Lack of skills hound Zimbabwe companies

Zimbabwean companies have continued to suffer as a result of the brain drain which saw the most skilled employees leaving the country for greener pastures in the past decade.
The most skilled employees ended up in South Africa, Botswana, UK, USA and Australia leaving industry on its knees.
According to a survey done by Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd on talent shortage in the country, lack of skills and experience are shown to be contributing to the difficulties faced by companies in filling certain positions.
More than 39 percent of the respondents said they face challenges when filling in vacancies with engineering and accounting being the most affected fields.
The survey results also showed that 74 percent of the respondents lack leadership and people management skills while most graduates lack technical and business appreciation skills.
"Respondents cite a variety of causes behind their inability to fill jobs, ranging from lack of experience to a mismatch between what is being taught in academic institutions and what is in demand in the job market," the report said.
The shortage of talent has impacted negatively on quality of work with a marked increase in lead time between tasks, number of contract workers, consulting fees, and poor quality of work. This has led to a decrease in productivity.
The problem, according to the report, has been exacerbated by the low remuneration offered by most organisations making it impossible to get the right talent.
Close to 56 percent of participants said they had recruited graduate trainees in 2013 in a bid to produce the required skill in organisations. They said they had resorted to in-house training and offering internship to address the skills gap. Participants were drawn from 19 industries with most of them coming from manufacturing, mining, information technology and telecommunications, and financial services.