EMPLOYMENT COUNSELLING INVITING STAKEHOLDERS

South Africa has a high unemployment rate and the competition amongst the unemployed and underemployed is very strong to fill the career and skills development opportunities available. Employment counseling is a very important channeling mechanism to serve labour market and human resource development goals. The Department of Labour is inviting all stakeholders to collaborate with it and provide careers information to our employment counseling clients with the view to integrate and re-integrate them to the labour market.

What is employment counselling?

Employment counselling aims to activate or re-activate the unemployed and underemployed to make informed career choices about the world of work, enhance people’s employability and overcome their barriers to the world of work, to enter an income-generating or skills development opportunity

Employment counselling is a process by which the unemployed or underemployed are assisted to identify their career strengths to choose an income-generating or skills development opportunity that will be best suited to them. Career strengths might include careers interests, aptitudes,life or work experience and skills already gained. Careers and labour market information is provided as integral part of the process, to assist them to make an informed choice for a future or alternative career. Information provided by stakeholders very often provides a different perspective to the work-seekers on issues affecting their integration/re-integration into the labour market. Employment counselling also entails raising the employability of work-seekers through further skills development and/or life skills programmes, such as work ethics and job preparation and the removal of barriers to entry into employment. A variety of methods are used, such as group employment counselling, self-help pamphlets, careers exhibitions and job fairs.

How is employment counseling different from career guidance?

Employment counseling is different from career guidance, because it is aimed at the unemployed and underemployed and how to prepare them to move through a transition or change in their work life. It is not aimed at learners still at school who must make a once-off choice for further studies, but rather assists people in times of unemployment and underemployment right through their working life, from the period of school-leaving to retirement. It therefore serves labour market goals, by helping people to find work and therefore balancing demand and supply of labour, contributing to labour market efficiency by lowering maladjustment in the work-place, contributing to alleviating unemployment and poverty and assisting the most vulnerable to enter employment (employment equity). It also contributes to human resource development goals by channeling people to skills development opportunities, lowering training dropouts and ensuring return-on-investment of training funds.

The Department of Labour does not provide employment counselling to learners who must still go to an educational institution, since the idea is that clients must be ready and available to work, before they can be assisted. There are many other service agents that assist learners and the Labour Centres can refer you to these. The Department of Labour’s mandate is to assist the unemployed and underemployed, especially those who come to register as work-seekers.

Target groups of the Department of Labour

All unemployed and underemployed are assisted, but special attention is paid to the following groups, since they find it particularly hard to access employment:

  • Youth-those 16 years and older
  • Women
  • People with disabilities
  • Retrenchees
  • Soon-to-be-released offenders, ex-offenders, parolees, probationers
  • Rural people (outreach service)
  • Entrepreneurs wanting to set up small businesses and co-operatives.

The special needs of the above groups are being addressed in the special employment counseling programmes.The employment counseling service is a new service of the Department of Labour and currently still being developed.

How can stakeholders assist?

Government Departments, parastatals, ngo’s, private organisations, individuals, higher education institutions, critical interest groups, clubs, employers, basically everybody having expertise in rendering a counselling, career information, career integration or re-integration service or placement in employment to the above target groups free of charge and willing to enter into a stakeholder relationship with the Department of Labour, to share expertise and enrich service-delivery, are welcome. It has been the Department’s experience that the best service is delivered through mutual collaboration.

Examples of such collaboration are joint workshops on,for example,small business and co-operative establishment or life skills presentation, sharing expertise with the Career Counsellors on how to integrate ex-offenders, sharing expertise with Career Counsellors on how to counsel people with disabilities, their special needs and how to sensitize the employer, sharing databases of support organisations, making vacancies, employment schemes and skills development opportunities available, making materials available to empower the Career Counsellors to do their work better and for clients to become more employable and know opportunities, sharing ideas for serving rural people, etc.

Contact us:

For Nation-wide service-delivery contact:

Estelle Crafford, tel 012-309 4364, or Ratha Hlalele, tel 012-3094734, or LynetteSteyn,

tel 012-309 4215

For Provincial service-delivery contact:

The Career Guidance Co-ordinator-visit for Provincial Office contact details.

Life is a journey, employment counseling gives you direction!