Liberty Life Learnership bridges employment gap

Entering the workplace today is daunting for every learner, but particularly for those with little practical experience in their chosen field. Its against this backdrop that Liberty Life is providing learners within the financial sector an opportunity to gain valuable hands-on experience while completing their studies.

In its third year, the Liberty Life Financial Sector Charter Learnership programme provides a platform for learners to alternate between the theoretical component of their qualification and vital workplace experience.

Over a 12-month period, each learner would have spent 50% of their time studying the theory of their chosen field and 50% of the time putting that theory into practice under the guidance of trained professionals.

The participating tertiary institutions include Boston City Campus & Business College and Intec College. Liberty Life has specialised each programme per business area. Business areas covered by the learnership include CAL group risk, corporate benefits, marketing and distribution, human resources, operations and group information management.

Each business area has a learnership co-ordinator, who focuses on the needs of that particular business unit. The programme also boasts a dedicated programme manager and projects manager, who together ensure that the specific needs of learners are constantly met.

In this way, Liberty Life provides that all-important stepping stone that helps turn learners into potential employees, bridging the gap between studying and actual employment.

A group of 88 learners are currently going through the latest learnership programme, which kicked off on 8 January 2007. Upon completing the programme at the end of the year, this group will bring to 266 the number of learners who have successfully passed through the programme since it was launched three years ago.