Eleanor Roosevelt wisely said; "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself"; and in business learning from ones' own mistakes could amount to considerable outlay.  Expert BEE consultants, EconoBEE have used their vast experience to compile a list of the top five mistakes that businesses make when interpreting the employment equity element on the BEE scorecard in order to save you the time, and money, of making them yourself.

1.         The targets for black Junior, Middle and Senior management job categories are 68%, 63% and 43% respectively. If a company fails to meet the 40% sub-minimum target for each Employment Equity management level, no points will be scored.  Companies often wrongly calculate their Employment Equity score by ignoring the 40% sub-minimum target on the Employment Equity scorecard.

2.         If a company does not distinguish between Middle and Junior Management, the targets should be adjusted to the following:

• Senior Management - 8 points
• Junior Management - 6 points

In error, companies might forget to make the adjustment and continue to use the original targets.

3.         Calculations in this element should be adjusted for gender.  Companies may wrongly calculate scores on their Employment Equity scorecard by using an unadjusted black-people percentage.

4.         EAP targets (for bonus points) are determined and published by Statistics South Africa. Company management does not determine them.

5.         The only Employment Equity indicator expressed as a percentage of all employees is for black disabled employees (adjusted).  Junior, Middle and Senior Management scores are calculated as a percentage of employees within that category. Companies may mistakenly calculate the scores for Junior, Middle or Senior Management as a percentage of total employees.