This is particularly relevant for its union shareholders – Cosatu, Fedusa, Popcru and SACTWU - whose membership stand to benefit from this knowledge transfer, helping to bring the unions and its membership base into the digital era.
To fill the gap in skills that have been created by the exponential explosion in technological advancement, the company has seen the need to develop its own comprehensive knowledge transfer programmes. The AYO Incubation and Technology Hub will assist the unions to remain relevant, sustainable and true to their mandate of connecting their members to each other and economic opportunity.
The incubation hub will embrace a multi-stepped mentoring approach to developing skills within the company and also attract and advance BEE developers and tech specialists from external sources. In addition to these pipelines of potential, AYO will be identifying a number of candidates from several of its union stakeholders.
Dennis George, general secretary of the Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa), said: “Many of our traditional industries lack the necessary knowledge, skills, and equipment to optimally embrace this new technological era. Yet our people have the potential to embrace it. The AYO Incubation and Technology Hub will be ideally placed to assist us in transforming how we as unions and the business sectors we represent, transform – better communication with our members, better processes leading to better outcomes for all.”
