SAS Institute South Africa has been awarded Level 1 broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) contributor status. SAS is a leader in analytics, and central to its business ethos and mission remains its dedication to social impact and innovation – attributes that could not be more prevalent for responsible corporates in today’s market context.
The company says this Level 1 achievement is testament to how the local business lives and breathes these attributes, and affirms the company’s ongoing commitment to invest in South Africa. “As a multinational business, SAS takes great strides to understand the nuances of each market it invests and operates in,” said Riad Gydien, executive vice president and chief sales officer, EMEA and AP at SAS.
SAS Institute stated that it has always invested significantly in its South African operations, implementing the processes according to the principles of B-BBEE for several years, but it needed to align its activities to the requirements of the official B-BBEE Scorecard.
As part of this refreshed alignment, SAS identified the skills, enterprise and supplier development targets, and closely monitored the business’ investments, programmes and initiatives according to these targets. According to Desan Naidoo, Vice President of EMEA Customer Success at SAS: “We recognised that skills, enterprise and supplier development are each valuable micro, macro and socioeconomic drivers. And to fulfil our part in contributing to sustainable transformation and inclusivity, we are committed to supporting the growth of small emerging and medium-sized black-controlled businesses within our existing value chain, as well as in the development of new entrants.”
SAS is also a longstanding advocate of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills development – with emphasis on emerging identified Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) skills in more recent years. In South Africa, the company has been running a technical internship programme since 2012. This programme aims to equip youth with the digital skills that are critical for today’s connected and digital environment, while giving graduates the opportunity to gain workplace learning and experience with some of SAS’ customers or partners on real-world projects.
SAS interns can attain specific qualifications to help them further their careers with the company or elsewhere. The year-long technical internships encompass several functions, from consulting, customer advisory and marketing, to finance and sales.
Naidoo notes: “While internships are terrific opportunities to learn, for those participating in them there is a real need for the internship to translate into sustained employment. And we endeavour to help those who complete our intern programme find placements, either retained within our business or within our partners’ businesses. For example, more than half of those who finished the internships in previous years were absorbed into the operations of our partners and were able to continue growing their career in the technology industry.”
Over and above this, SAS has also become a member of Yes4Youth and sponsored 15 budding young professionals through the 12-month Yes4Youth programme in partnership with Conservation South Africa, which resulted in the creation of nine permanent jobs.
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