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Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, is consistently transforming the organisation through its People and Culture Strategy, its approach to employment equity, its policies and procedures, its management controls, and its educational and skills development programmes.
“Our mandate requires us to make a positive contribution to the socioeconomic transformation of South Africa by promoting inclusive growth that boosts the economy, creates jobs and empowers people,” says Lungile Langa, ACSA’s Group Executive Human Resources.
“We strive to transform our business, our people, our society, and our environment in order to address inequality, strengthen our democracy, and promote sustainable use of environmental resources.”
She notes that the focus of ACSA’s Transformation Plan is to drive a transformation mindset throughout the organisation by ensuring that it attains and retains a diverse workforce, supports the development of black-owned businesses, and promotes youth development.
“In order to advance our transformation agenda, we focus on five priority areas: strengthening black-owned businesses through our procurement practices; improving market access for new black entrants in the aviation and related sectors; promoting access to funding through strategic partnerships with financial institutions; providing training and upskilling opportunities; and building capacity in the small and medium enterprise sector,” says Langa.
ACSA is working to achieve this through skills development programmes, enterprise and supplier development programmes, sustainable socioeconomic development programmes and corporate social investment within its business, communities and the country.
Langa explains that the organisation is implementing its People and Culture Strategy, as approved by its board, within the framework of ACSA’s Recover and Sustain Strategy.
This, she says, sets out realistic short- and medium-term transformation objectives. The key objectives of the plan are to design a smart and flexible organisation, energise the workforce, build high performance with future-focused skills, entrench an ethical culture, enhance ACSA’s carbon intelligence, and strengthen its commercial agility.
“As a result of the organisational realignment necessitated by the pandemic, the nature of some roles will change as the environment in which we operate continues to evolve,” Langa explains.
“We are, therefore, focusing on continuous training and re-skilling, not only to retain our employees and their institutional knowledge, but also to reduce the need to acquire skills at significant cost.”
While young people between the ages of 18 and 35 are a primary focus for ACSA, access to skills development and further education and training is available to all employees, up to and including those at executive level.
In addition, the ACSA Training Academy, as the only aviation security training centre in the sub-Saharan region, has been accredited to provide training since 2004 and also provides training to external clients.
“This accreditation is based on ad hoc audits by various authorities throughout the year, and has to be renewed annually so that we can continue to offer accredited courses in line with our Commercialisation Strategy,” Langa says.
The Academy is also in the process of applying for accreditation with the various Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), which will ensure that the courses it offers are certified by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and count as credits towards various diploma and degree courses.
“We are very excited and proud to have launched a first of its kind initiative – the Airport Executive Programme (NQF 7, 8 &9) – which is targeted at African airports. The programme was launched at the Airports Council International (ACI) Conference currently being held in Dakar. This is a collaboration between the ACSA Training Academy, ACI and the University of Cape Town. The program is aimed at strengthening aviation and airport capability while ensuring that learners obtain a qualification that is SAQA-accredited and internationally recognised,” Langa says.
“A specific area of focus is the repositioning of our Training Academy with the aim of establishing it as a leading and preferred provider of aviation training. Through strategic partnerships, collaborations, acquisitions and amalgamations, our objective is to offer access to a single, integrated aviation academy. This will, in turn, enable us to provide comprehensive and high-quality training services to meet the industry’s evolving needs.”
She adds that ACSA’s focus on broad-based transformation provides advancement opportunities for its employees in line with legal requirements and its transformation agenda. It also provides access to transformation opportunities for suppliers, particularly local small, medium and micro suppliers and service providers, as well as black-owned businesses.
The post and content is sponsored, written and provided by Airports Company South Africa (ACSA).
