Dear Valued Clients, Suppliers and Colleagues,

Following the President’s announcement on Sunday 15th March 2020 declaring that South Africa is officially in a national state of disaster in terms of the Disaster Management Act, we had to take a number of immediate steps as a training institution to ensure the safety of our employees, learners, clients, and suppliers, in alignment with government protocols.

CSG Skills fully supports the governments efforts to curb the spread of this virus and as a responsible business, we have put robust measures in place to assist in mitigating this disease, whilst at the same time ensuring that the impact to our business, employees, clients, and learners, is minimised as far as reasonably possible.

On Monday 16th March 2020, we sent out a communication to all our clients and learners confirming that all classes shall be suspended as an immediate reaction to government’s preventative plan of action around COVID-19. Since such time we have put plans in place to ensure that our learners can continue with learning through a distance learning curriculum. We will be contacting all learners to explain how our distance learning process shall work and ensure that they have a full understanding on the way forward. The distance learning curriculum shall commence next week (23 March 2020). We shall also be sending e-posters and information about COVID-19 to all our learners.

Each of our facilitators will be setting up a WhatsApp group for their allocated training groups. Facilitators shall make regular updates to these groups and, where feasible, post short videos on the learning topic to assist learners with their learning. In addition, we will have a dedicated support line manned by our facilitators to provide telephonic support to learners, as and when required. Learners that call our support line will be called back immediately as we do not want our learners to incur any additional costs during this time. This distance curriculum has been put in place for learners that do not have access to their own computers.

For learners that do have access to computers, our distance learning curriculum shall be delivered through various online platforms that we have implemented. We kindly request that these learners are supported by allowing them dedicated time to complete their studies. It would be recommended that learners be given the same day that they would’ve attended class, to complete their studies.

Where SETA-funded learners are being hosted by companies, we would encourage these learners to follow the protocols set by the relevant organisations and if feasible, that they continue with their duties to ensure that their stipends from the SETA do not get impacted. As a number of these learners are unemployed, it could have a devastating effect on them should they not receive their stipends. We fully understand that should your own organisational protocols not support this and kindly request that you communicate this with us.

We have requested, but not yet received any formal communication from Services SETA on how they will be managing stipends for learners should such learners be requested by host sites not to come to work. Should we receive communication on this matter we will immediately update our learners and clients.

Furthermore, we have put several stringent protocols in place to ensure the protection of our employees to limit the spread of COVID-19.

These protocols include, but are not limited to:

• The CSG Skills management team have put a formal policy document in place around the preventative measures that we have implemented around COVID-19.
• Our employees have been trained on what COVID-19 is and how they can limit the spread of the disease. All employees are updated on a continuous basis regarding the developments of COVID-19 and government protocols. Employees have also been encouraged to practice the same preventative measures outside of the workplace.
• We have put a meticulous and compulsory disinfecting and sanitising schedule in place.
• We are restricting visitors to our premises, as far as possible, and we kindly request your cooperation in this regard.
• Measures have also been put in place to minimise the number of employees at our premises on any given workday. Several of our employees shall be working from home. To ensure that our day-to-day activities are not disrupted, we have implemented a rotational schedule for our management team, as well as essential departments, and have allowed our employees to work on a shift basis.
• Face-to-face meetings with clients are, as far as possible, restricted and our team shall make use of online meeting platforms. We kindly request your cooperation in this regard.

It is currently a time of great uncertainty for all businesses and citizens of South Africa. However, we would like to assure all our clients that CSG Skills is fully committed to doing everything in our power to prevent and limit the spread of COVID-19!

We continuously monitor all developments or directives around COVID-19 communicated by the Presidency, and should any further regulations be imposed by the government, CSG Skills shall swiftly align ourselves. We will provide continued communication to all our valued clients should we need to further change our policy around COVID-19. We implore all our clients and colleagues to remain safe and healthy and sincerely thank you for your patience and support during this time.

Kind regards,

Odette Page

CEO – CSG Skills