LEADERSHIP FOR STAFF RETENTION IN THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN GAUTENG.
Date
2011-11-14
Authors
SITHOLE, PHUMZILE
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Abstract
Social development is essentially a people centered approach to development that promotes
citizen participation and strengthens the voice of poor people in decision making. The meeting of
human needs is a national collective responsibility, a collaborative partnership, amongst the civil
society, government and private sector. The state plays a leading role in implementing
development programmes, and these programmes require adequate and skilled service
professionals, which are social workers. Social workers are enthusiastic proponents of the social
development approach. There is however a serious mismatch between the overwhelming
demands for services and the numbers of social service professionals to deliver on these
demands. This has adversely affected the organisation’s programmes as projects are abruptly
stopped or shelved due to lack of manpower. The National Minister for Public Service and
Administration recognized the scarcity of social workers as early as 2003 and declared it a scarce
skill. Social work has been declared a scarce skill in terms of the skill framework issued by the
Department of Public Service Administration.
The primary aim of the study therefore was to explore and describe the role that leadership can
assume in the crisis of skills shortage of social workers in the Gauteng province. Qualitative
description methods were used in the study, with a purposive sampling of eight respondents, four
production officials and four managers from the metro (Johannesburg) region of Gauteng
province with different number of years of experience.
The results of the study show that the respondents are not content; the non managers have lost
confidence in the present leadership and the retention strategy. The present leadership agrees that
they are not operating the way they should as some are not capacitated to do so, while others
complain about being excluded in decision making, giving political appointees more power to
rule and oppress them. This study maintains that leaders do not possess the qualities that their
followers most value; they feel left out, not represented and not taken care of. The results of the
study are discussed and recommendations are offered for the organization to deploy the
necessary leadership theory to address job turnover and keep it to a minimum or even halt
completely
Description
MM thesis - P&DM
Keywords
Staff retention, Leadership, Staff development, Department of Social Development, Gauteng