to enable staff to excel in their individual and organisational roles andfunctions and deliver on the organisation’s strategy. The organisation’s recruitment and retention interventionsare intended to ensure the organisation has sufficient flexibility to obtain the skills that it needs to implement itsbusiness plan. The approach will include options for buying, making, converting and creating skills, whilstcontinuing to ensure diversity is increased in under-represented areas. The convert strategy will focus on core,scarce and critical skills through retraining. This will be achieved through learnerships, training interventions andrecognition of prior learning. Umgeni Water will develop strong partnerships with universities, FET colleges,vocational institutions and SETAs in support of its skills development initiatives.12.4.1 Learnerships and ApprenticeshipsDuring this business plan period Umgeni Water will:• Continue to develop and complete thirty-seven external learnerships and fifteen internal staff learnerships, inWater and Wastewater treatment, and• Develop and send for trade test 12 Apprentices in the fields of Mechanical: Fitting and Turning and Boilermaking,Electrical Engineering and Instrumentation• Extend its programmes to a total of seventy learners enrolled in the fields of Electrical, Instruments,Mechanical Engineering and Water and Wastewater Treatment.The Learnerships programme will utilise forty per cent (40%) of the training and development budget.12.4.2 Bursary and Graduate ProgrammeA create strategy will be used to create a skills pool that would address future skills demands in the organisation.This will be achieved through:• Continuing with the current bursary programme and awarding further bursaries to achieve a total of tenbursaries for skills identified, namely, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and financial accounting.• More vigorously ring fencing eighteen positions in the structure for implementation of graduate developmentprogrammes as mechanisms for addressing the core, critical and scarce skills needed by the organisation. Afurther twenty six trainees is envisaged to be enrolled to the fields of chemistry, chemical engineering,microbiology and mechanical engineering upon receipt of funding for the Energy SETA (ESETA)12.4.3 Training and Development and Assisted Education ProgrammesTraining and development and assisted education programmes will be improved by better alignment of the skillsand competency needs of the business plan to individual’s development plan, as well as, the workplace skills plan.Page 68 Umgeni Water Five-Year Business Plan | 2011/2012 to 2015/2016