Skills development and organisational development : an assessment

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Education and training under apartheid can at best be described as fragmented and unequal along racial lines. The consequence of the decades of human resource neglect resulted in the virtual destruction of human resource potential, with devastating effects for social and economic development. At the organisational level witness to this has been the lack of career paths offered to workers and the debilitating effect on worker motivation and general productivity. In response to this state of affairs the South African government introduced a number of innovative laws aimed at reversing this downward spiral: The Skills Development Act, 1998 and the related legislation have as their single objective the establishment of a more enabling and responsive human resource environment. This will amount to the rebuilding of the South African workforce within organisations through the introduction of new sets of human resource processes, policies and principles. This study compares the activities of the Pioneer Foods Group with those of the Drakenstein Municipality in relation to the skills development regulatory framework and the subsequent obligations it places on organisations to establish new human resource practices. The study goes further and seeks to establish whether there is a causal link between the processes of skills development and Organisational Development (00). The study concludes that there is a definitive link between the skills development regulatory framework and 00. The two processes are regarded as mutually supportive, leading to the achievement of individual and organisational end goals.