With the severe shortage of skilled staff in Africa and specifically with the overall lack of local skills, it has become a necessity to source foreign skills from alternative markets.
This is easier said than done as Africa is a complicated and challenging environment to work in at the best of times. As a result, companies wanting to be successful with their African ventures can ill afford to travel down that road without a partner who understands Africa and her ‘eccentricities’.
Who Are We?
We are a specialist Resourcing Management company working in Africa and the Middle East, providing cost effective skilled workforces in the form of Third Country Nationals (TCNs) wherever required. We focus on the Construction, Mining, Power Generation, Infrastructure, Oil & Gas and Chemical Sectors.
We are able to provide expatriate or foreign blue and white collar staff, on fixed term or limited duration contracts, throughout Africa. With extensive experience in sourcing internationally, we have developed a secure knowledge of both local and foreign source country legislative requirement, procedures and pitfalls. Through our own network and those of our partners, we have substantial resourcing facilities in countries such as South Africa, the Philippines and Thailand.
Secondary sources such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia and China are utilized on an ad hoc basis for specific project criteria. These resources are best utilized to alleviate the pressures of shutdowns and the tie-in portions of projects by mobilizing a separate workforce for a short duration with high hour volumes.
This ensures the retention of the core project resources, especially through peak periods of a project.
How do we do it?
A great portion of our success depends on our trainers and assessors being able to accommodate large workforces during resourcing, skills verification and training prior to project roll out.
Our resourcing facilities have Lecture Rooms, Workshops and Accommodation and international trainers are available and can be supplemented with South Africans if necessary. Trade tests are conducted in major centers in the country of origin and test procedures and material specification are generally supplied by the client. Often the client will want to supply the relevant competent assessor to witness and to verify the test & test procedure but RFA also provides independent vendors (approved by client).
Materials for tests are generally supplied on a cost plus basis and X-Rays are generally sent to an independent facility. All qualifications are verified prior to labour mobilisation. Once the workforce has been selected, qualifications verified, training, testing and assessment completed, we mobilise the workforce to the country required.
As the logistics around this is fairly complex, a brief summary of what we do is listed below:
- Pre Mobilization Induction
- Ensure customer has correct permits to deploy in country (work permits, letter of demand, letter of invitation etc.)
- Ensure home country authorisations are in place (POEA)
- Acquire necessary certificates and clearances
- Contractual arrangements (structured and unstructured – LCD / SOIF)
- We assume employment liability
- Arrange and coordinate logistics
- We build and manage camps (and all related logistics) where required
- Ensure that the TCN workforce arrives on-site on time
- Provide site agent/s who are responsible for the workforce on-site
- Management of payroll & distribution of pay (as per requirements)
- Ensure tax effectiveness (SOIF Structure)
- Ensure adherence to local statutory requirements
- Indemnify statutory adherence
- Ensure employee well-being
- Resolve any employee labour issues
- Provide and manage timesheets
- Resolve pay queries
- Roster schedules
- Manage rotation
- Manage staff replacement
Why Third Country Nationals?
The Third Country Nationals we provide are South East Asians who are exceptional quality workers. They are not militant, have top work ethic, very low rejection and rework rate (5% as opposed to local artisans being upward of 20%). They have a significant sense of pride in their work resulting in higher productivity, don’t mind rotations and can work for 11 months on and 1 month off (where South Africans or Europeans need 8 weeks on and 2 weeks off). They are happy to work in harsh conditions and will want to work longer hours, giving higher performance overall (95% vs local of 65%).
As a result you will get the Right Skills on-site at the Right Time with a less than 1% skills failure or repatriation due to breach of contract.