Abstract
In response to South Africa’s youth employability challenge, the government encourages business, civil society and SMME’s to employ young people through learnerships, internships and accredited or non-accredited training courses for a period of 12 months. The Youth Employment Service (YES) initiative aims to prepare unemployed youth for first time employment through a work-readiness programme.
The contribution made by corporates in addressing unemployment is an under-researched area, this study is therefore important to potentially fill this gap. The research project explores how a South African bank through its involvement in the YES programme contributes to youth employability.
Using the Positive Youth Development (PYD) theoretical framework, this study brings to the fore three key elements: positive and sustained relations, life skills building activities and opportunities young people to be active participants in their communities and networks.
The study drew its findings through semi-structure interviews from a purposively selected sample of ten beneficiaries of the YES beneficiaries and two managers from the studied organisation. Thematic analysis was used to organise data.
By reviewing literature and gathering the participants perspectives the key finding is that employability programmes like the YES programme in the studied bank have shown to be effective in contributing to the employability of young people.
A key limitation in this study is found in its exclusion of young people who were not absorbed for employment post completion of the internship. Therefore, it is difficult to comprehensively indicate the YES programme’s effectiveness in the studied organisation. However, majority of the study’s participants feel that the YES programme has undoubtedly made them more employable – this was founded on the skills gained through the programme and their ability to retain work.
Although employability and employment/unemployment are two sides of one coin, it is important to note that this study focuses on the employability of young people i.e. young people’s level of labour force competencies and not youth unemployment/employment i.e. their employment status.