Equity-Skills News & Views
    SOUTH AFRICA'S most widely distributed & read INDEPENDENT HUMAN RESOURCE PUBLICATION

 

Equity Skills News & Views
Volume 4, Issue 20, 30 October 2005
Registered as an electronic newspaper: ISSN 1684-5722

In This edition

1. Confusion And Poor Leadership Hindering Diversity Drive
2. Deal Making Is Back. Is HR Ready?
3. Career Turbulence: Challenges And Opportunities For Talent Engagement
4. Across The Board: Official Newsletter Of The SA Board For Personnel Practice
5. Book Reviews: Results: Keep What's Good, Fix What's Wrong, And Unlock Great Performance
6. Downloads: White Paper: Making HR Strategic: Integrated Human Capital Management Holds The Key
7. Case-Law & Legislation Review: Practice And Procedure Evidence In Arbitration
8. Unsubscribe & Moving Soon

NB: If your Internet service provider (ISP) or server administrator filters incoming e-mail, please add Equity Skills News & Views to your list of approved senders to ensure you receive this e-journal to which you are subscribed.

Jeff Sacht: Publisher-editor

www.equityskillsweb.com

jeffs@worldonline.co.za

 

'A MUST TO PRINT & READ'

>25,000 & still growing!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Postponement Notice: Southern Africa Launch Of The Human Capital Institute (HCI) Rescheduled To First Quarter Of 2006

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

On behalf of HCI (USA) and at the request of our key South African sponsors we announce the postponement of the launch of the South African chapter of HCI to the first quarter of 2006. The launch will now be a fully fledged Human Capital Conference, and will include the launch of the flagship ‘Human Capital Management Principles (HCMP)’ workshop.

 

Lawrence Sichinga

Chairman, Sandton International Business School

----------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Confusion And Poor Leadership Hindering Diversity Drive*

 

By Nic Paton who can be contacted at www.management-issues.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Efforts to employ a more diverse workforce commonly come unstuck because firms fail to manage diversity programmes properly, become confused about what they want to do and get wrapped up in percentages, a U.S consultancy has warned.

 

Novations/J. Howard & Associates has identified a series of key reasons why diversity and inclusion programmes so often end in disappointment.

 

The first is that firms often get confused between diversity and inclusion initiatives, it said.

 

The metrics firms use to define a successful diversity programme differ from those used to assess an inclusion initiative, it explained.

 

While diversity centres mostly on representation, inclusion needs to reflect organisational health factors, including employee engagement, it said.

 

"Companies frequently implement an initiative expecting it to affect the wrong set of metrics," the study warned.

 

"A diverse company is not necessarily inclusive, and an inclusive company may be just that, with little impact on representation. So both kinds of initiatives are needed," it added.

 

Another factor is that companies fail to manage their initiatives well, frequently struggling with who is taking ownership of them.

 

Directors or vice-presidents of diversity will end up working in glorious, and often completely ineffectual, isolation.

 

"Successful companies ensure that diversity initiatives are owned by the business units and held accountable," said Novations/J. Howard & Associates.

 

But the most common shortcoming of diversity programmes is that companies end up focusing just on the delivery of training and the percentage of employees who have "completed" such training, it stressed.

 

"Diversity directors may provide training and tools, but they will be used by only a few employees if the organisation's attitude is really one of 'doing what I should do only while people are looking'," it argued.

 

"Successful organisations seek to internalise the commitment to inclusion and look for evidence in decision-making, promotion criteria, strategic direction and professional development," it added.

 

Fourth, even though many organisations will do good work in diversity and inclusion, when a new diversity director starts there may be a strong temptation to get rid of everything that has gone before and start afresh.

 

"So the organisation is blanketed with training or cultural awareness events or activities that look like diversity work," the study concluded.

 

"The projects or activities may in fact be worthwhile. Nevertheless, such a scattershot approach may miss critical targets or 'tipping points' where less effort and better pacing would have greater impact," it added.

 

At the same time, companies were often reluctant to measure and assess where they are in the diversity process because asking for feedback raises expectations, and ignoring these answers may make an organisation vulnerable to litigation, it warned.

 

"A well-managed measurement and assessment process can save the company time and money, and deliver short-term wins that will support the long-term initiative," it added.

 

Finally, management often fear that their organisation will become unwieldy if the performance curve changes dramatically and so are reluctant fully to embrace the challenge posed by the diversity/inclusiveness agenda, it said.

 

"As with any business strategy an organisation must be willing to take risks to make change happen," said Gerry Lupacchino, vice-president of Novations/J. Howard.

 

"Management has to know what it wants to impact, define what success would look like, work in a focused way and not be afraid of the changes that result," he added.

 

* Reprinted by permission of Management Issues

----------------------------------------------------------------------

2. Deal Making Is Back. Is HR Ready?*

 

By By Doug Brown and Moira Donoghue who can be contacted at www.mercerconsulting.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------

After a few quiet years, merger and acquisition activity is humming again. How well will people issues be handled this time around? A big part of the answer depends on HR. If HR is “deal ready,” key employees and leaders will be more likely to stay, remaining engaged in making both the deal and the underlying business successful. People-related savings and opportunities for creating new value are likely to be realized sooner rather than later. But if HR is not ready, employees are more likely to leave, taking industry knowledge and customers with them. Or they may stay and drain productivity as they struggle with uncertainty about the effect of the deal on them. And as a result, expected savings and new value are either lost or so delayed that their impact is compromised.

 

There is much that HR executives can do to ensure success. As merger activity gathers momentum, HR must assume an “M&A ready” stance – especially in companies that have not experienced much dealmaking activity. HR leaders who have anticipated and

planned for mergers – who are “M&A ready” – can more easily smooth employee transitions and reactions during and after the deal. As importantly, they can help their organizations preserve client relationships and deliver the boost to long-term shareholder value promised in the press releases.

 

Why talk about this now? Because the consequences of flawed mergers or acquisitions show up quickly in lost productivity, customer defections, and stalled stock prices – and because HR leaders and their staff are better placed to influence those outcomes than they have ever been before. By our estimation, the average US company now invests the equivalent of 36 percent of

revenues each year in its workforce – expenditures that almost always increase whenever turnover increases.

 

The problem is amplified among executive ranks: research indicates that executive turnover rates are twice as high after a merger as before one – even nine years after the deal.

 

1. M&A readiness is vital HR’s M&A readiness is especially relevant now because the criticism of deals gone bad is more widespread. At least two-thirds of M&A deals fail to build real longterm

value for shareholders.

 

2 More than one-third of surveyed executives who’ve done major deals now acknowledge that they got “too caught up” in the bidding process to do effective due diligence, raising significant questions about the attention given to post-closing integration.3 Such issues take on new importance in today’s deal-making climate.

 

3. According to MergerStat, 2004 was “a year to remember” for US and European deal makers alike: in the US, the number of M&A announcements climbed by almost 15 percent and cumulative deal spending soared by nearly 44 percent to more than $775 billion – the highest numbers since 2000.

 

4 While 2005’s deal-making pace to date doesn’t match last year’s zest, it continues to make headlines.

 

5 M&A readiness for HR is vital because the drivers of the upsurge in deal making are still strong. Foremost among them are plump corporate cash hoards and solid stock valuations, a huge backlog of investment capital among private equity firms, and greater liquidity on the part of the banks. And new and assertive acquirers are appearing on the global stage.

 

China’s Lenovo recently bought IBM’s PC operations, for example, and Indian steelmaker Mittal Steel last year bought US-based International Steel Group. As of July 2005, French liquor company Pernod Ricard had obtained regulatory approval to buy Allied Domecq, and Holland’s VNU is acquiring US health care data provider IMS Health.

 

HR leaders who have been through a merger or acquisition know they get pulled in many different directions:

 

>> C-suite executives look to them for strategic advice on the people implications of the merger and to strengthen the alignment between the organization’s human capital strategy and its business strategy.

 

>> Managers seek direction on changes affecting their operations and their staff. Employees expect quick, honest answers to questions about how the deal will affect them, and they look to HR to step up its support for them.

 

>> HR itself has to decide how it will be managed after the deal, raising hard issues such as in-house versus outsourced activities and shared services versus decentralized operations.

 

>> Finally, management wants to know how HR plans to manage the change without disrupting

day-to-day operations.

 

Assessing your M&A readiness

 

HR’s effectiveness during any merger or acquisition is rooted in its

 

>> understanding of deals and the deal process;

 

>> ability to reinforce relationships between managers

and employees;

 

>> skills in project management, change management,

and integration;

 

>> technology capabilities; and

 

>> ability to supplement its capabilities and skills during

critical periods.

 

Click on www.workinfo.com/free/downloads/180.htm to read the remainder of the article.

 

------------------------------------

IN-COMPANY WORKSHOP: EMPLOYMENT EQUITY COMMITTEE TRAINING

------------------------------------

An Intensive 2-Day In-Company programme For ELECTED EMPLOYMENT EQUITY (EE) MEMBERS & CHAIRPERSON To Competently & Confidently Represent Co-Workers. Contact Jeff Sacht to request a workshop flyer and to arrange an in-company workshop customised to your requirements. Facilitation is charged on a realistic daily rate and not a per person cost.

Also available as a web download for self-delivery/in-house use under license agreement. Contact jeffs@worldonline.co.za

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

3. Career Turbulence: Challenges And Opportunities For Talent Engagement

 

By David Creelman who can be contacted at creelmanresearch@canada.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Globalization is touching and transforming every aspect of the employer-employee relationship. Consequently competition among employers to grab the limited supply of talent passing in and out of organizations is being played out on a global stage. The full effect

on work and the workplace is as yet unknown. In North America and Western Europe, experts also grapple with the predicted impact of generational differences in employees’ attitudes toward work and their employers. Loyalty, whether on the part of the employer or employee is

said to be in decline and among younger workers, it is thought that the principle of ‘living to work’ (the mantra of the baby boom generation) is giving way to a ‘work to live’ mindset.

 

At the same time, a newly minted workforce of hundreds of millions in India, China and Eastern Europe are bringing their own attitudes and work ethics into the mix. The result, for the time being is a great deal of strain in every part of the employee-employer relationship which, when

the pressures of downsizing, upsizing and right-sizing are added, can make for a volatile and sometimes hostile workplace.

 

Employers and employees have responded to the challenges in recent years by demanding and exercising increased flexibility in a few key ways:

 

>> Talent is being sourced on a more global scale than ever before, even the smallest companies are beginning to tap offshore workers for skills and for cost advantages.

 

>> Employers are making increased use of the contingent workforce for everything from the mail room to the chief executive suite.

 

>> Employees are demanding and receiving more flexible work options and this trend

is likely to continue.

 

As the next generation enters the workforce and the population itself ages, pressure for flextime arrangements and work-life balance is intensifying. While some perceive new developments as liberating for employers and employees, there are critics who claim that the new-found flexibility in management and talent comes with negative short-term and long-term consequences.

 

Perhaps the most important challenge for employer and employee alike lies in handling multiple skills requirements and short tenure. For workers today, the responsibility for career planning and advancement is almost solely their own. No skill set or learning can be final. As Teresa Merchant puts it in a recent paper on managerial careers: “Since job security can no longer be guaranteed, employees need to maintain or improve their skills. This is necessary in order to ensure that they are employable in other organizations.

 

Employability is set up as the alternative to, or replacement for, job security.”In the face of globalization of the workforce and accelerating demand for both specialized and general skill sets, employers and employees have never faced a more daunting labor market in which to coexist. In attempting to understand the landscape for employers and talent today, we convened an expert panel in career mobility and transitions. A series of questions were put to the panel. Their answers and insights are summarized below.

 

 

Q: WHAT SHOULD MANAGERS DO TO GET EMPLOYEES ENGAGED/RE-ENGAGED WITH COMPANY GOALS AND PRIORITIES?

 

Download a copy of the complete Executive Briefing at www.workinfo.com/free/downloads/180.htm

------------------------------------

IN-COMPANY WORKSHOP: MANAGING FOR DIVERSITY (NOW UPDATED & ENLARGED)

------------------------------------

An Intensive and Practical 2- DAY MANAGEMENT/ SUPERVISOR WORKSHOP to develop insight and self-knowledge about intercultural competence and enhance your capacity to work with a diverse workforce.  Contact Jeff Sacht to request a workshop flyer and to arrange an in-company workshop customised to your requirements. Facilitation is charged on a realistic daily rate and not a per person cost. Also available as a web download for self-delivery/in-house use under license agreement. Contact jeffs@worldonline.co.za

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

4. Across The Board: Official Newsletter Of The SA Board For Personnel Practice

 

By Huma V Rensburg CEO for the SABPP who can be contacted at www.sabpp.co.za

----------------------------------------------------------------------

# SABPP HR Review – The DVD

 

The Board’s annual review took place on 9 September at UNISA Midrand campus and some 150 delegates registered for the day.  For those who were unable to attend, we have prepared a DVD of the proceedings with highlights in particular from the SABPP Chairman, Prof Nicky Morgan.  The views on the Act of the President of IRASA, Ms Rhode van Rensburg, the Chairperson of SIOPSA, Ms Aletta Odendaal and the President of HRCOSA, Mr Shaun Schwanzer are on the DVD.  The price is R100 + VAT + R10 postage and we will be ready to start posting out by mid November.  Please contact Barbara at 011 773-6222 to order your copy.

 

2. Chinese Delegation

 

A delegation of 7 Chinese government officials and organizational leaders visited the Board's offices on 15 August for a two hour discussion on key HR issues and the Board's functions.  Prof Ray Eberlein and Mr Ivan Lätti lead the discussions. Translation was required throughout, but the delegation appeared to have found the information stimulating.  They were particularly interested in our criteria and process for registration.  They found the concept of voluntary registration and CPD strange, expecting people only to react when compelled to do so either by legislation or by instruction.

 

There seems to be a vast difference between our conditions and theirs insofar as HR development is concerned.  Here HR is a private sector led event, while much still has to be done in the Chinese environment to take HR beyond administration and integrating it with the fields of people development, employee relations, wellbeing and business partnership.  The initiative seems to be squarely in the public sector domain for achieving HR's developmental objectives in the future.  The contact was nevertheless significant in the globalization and networking contexts while the importance of the Chinese economy, its solutions in the people management field and its coping with the human side of rapid growth are learning areas where more sharing may well prove vital for us.

 

3. Indaba For Public Higher Education Providers Of HR Qualifications

 

A historic event took place recently at the University of South Africa (Florida Campus) when 12 different public higher education providers met to talk about qualifications in the HR field as impacted by the current draft Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQF) document.  The future nature of existing HR qualifications within the NQF and the articulation between such qualifications and types of institutions were items on the agenda.

 

Issues addressed in the two-day indaba were among others the status of national diplomas, B Tech and traditional HR degrees, the impact of professionalism and regulation, the specialisation options for HR, Learnerships, models of life-long learning etc etc.

 

This unique event was initiated by Prof Heinz Schenk of Unisa Florida and drew academics from the following Universities: Cape Peninsula, Durban Institute, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan, Johannesburg, Mangosuthu, Tswane, North-West (Potch campus), Vaal, Fort Hare, Walter Sisulu, Western Cape, Unisa.

 

Suzanne Hatting, a leading NQF consultant facilitated the Indaba.  The Board’s CEO was privileged to make the opening address and speakers from academia, the SGB, HR Future, HRCOSA and Telkom all gave input into the topics at hand. In order to find synergies and address the challenges being faced, the Board was asked to convene a meeting at the beginning of next year to take things forward.

 

4. RPL Or Registration By Evaluation Of Competence

 

The working committee set up by Ms Moira Katz, Chair of the Professional Practices Committee of the Board, has finalised their input into the Board’s RPL process.  While the SABPP as ETQA accredits providers to do RPL within the NQF context, the professional chamber of the Board also felt a need to have a well-designed system to handle applications for evaluation of competence for the purpose of registering professionally.  A few brave souls have volunteered to take part in the pilot studies to test our system and are being evaluated.  The Board will have this finalised and on our website by January 2006 and we have some indication that there will be a great deal of interest.  Please do not apply yet!  We would like to thank Ms Morag Mentis and the working committee members for the sterling work done.

 

5. CPD Position Paper Out

 

The Committee of the Board working on CPD or continued professional development has finalised a position paper on the review of the Board’s system.  This committee was chaired by Ms Jean Grundling and she delivered the position paper at the Board’s HR Review in September.  Our thanks to the dedicated participants!  The Board is testing the electronic system that will be made available to all registered practitioners and hope to launch this early next year.  As this will always be a work in progress, registered practitioners are invited to participate.  The SABPP will in principle accept all forms of learning, but we have yet to catalogue them all.  As the CPD form is therefore completed electronically, any additional forms of learning not found on our drop-downs, can be emailed to the Board for consideration.

 

6. ETQA News

 

>> Learnerships: As HR does not have a SETA from which to launch HR Learnerships, a viable alternative has now been found and is already in progress with quality assurance being done in 4 provinces and 17 towns.

 

An HR Learnership is either initiated by another SETA or by a company wanting HR learnerships, through their own SETA.  A level 4 HR learnership is registered on the NQF (FET Certificate in HR Management and Practice Support – Registered no  21Q210002331404; eQS record number 694) and may be used by anyone after notifying the PSETA who originally registered it.  The SABPP does the quality assurance of these Learnerships through a contract with the SETA. 

 

The Learning Implementation Pack developed for HR Learnerships is being handed over to the Board on the 15th of November and we are proud of the quality of the programme that will be used in all HR Learnerships.

 

The Board strongly supports learnerships as a natural first step towards tertiary studies in human resources. It is manageable for the disadvantaged and leads to the SABPP career path.  Two leading universities are already accredited to provide the Certificate as an extra-curricular course.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

5. Book Reviews: Results: Keep What's Good, Fix What's Wrong, And Unlock Great Performance

----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Results: Keep What's Good, Fix What's Wrong, And Unlock Great Performance

 

By Gary L. Neilson and Bruce A. Pasternack, Crown Business, 2005

 

To buy this book click on: http://www.kalahari.net/e-trader/referral.asp?toolbar=mweb&linkid=5&partnerid=293&sku=28157123

 

Being made of the 'right stuff' is often seen as essential to career success. But could it apply to companies too?

 

Gary L. Neilson and Bruce A. Pasternack, senior executives at international management consultants, Booz Allen Hamilton argue that the key to understanding how an organization performs depends on what they call its organizational DNA.

 

Based on an analysis of over 50,000 surveys and long experience as consultants in the field, the authors arrive at four building blocks, which they say are fundamental to the success or failure of any organisation.

 

These are:

 

>> Decision Rights – how well and efficiently decisions are made

 

>> Information – the degree to which it is accurate and available

 

>> Motivators – the level to which staff are incentivized

 

>> Structure – the extent to which it serves the needs of the other three elements

 

None of these building blocks stands alone, say the authors: they are interdependent, and making changes to any one element is likely to affect the other three, and the organization as a whole.

 

Dysfunctional organizations suffer from a misalignment of these four basic building blocks, they argue.

 

Using this model, Neilson and Pasternack identify seven basic types of organization, according to 'personality' types. These range from the healthiest (resilient) to the least healthy (passive-aggressive).

 

Applying this analysis to the results of the survey, the authors argue that 54 per cent of organizations are unhealthy, with passive-aggressive (27 per cent of the sample) being the most common.

Congenial and seemingly conflict free, these organizations achieve consensus easily, butstruggle to implement what has been agreed. In contrast, only 17 per cent of companies are resilient.

Using case studies, from companies such as Symantec, and 7-Eleven, the authors show how this model can be used as a valuable diagnostic tool to first understand, and ultimately to transform ailing companies.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

6. Downloads: White Paper: Making HR Strategic: Integrated Human Capital Management Holds The Key

----------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a new wave of thinking about what it means to be strategic, and savvy HR executives are leading forward thinking commercial and government organizations in integrating human capital management to optimize organizational success.

Strategic goals can shift depending on the political climate, business demands, and the changing needs of an organization. However, being strategic means being able to make rapid and informed decisions and take the actions necessary that will enable the entire organization to be successful for the long term. The economic downturn of the past several years has forced

organizations to do more with less. Budgets have been cut and head count reduced, while work loads and expectations have increased. Employees have been forced to do their jobs faster, better, and smarter.

However, if an organization loses an employee it can cost up to 150% of the employee’s annual salary to simply replace that individual, let alone the knowledge capital lost. This figure does not take into account the decrease in efficiency and effectiveness of other employees while a position is unfilled or while a new, inexperienced worker gets up to speed. Organizations are realizing that maintaining, nurturing, and retaining their human capital is a strategic requirement that cannot be overlooked.

The Strategy of Long Term Success

Employees hold the organizational knowledge and capabilities to sustain a business. To maintain steady productivity gains and added efficiencies, organizations must look deep into their most important assets – employees – and nurture this talent over the long term. To achieve this, organizations must take a strategic view of HR data in order to determine performance goals and results, gap analysis, development priorities, provide accurate incentives and rewards for motivation, and identify high potentials and development priorities for succession. While the process of becoming efficient can be unique to each organization, staying efficient is based upon a few basic rules:

>> Have the right talent in place and fully trained

- Correct skill set

- Appropriately trained

- Motivated

- Aware of how their performance and goals drive the entire organization’s success

 

>> Nurture talent to limit attrition and prepare for future needs

 

- Defined career goals

- Personalized training paths

- Potential and gap tracking and analysis

- Workers compensated in line with performance

- Detailed succession plans

- Integrated HR Information

 

The concepts are straight forward; hire good people, ensure they are properly trained, and provide motivation to retain the best employees. While these are simple concepts, implementing them successfully in a complex organization can be difficult. A key to success is having the right information easily accessible in order to make the right decisions.

 

Download a copy of the SotScape white paper at www.workinfo.com/free/downloads/180.htm

----------------------------------------------------------------------

7. Case-Law & Legislation Review: Practice And Procedure Evidence In Arbitration

By Gary Watkins who can be contacted at www.caselaw.co.za  ; www.workinfo.com 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Klaasen v CCMA & others

Case No.    C 260 / 03

Judgment Date     27 June 2005

Jurisdiction      Labour Court, Cape Town

Judge Murphy AJ

SUBJECT: Practice and Procedure Evidence in arbitration

ISSUE:  The commissioner allegedly committed an irregularity by failing to properly caution the employee about the implications of him not giving viva voce evidence.  His failure to testify under oath played a significant role in the Commissioner reaching the conclusion he did.  It was obvious that the Commissioner felt constrained not to give any weight to the employee's version, which had not been given under oath.  An employee's failure to testify will always strengthen the case for the employer.  The employee was denied a fair trial of the issues and the award was set aside on this ground alone.

SUMMARY OF FACTS:  The employee worked as a geologist for the employer for a period of 7 years.  On 9 September 2002, the employee and the CEO of the employer company experienced some unpleasantness regarding the failure of the employee to submit certain information to the CEO.  The employee claimed that he was then summarily dismissed by the CEO during their meeting, while the employed alleged that a disciplinary hearing was convened in which the employee partially participated and that he was dismissed at the conclusion of this hearing for insubordination.  The employee’s version was that he had already been dismissed, started to participate in the hearing and then left as he felt that the outcome of the hearing had already been decided.  A dispute was referred and the employee called 8 witnesses but did not give evidence himself.  The commissioner handed down his award on 8 April 2003 in which he found that the applicant had been dismissed on 20 September 2002 and that the dismissal was both substantively and procedurally fair.

SUMMARY OF JUDGEMENT:  The employee was unrepresented at the arbitration and when explaining the procedure to the employee failed to caution him what the effect of his failure to testify may have on the outcome of the arbitration. It is clear form the Commissioner’s award that he did not take the employee’s version as put to the employer’s witnesses in cross examination unto account as this was not evidence under oath. 

In approaching this court in the review proceedings, the employee complained that the commissioner failed to warn him that his failure to testify on crucial events would be held against him and that the commissioner should have realised that he was ignorant of the rules of evidence and warned him accordingly. As a lay person, he claimed to have been under the impression that he did not need to present evidence because he had placed his version before the commissioner in his opening statement and during cross-examination of the employer's witnesses. He averred that he would have testified under oath had he known that his presentation of his version was insufficient. That he believed his version was before the Commissioner is to a degree borne out by the manner in which he dealt with it in his written closing argument. 

The court held that an employee's failure to testify will always strengthen the case for the employer, however, a Commissioner would only be justified in drawing an adverse inference or accepting an uncontradicted version if he had cautioned the unrepresented litigant that his failure to testify might lead to that result.  Commissioners acting under the auspices of the CCMA in terms of the LRA are expected to act inquisitorially or investigatively. Section 138(1) of the LRA provides that a Commissioner may conduct the arbitration in a manner that he or she considers appropriate in order to determine the dispute fairly and quickly, but must deal with the substantial merits of the dispute with a minimum of legal formalities. This includes stepping momentarily and cautiously into the arena to direct the proceedings in the interests of justice. A Commissioner has a duty to inform the litigants of the rules of evidence and his intention to rely upon them to accept an uncontradicted version or to draw an adverse inference.  Failure by a Commissioner to instruct an unrepresented litigant on his rights and the consequences of choices he made during the arbitration process, constitute a reviewable irregularity.  The court held that the employee did not have a fair trial and set the award aside.  The matter was referred back to the CCMA for de novo arbitration before a Senior Commissioner.  No order was made as to costs.

------------------------------------

THE IR PROTECTOR

------------------------------------

Is your company spending valuable time and resources handling disciplinary issues?

Does your business contribute to the 130 000 cases at the CCMA each year?

Is your share of the R14 000 000 000 in South African industrial relations costs affecting profitability? Take the next logical step in people management and protect your organisation.

To find out more about “The IR Protector” visit www.workinfo.com/sponsors/irprotect.thm 

Brought to you by Workinfo.com and Camargue, Hollard’s labour dispute specialists.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

8. Unsubscribe & Moving Soon

----------------------------------------------------------------------

UNSUBSCRIBE: Scroll to the end of the newsletter where you will find a code directly linked to your name. Click on the unsubscribe link. PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS NEWSLETTER TO UNSUBSCRIBE. MOVING SOON: If you are changing your email address soon and would still like to continue receiving this newsletter, please email us your new or temporary email address to ensure that you do not miss out on the next edition.

------------------------------------

About the e-Journal/e-Newspaper

------------------------------------

Equity-Skills News & Views is a free bi-monthly newsletter for business owners, Line Managers, and Human Resource Practitioners (who support Line Managers) with the implementation of fair and developmental people management systems and practices. The style of this e-Newspaper fits between the traditional email newsletters and printed professional trade journals & magazines. Subscribers will be kept up to date with the latest developments in the world of people management, receive handy people management tips, and feedback about labour court rulings that relate to the implementation of the key Labour Acts. Please add equity skills news & views to your list of approved senders if your Internet provider or server administrator filters incoming e-mail, to make sure you receive periodic e-mail alerts and this newsletter to which you are subscribed.

------------------------------------

Opinions expressed by contributors DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT the standpoint of the publisher-editor of Equity-Skills News & Views. Information published here is for general information, and is not intended as legal advice. The authors, editors, and publishers do not accept responsibility for any act, omission, loss, or damage occasioned by any reliance upon the contents hereof.

This message is sent in compliance with the ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AND TRANSACTIONS ACT. 2002, Act No. 25, 2002 [South Africa] passed on 20 May 2003.

Sender: Jeff Sacht

URL: www.equityskillsweb.com

E-mail: jeffs@worldonline.co.za

Telephone: +27 011 485 4943

Facsimile +27 011 485 4943

Publisher-Editor: Equity-Skills News & Views

'A MUST TO PRINT & READ'

------------------------------------

Copyright (c) 2004 Registered electronic newspaper: 1SSN 1684-5714

 
© 2002 Equity Skills New & Views.  All Rights Reserved.                            ISSN 1684-5714