Introduction

Guarantee Trust Corporate Support Services has, for the past six years, run a Work-Readiness Program for unemployed commerce graduates. Alan Murray and Kevin Wakely-Smith manage the program and to date have trained 1820 such graduates. 80% of these graduates have been placed on 3-year accounting Learnerships and a further 10% have been placed in commerce and industry.

Guarantee Trust has secured a contract to deliver a Work-Readiness Program for a further 500 graduates across South Africa in 2009/2010. This program is known as the Bonani Work-Readiness Program.

Work-Readiness Program

The program, which was created in late 2002, has completed 7 phases and is currently involved in the 8th phase of this process.

Phase 8 of the program is delivering work-ready graduates to firms in Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria and the greater Johannesburg area. The company will be placing 500 graduates into practices as learners on either (3-year) SAIPA Learnerships or into CA practices to follow a CA-route qualification. Graduates either have a National Diploma in accounting or a B.Comm Accounting as minimum qualifications before embarking on the program.

There are 3 very exact and defined steps to the success of this program:

1. Selection is done to establish the applicants’ suitability for the profession including motivation and organizational sense. The latter is critical to a graduate making it in the detailed environment of the profession. On average between 1500 and 2000 graduates apply for entry to the program. Of these 250 are selected in each half of a year.

Pre-selected graduates are a huge benefit to those firms taking on our graduates as this would be a very expensive and time-consuming action for a professional firm to embark upon by itself.
2. Training is conducted over a 5-month period in one half of the year and repeated with the second group in the second half of the year. The training covers researched areas that actually prepare our graduates for the accounting environment.

Subjects covered are basic skills that break down ‘learning for exams’ and build skills in learning for actual work environment application. Actual communication skills are taught with the accent on operating skill as opposed to technical skill. Basic accounting functions are brushed up with graduates taking a set of transactions through a manual process and later repeating this exercise on Pastel.

The training regime includes a set of courses on rules of professional conduct, full office orientation, work-place manners, etiquette, work habits, performance techniques and much more. An interesting aside is a strong emphasis placed in the critical but ‘simple’ task of filing with all graduates being able to recite the alphabet forwards AND backwards as an added tool to make filing a skill worth having. This is a simple example of a small part of one of the courses that demonstrates the relevance of the training to the work-place. This example also illustrates the detail and care built into the program to ensure eventual and sustainable success.
3. Once their training is completed the graduates are offered to practices on a one-month free ‘internship’ to see if the person is suitable for the practice in question. Thereafter the practice is encouraged, but not obliged, to employ the graduate on a Fasset Learnership. The primary reason that firms continue to use our services and take on our graduates is the quality of our trainees. We place, on average, 80% of our trainees onto 3-year Learnerships and a further 10% into positions in commerce and industry. For various life-related reasons the balance of 10% do not make it through the final placement process. A 90% success rate is nevertheless unheard of and a strong recommendation of our process and methodology.

Virtual Office

A very interesting development is a unique workplace simulation practical module. All trainees prepare actual company financial records encompassing all transactions for real companies over twelve months. Qualified accountants run this program as “Virtual Offices” simulating an actual work environment. The VO is fully operational with groups of graduates split into “virtual accounting firms” with “bosses” across 250 computerised workstations. These VO graduates are highly sought after so we suggest you book your graduate as early as possible!

(Read more about the Virtual Office)

On-site follow up

Once these graduates are through the Work-Readiness and Virtual Office programs, the Virtual Office accountants will work with practices to monitor and assist graduates to actually see their Learnerships through to a successful conclusion.

A final but vital part of the Guarantee Trust success formula is the attention given after the placement of the learner to ensure teething problems are overcome and by offering practice support where possible.

Conclusion

Guarantee Trust fully understands the difficulties of HDI graduates making it through the system and finally qualifying as accountants. This includes the dichotomy of graduates studying for academic qualifications with decent pass rates while experiencing a shortfall of skill in application of knowledge once employed.

The Guarantee Trust program actually bridges this gap. Vital in our process is careful selection of those who have the capacity to make it in this profession.

Equally vital is the work-readiness program content that is thoroughly researched and included in each segment only because of its direct impact on the graduates’ ability to succeed in the workplace.

These graduates will be highly sought after and will have a short runway to you being able to invoice their production.

Book your graduates now!