LETTER: Business leaders, don’t forget about BEE targets

With the flurry over the department of employment & labour’s sectoral employment equity targets, business leaders are taking note of compliance repercussions. While important, it would be amiss to forget a larger scorecard — the broad-based BEE requirements.

Corporate SA is driven by doing business with organisations that have strong BEE credentials. A generic company with a BEE certificate level 1–4 is in the game, as every business large and small uses BEE ratings in their own preferential procurement reporting.

Regardless of what sector a business operates in, there is either a sector code or the department of trade, industry & competition’s generic codes of good practice, which create a framework enabling the entity to both comply with the BEE Act as well as retain and attract new business, whether from the private sector or state-owned entities.

All requests for proposals have a section to report how an organisation is achieving transformation goals and what plans are in place to improve. The BEE Act is open-ended and has no finishing line. Compliance reporting starts with sector code councils and ends with the annual report to the B-BBEE Commission.

For financial service entities there are also regulators such as the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FCSA) and Prudential Authority, and others that take an interest in the company’s transformation progress. Everything is watched, reported and monitored. A good BEE certificate could almost be taken for granted by boards until the organisation’s rating drops or targets become difficult to achieve.

So, let’s not forget the imperative cousin of employment equity, the intricate BEE scorecard. It leads to the rating and BEE certificate status of an organisation and influences the spend of corporate SA for goods and services.  

P Stone
Hout Bay

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