‘Industry needs co-ordinated approach to training’

Forwarding major KWE has put its money where its mouth is with regard to industry training and appointed a dedicated manager to focus on upskilling staff. “The recession taught us a lot of lessons,” says managing director Arend du Preez. “A number of freight forwarders have realised that staff is our biggest asset. It’s all we have and unless we start investing in the industry, the industry as a whole will disappear.” This has informed KWE thinking for the future. “We’ve now put specific resources to the task and appointed a training manager, Liesl van Jaarsveld, whose only focus is training. She rolls out training programmes, develops modules and ensures that staff get the training they need to do the job.” Du Preez believes that a more co-ordinated approach to training is imperative. While the industry offers learnerships, it’s up to every freight forwarder to manage those learnerships – and not every company has a dedicated training department. “What we need is a training school that trains a few hundred people a year who can come into the industry with the knowledge to do the work so that we can start hiring at a lower entry level cost – and maybe that will stop job-hopping.” While the recession reined in this practice to a degree, it’s starting again because there are not enough skills. According to Du Preez, the industry’s salary bill is 40-50% of its overheads. “If every year we give a 10% increase and we don’t even get 5% from our customers, it’s clear where the industry is heading. “It’s something that needs to be fixed sooner rather than later.”