SA brain drain to get worse

Europe and the US will augment their workforce with skilled SA locals.

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A baby shortage far away in the northern hemisphere may seem of little concern to South Africa, but labour experts warn that it is a ticking time bomb for the country’s growth prospects.

Linda Duxbury, a professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, said that low birth rates in North America and Europe meant those regions faced a growing shortage of skilled professionals, which was likely to fuel the brain drain from South Africa.

“The developed world is hungry for talent,” Duxbury told Business Times during a recent training visit she made to South Africa.

“You’re going to lose the people who can really make a difference here. You’re going to lose a lot of them.”

She said South Africa was making the problem worse with employment equity policies that alienated skilled whites and made them all the more receptive to overtures from overseas recruiters.

“South Africa has some segments of its population that are incredibly well educated and are feeling unappreciated, not respected and constrained,” Duxbury said.

“And those are the ones that are going to be attracted to the developed world because we offer them stuff they don’t have here; we offer them respect and the ability to advance. It’s interesting, but nobody here is having that discussion.”

She said apartheid had been a tragedy for SA, but it was time to move on.

“The focus on redressing the past means that you might actually not have a viable future, because you lose all of your talent.

And the data suggests (whites) are not leaving for money. They’re leaving for respect, recognition, talent, and because they don’t feel safe here.”

Duxbury said her physician in Ottawa was a South African from Stellenbosch. “ I asked him why he left. He said: ‘I left for my kids — they would have no opportunity.’ ”

She said South African policy- makers appeared to have little appreciation for the implications for the country of falling birth rates in the developed world, which in many cases were below the replacement level of 2.1 children per family.

“For the next 25 years at least, for every two people retiring there’s only one person in the pipeline to take their place.

“And because it’s the workaholic baby- boomer who’s retiring, and the younger person is not prepared to give their heart and soul and life to the organisation, the data says that for every two older workers, we’re going to need three younger workers to take their place. And we’ve only got one.”

Duxbury said the US would have a shortfall of 10 million skilled workers by 2010, and would be sucking in talent from the rest of the world like a vacuum.

“South Africa should definitely be worried,” she said.

The global financial crisis would reduce demand for talent, but only temporarily.

“In Canada (and) Australia, companies are being really careful who they cut right now, even though we’re in a downturn.

“They’re recognising that if they cut now, they’re not going to be able to grow in a year, which is when the market’s going to go crazy. If you cut now, then in 18 months that’s when the baby-boomers are leaving... are you going to be able to hire to replace?”

Local recruitment agencies report a growing exodus of skilled South Africans. Jan Coetzee, managing director of Manpower SA, said in the last six months the company had seen an increase of about 50% in the number of people looking for jobs abroad.

“The majority are engineers and a lot of mining people. There’s a lot of mining developments going on in Australia and New Zealand, so we are unfortunately losing a lot of specialised skills to those two countries specifically. On the IT side, people tend to go to the UK.”

Coetzee said despite retrenchments, SA companies were trying to hold on to people with scarce skills.

David Arkless, a senior vice-president at Manpower based in Europe, called the developed world’s demographics “disastrous”.

“We’re just not producing enough kids any more, it’s as simple as that. So, the problem is, more countries are competing for thin resources, and those resources include human resources.”

Duxbury said South Africa needed to devote far more resources to education and scrap the “punitive” labour policies that protected the “lowest common denominator” in the workforce.

“When you’re an outsider and you look in, you go ‘holy heavens, why are they still rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Do they not see there’s a big ice berg?’ And I think they don’t.”