The transitional period was initially indicated as a period of one year from the date of publication and would have expired on 10 October 2014. However, this may not be long enough if businesses don't start working towards compliance now.
That's the view of Dr Jerry Gule, chairman of South African Employers for Disability (SAE4D), who says that one of the key elements of the revised codes, which introduce more stringent compliance targets, is to encourage businesses to employ black people with disabilities.
"More than that, however, is that the codes are also designed to ensure that people with disabilities receive the training and skills development they need to empower to take their rightful place in the workplace as equal, productive and valued employees," he adds.
SAE4D, an employer organisation that is committed to addressing issues confronting the integration of people with disabilities in the workplace, is positioned to assist businesses to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the revised codes.
The new codes are focused mainly on three priority elements: ownership, skills development, and enterprise and supplier development. Failure to comply with the sub-minimum requirements of any of the priority elements will result in businesses automatically being penalised by being categorised at one B-BBEE level lower than the level achieved by their overall scorecard rating.
However, the codes also provide enhanced recognition for certain categories of black people, including black people with disabilities. "This means businesses can obtain additional points by employing black people with disabilities and then providing them with appropriate training," says Dr Gule.
The revised codes set a compliance target for the employment of black people with disabilities at 2% of all employees. Achieving this target will enable businesses to claim two of the 19 available points in a key element of the B-BBEE scorecard - Management Control.
In addition, businesses that spend just 0.3% of their skills development expenditure budget on learning programmes for black employees with disabilities, will earn four of the 20 points available for this measurement category.
"However, businesses that seek to employ black people with disabilities simply to boost their B-BBEE rating will be doing both their organisation - and their employees - a disservice. Indeed, there is a sound business case for many businesses employing people with disabilities. One also has to look at the human rights aspect for doing this. Besides, people with disabilities are an untapped customer base; when companies empower them and they get fully integrated in the workplace, who knows what new customers they can attract," he adds.
