DOI: 10.14749/1449577305
title: Investigating employer interaction with the Employment Services of South Africa (ESSA) 2013 - All provinces

description: Description: 
 The data set contains information from employers who have registered vacancies on the ESSA database and covers topics regarding the size and location of their industries, the profile of the work force, experience with ESSA and other recruitment channels used.

 The data set contains 265 cases and 94 variables. 265 of the 605 employers realised providing a 43.8% realisation.
Abstract: 
 As part of the Labour Market Intelligence Partnership (LMIP), the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) undertook projects aimed at identifying data held by government departments that would be relevant and useful for skills planning. One involved a high level audit of government databases that contain data on labour demand and supply. The latter LMIS' Data Audit project identified the Employment services of South Africa (ESSA) database under the administration of the Department of Labour's Public Employment Services (PES) branch as having potential to yield valuable labour market information because it is positioned in the critical space where matching of demand and supply takes place in the labour market.

 This argument was made in recognition that we should be aware of the development of new and useful data systems for incorporation in the skills planning mechanism. In this sense, the ESSA project was investigated with the expectation that in the following years it could mature. If ESSA becomes a larger intermediary, serving greater numbers of employers and work seekers, it can offer an increasingly more detailed picture of intermediation between employers and work seekers.

 We therefore need to know how enterprises and how work seekers perceive the ESSA as useful or not to their needs and how they interact with ESSA. What we learn through this research will feed into making improvements to the ESSA. The specific aim of this project is therefore to consider how firms' level of participation and the nature of that participation impacts on the value of the data in the ESSA data system. We also want to know more about the quality of data created via administrative processes in interaction with the enterprises.

 The main aim of the study is to investigate employer interaction with ESSA and to consider ESSA in the context of other recruitment channels used by employers. The greater the number of employers interacting with ESSA in terms of registering vacancies and recruiting from the ESSA database of work seekers, the larger the database records of these transactions will become. Thus rising levels of interaction between clients will make ESSA data richer and more detailed to be used as part of the system needed for skills planning decision making. For datasets to be used to support skills planning they must be of a minimum acceptable quality. Therefore, procedures for capturing registration of vacancies, registration of work seekers and the conclusion of agreements between parties must be a captured and maintained to highest possible levels of accuracy.

 The report can be accessed on the LMIP website: http://www.lmip.org.za/document/investigating-employer-interaction-employment-services-south-africa-essa
description: Telephone interview
description: All employers who have registered a vacancy on the ESSA system during the 2013 calendar year.
description: A convenience sampling technique was applied. It is a non-probability sampling technique where subjects are selected because of their accessibility.

 The population initially consisted of 1200 entries but once duplicates were removed this total was reduced to 605. All 605 employers formed part of the sample and the summary provides the outcome of the telephonic survey.

 
 Total interviews completed: 265 - 44%
 
 Duplicates: 21 - 3%
 
 Wrong numbers: 76 - 13%
 
 Refusals 119: - 20%
 
 Other reasons for not participating: 35 - 6%
 
 E-mails requested before participation: 19 - 3%
 
 Number of maximum call attempts (4) exceeded with no contact made 70: - 12%
 
 Total number of firms contacted: 605 - 100%