Page 17 - Q&A 2019/2020

When to say yes to the Y.E.S. Initiative
BEE Marc Naudé
March 2019

“My business is considering supporting the Youth Employment Service initiative
announced last year by Government to help improve the BEE level of my
business. However, I’m struggling to find more information on how it works and
how to get started. Can you help?”

On 28 August 2018 the Youth Employment Service Initiative (“YES Initiative”) was
published within Code Series 000, Statement 000 of the Amended BEE Codes of
Good Practice and became effective with immediate effect.

The YES Initiative in short, is aimed at creating jobs for South African youth, youth
being defined as persons between the ages of 18 and 35, by incentivising
entities to help create such jobs in return for benefit on their BEE scorecard.

The YES Initiative sets targets for the creation of new jobs for youth as well as
their absorption. If entities meet the various requirements as well as their targets,
they can be enhanced by a level on their BEE scorecard and if they meet the
requirements and double the targets, they can be enhanced by two levels.

Initially, after its publication, there was a large degree of uncertainty regarding
the implementation of the YES Initiative. This led to a practice note being
published on 12 October 2018 which did help clarify a number of issues but
still left certain areas uncertain. On 23 January 2019 the South African National
Accreditation System (SANAS), in consultation with the DTI, published a list of
Questions and Answers, to deal with the remaining uncertainty.

The main points clarified by the practice note and the Questions and Answers,
are as follows:

• An entity wishing to participate in the YES Initiative must be registered
with the YES Non-Profit Company.
• Entities must maintain the BEE level that they had prior to participating
in the YES Initiative. If their level drops, they may engage with the DTI’s
BEE Policy Unit and try to justify the drop in their level.
• Absorption is not measured for the first year after the implementation
of the YES Initiative.
• A YES Initiative Employee cannot be placed on a Learnership,
Apprenticeship or Internship for BEE purposes.
• EMEs and QSEs cannot make use of the enhanced BEE levels obtained
from the YES Initiative to improve automatic levels and would need to
go through a full QSE verification in order to benefit from the YES
Initiative.
• The employee headcount at the end of the last financial year is used
to determine the targets for the YES Initiative.

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