Productivity SA National Awards for top performers

Top companies who managed to improve their productivity throughout the year have been honoured at the National Productivity Awards held at Gallagher Estates, Midrand this past weekend.

The Productivity SA Awards are a means to recognise creativity, innovation and productivity within South African enterprises. Productivity SA is established in terms of section 31(1) of the Employment Services Act, No. 4 of 2014 as a juristic person with a mandate to promote employment growth and productivity, thus contributing to South Africa’s socio-economic development and economic efficiency.

The Chairman of the Productivity SA board, Mr Mthunzi Mdwaba in his welcome speech said “Behind productivity growth is the worker, strong work culture, and the worker working smarter. This establishes a need for South Africa to make important adjustments and improvements in the labour market which is characterised by structural mismatches resulting from historical patterns of production in the economy on one hand, and education and skills development on the other.”

Productivity and competitiveness are concepts that are important in order to harness the energy that build economies. The need exists to address these challenges via raising national productivity and competitiveness, which is a key challenge in itself.

The Keynote Speaker at the function President of the Black Business Council, Dr Danisa Baloyi, urged everyone from business, labour and government to work together with Productivity SA in ensuring that it becomes the apex of productivity and is accessible to all who need the interventions.

The winners were awarded in the following categories:

•  Emerging:  Eat Smart Organics (Cape Town)
  
• Corporate: Eberspächer South Africa (Pty) Ltd (Port Elizabeth)
  
• Public sectors: SAFCOL Timbadola Sawmill (Levubu, Limpopo)  and
• Cooperative sector: Inqolobane Yobumbano Secondary Co-operative (Durban)
  

The Deputy Minister of Labour Inkosi Phathekile Holomisa says the mandate of the DoL is to regulate the labour market through policies and programmes developed in consultation with social partners, which are aimed at:

• improved economic efficiency and productivity;
• employment creation; sound labour relations;
• eliminating inequality and discrimination in the workplace; alleviating poverty in employment;
• Enhancing occupational health and safety awareness and compliance in the workplace; as well as nurturing the culture of acceptance that worker rights are human rights.