Employer Engagement: A Business Plan for Further Education and Training Colleges

Further Education and Training Colleges serve two vital roles in South Africa’s society and economy. One is to provide access to economic opportunity and education for over 200,000 South African young adults who need skills to gain employment and a promising career. A second role is to address the skills needs of employers, both private and public, who drive the South African economy and create much-needed jobs. Fulfilling both of these roles will require deep engagement between the FET college system and employers.

This guidebook is for FET college leaders who seek more productive partnerships with employers in order to improve career outcomes for students. It includes examples and strategies for everyone whose work affects employer engagement, including CEOs and deputy CEOs, partnership managers, student support managers, and lecturers. Since FET college leadership is so key to employer engagement (and transformation in the college), this guidebook targets college CEOs and their teams. It can also inform provincial and national officials who wish to support FET colleges’ engagement with employers. It is a source of models, principles, and examples for anyone passionate about helping FET college students prepare for and succeed in the job market. It draws on employer feedback, college engagement experience, models, and research internationally—primarily from South Africa, the United States, and the UK—to help FET leaders build capacity.

Generating Revenue from Employer Services

One key to generating revenue from customized training and other services is to understand how much the services cost to deliver (including indirect costs) and then adding an appropriate profit margin. The other key is to understand what competitors charge for comparable services.

This Excel spreadsheet can help FET colleges calculate their cost structures, build costs and pricing for services, and understand how much each project contributes to its internal capital funds and unrestricted revenue. Since a hard copy of the spreadsheet does not relay the underlying formulas, please use this spreadsheet, which contains the necessary formulas.