Metropolitan Health scoops skills development award

Metropolitan Health has been named as winner of the Skills Development category in the Business Process enabling South Africa (BPeSA) Western Cape Contact Centre Awards, held recently at the CTICC.

BPeSA is a national association for companies operating in the Business Process Service and Outsourcing sector. The annual BPeSA Awards recognise service excellence across 12 categories within the contact centre sector in the Western Cape. The sector is responsible for approximately 33,000 direct jobs and generates in the region of R8 billion to the provincial GDP through local and international investment.

“We are thrilled to have been acknowledged for our contribution to the transformation agenda in the country, focusing on the development of youth and creating work opportunities,” says Deborah Williams, Head of Learning and Development, Human Resources, Metropolitan Health.

The company places significant emphasis on skills development, resourcing a large Learning and Development team that currently trains approximately 3 200 employees across the country.

“We are known as a company that the government can partner with, and as a company that will provide an entry to the workplace. Our biggest pride is that we employ between 90% and 100% of people from our learnerships.”

The company is also committed to the ongoing skills development of its staff, ensuring that employees’ training and career development needs are identified and met through Metropolitan Health’s extensive training curriculum.

Training for employees on learnerships and work readiness programmes at Metropolitan Health is not only of a technical nature but incorporates a life skills component that helps candidates with behavioural change, assertiveness, communication skills and problem solving.

“We believe that skills development plays a pivotal role in meeting the service levels of our clients and it places us firmly in the marketplace as an employer of choice,” says Williams.

“We also have a unique focus on the recruitment of learners with disabilities for programmes intended for the unemployed, and a high percentage of candidates in our learnership are disabled.”

Teamwork played a considerable role in winning the award. Williams worked closely with colleague Takalani Nethengwe, Metropolitan Health’s Learning and Development representative responsible for skills development, in preparing the BPeSA competition application submission. His strategic efforts in skills development initiatives over the years had helped the company reach the point where they confidently believed that what they had achieved was worthy of external recognition.

“This award is a fitting tribute to the sterling efforts of our Learning and Development department, the whole Human Resources team and our staff,” said Blum Khan, CEO of Metropolitan Health.