Empowering unemployed South Africans, to empower GEMS members - Medical scheme assistance at your office doorstep
26 June 2013
GEMS
By mid-2011 Amanda Nyakonda, who had relocated to Johannesburg from Cape Town in search of better prospects had been unemployed for several months while Tsepo Tjikane was struggling to make ends meet, as his business venture had not turned out to be the s
All of their fortunes changed for the better when they saw the Government Employees Medical Scheme’s (GEMS) Client Liaison Business (CLO) unit pilot project advertisement in the newspaper.
GEMS heeding government’s call to create jobs and realising that the odds of a person finding employment with little or no work experience, after months or even years of being unemployed are stacked against them, especially in a country where one in four South Africans are jobless, decided to defy the odds by launching the CLO programme in June 2011.
The 12-month pilot project focused on servicing GEMS members’ needs in national departments throughout Tshwane. Sixty, mostly unemployed South Africans, such as Amanda, Tsepo, Julia, Thandi and Mikateko were invited to an interview. Amanda (25) recalls how invaluable the preparation she received from an agency GEMS was using to assist these individuals was. The agency gave me pointers on various interview techniques, such as thoroughly researching the company you plan to work for, this helped me get to the shortlist of 41 candidates, says Amanda. Equally important was having the right attitude and passing a rigorous test set for them with 99%, observes the candidates.
The 41 GEMS ambassadors were given extensive training, and since it was a new service, departmental stakeholders, such as human resources and wellness champions had to be introduced to the service. Further permission had to be obtained for the CLOs to have access to national departmental buildings and staff so that they would be able to service members.
On a daily basis each of the CLOs were tested against key performance indicators, says Amanda.
The programme brought the medical scheme to the offices of members, says Tsepo (30).
For the first time illiterate members, those without emails or access to a phone, such as cleaners and drivers, were told about the Scheme in their own language and were allowed to ask questions or raise issues, says Tsepo and Julia (25). Non-members working for government also got to hear about the Scheme.
Members were provided with a true face-to-face reflection of the Scheme and did not have to go to a walk-in-centre or via the call centre, this saved them time and trouble, they add. Those who were not familiar with their benefits or the Scheme rules were educated on this and issues that needed to be resolved were escalated to administrators, says Mikateko (27). “I have made it my mission to ensure that members’ complaints are resolved by the administrator and that they are provided with feedback as soon as possible so that they do not need to follow up,” he adds.
By the end of the first year of the pilot, 41 previously unemployed officials in the unit, had serviced over 25 500 employees – 20 092 of which were GEMS members and they resolved more than 24 000 queries in the process, says Liziwe Nkonyana, Executive: Communications and Member Affairs at GEMS.
Further, she adds, some departments were requesting that the service be extended to other regions outside Tshwane. When the GEMS Board considered this, it decided that the pilot be extended by another year between July 2012 - June 2013, and expanded to other regions within Gauteng, observes Nkonyana.
Most of the candidates have now been given permanent posts. Amanda, Tsepo, Julia Thandi (22) and Mikateko believe the programme assisted in their personal growth. It taught us how to express ourselves better, deal with conflict, be humble and opened our minds, they add. They all concur that if you are unemployed you should never give up on your dreams. “If one door closes, another will open,” says Thandi.
The value of this service prompted government departments to request that it be extended nationally, and the GEMS Board responded by not only making the CLO division a permanent feature of the Scheme’s services to members, but also decided to roll it out to other provinces over the next four years.