Women at Work Empowerment Programme

Background Information

The initiative is guided by and supporting the following frameworks:

•The Integrated Development Plan ( IDP) - City of Cape Town Strategic Pillars, specifically an Opportunity City and a Caring City.

•Employment Equity Act and Transport for Cape Town Transformation Agenda

•Economic Development Programme –Extended Public Works Programme ( EPWP)

•TCT Constitution By-law, No 7208 of 2013

Goals of the Initiative

TCT aims to create female maintenance teams for Cape Town of South Africa, through:

•Skilled women who are able to successfully compete for permanent jobs in a male dominated working environment or start their own businesses

•Changed mindsets in the organization regarding female maintenance teams in a male dominated working environment

•Establishment of a new financial model including partnerships, to ensure sustainability

•Application of key learning generated through continuous training and empowerment processes

•Implementation of empowerment programmes for women in all designations and across all levels of the organization

•Improvement in the quality and quantity of road maintenance in Cape Town with the women teams introducing healthy competition

Parties and Partners to the Initiative

As part of achieving and maintaining socioeconomic growth, the EPWP  was identified as one of the mechanisms to empower women in the workplace and at the same time increase the output and maintenance of the City of Cape Town’s 11, 000 kilometers of road network.

The EPWP is a nationwide programme providing an important avenue for labour absorption and income transfers to poor households in the short to medium-term. EPWP Projects employ workers on a temporary or on-going basis either by government, by contractors, or by other non-governmental organisations. Once tested under EPWP, TCT aims to find permanent employment opportunities.

TCT aims to establish partnerships with the private sector in order to cover indirect costs for further development and provide permanent employment opportunities. This includes uniforms, equipment and vehicles.

Resources Used for Implementation

The following resources are used for implementation:

•Access to Grant funding (EPWP)

•Operational managers and supervisors

•EPWP officers

•TCT Training Academy manager, Project team leader and support staff

Innovation for the Initiative

The programme is revolutionary as a new approach has been followed in the design. Previous attempts to establish women workers at this level have failed, mainly due to a lack of support.

Innovation has been applied in

Innovation is being applied in the following areas:

•Strategy – enforcing changes to organisational mind-sets regarding women’s ability, equality and empowerment in a male-dominated environment

•Planning, design and implementation – adopting a new approach towards integration of women in the workplace across the HR value chain and increasing competition in road maintenance

•Financial model - changing the current model, which is dependent on EPWP providing for temporary job creation, to a partnership model

•Tools  and technology – designing process specific tools to assist management with monitoring and feedback, using technology to generate surveys

Governance and administration – adopting a change management process and support from Project Team Leader to monitor progress

Obstacles and Solutions for Innovation

Obstacles which had to be overcome include the following:

•Initial resistance from the male-dominated Management to engage and commit due to this initiative. Providing separate and sufficient facilities for women

•Paying attention to women-specific issues such as sexual harassment and the demanding physical work

•Lack of effective and consistent skills transfer within the required timelines due to teams left on their own waiting for rotating Task Experts

•Males doing the work on behalf of the women

Bad habits and inconsistency in skills transfer due to lack of standards

Outcomes and Assessments

Desired changes/outcomes:

•Proven technical capability to conduct tasks such as road repairs, storm water cleaning, footway repairs and line marking

•Positive attitudes and high motivation levels

•On-time performance - minimum absence and lateness

•Team-work – the team should be able to work together, support each other and have open and clear communication

•Management support and attitude

•Peer support and attitude – provision of encouragement, knowledge sharing, skills transfer, respect in engagement and motivation

•Project support and monitoring – provision of project guidance, administration support and sorting out of issues and queries

•Being an incubator for change programmes offered to the Transport Industry on national and international levels

•Creating awareness of the TCT brand and gaining recognition at national level

•Influencing other entities to apply the concept and making a difference to women

•Creating awareness of women’s capabilities among the public

•Ability to put more teams on the roads and to improve service delivery

Methods Applied

The following supporting tools and methods have been developed:

•A Selection Assessment instrument to assess physical ability

•An Interview guide to identify job, team and organisational fit

•Check-in sheets for the Women-teams

•Check-in sheets for Management

•Performance sheets for Management

•An overall Assessment instrument for progress and monitoring

•Key-learning check-in sessions

•Advanced technical training

•Training in CV writing, Interviewing skills

•Training in Entrepreneurship

Project 2: A Transport Development Index

Background Information

In 1994, South Africa adopted a constitution to enable the promise of a “better life” for citizens. The National Land Transport Act was promulgated in 1998 to enable improved transport, particularly public transport. Progress was largely ineffectual, necessitating the establishment of TCT as the transport authority for Cape Town in 2012 as well as the introduction of the Constitution of Transport for Cape Town By-law, No 7208 in 2013, heralding a new governance era for land transport in Cape Town.

Goals of the Initiative

The goals are:

•Effective implementation of innovative performance based targeted service delivery that is grounded in fact not assumption

•To halve the cost of the collective user access priorities over the next fifteen years

•More affordable, flexible, sustainable, safer, and less congested travel

•Through the use of the Future of Urban Mobility Index, improve Cape Town’s ranking compared with other cities worldwide.

Parties and Partners to the Initiative

The TDI is useful for all transport operators in Cape Town and can be used by all as a measure to influence the services they provide.

Resources Used for Implementation

TCT conceptualized the TDI, its methodology and contents. TCT solicited support from technical experts to develop the model at a cost of R2.4 million. The ongoing management requires the necessary TCT human capital. TCT is now automating the TDI to enable synergized reporting and measurement.

Innovation for the Initiative

The TDI is revolutionary as it is the first tool of its kind in the world that supports a user access priority cost service delivery paradigm from strategy to planning, investment, implementation and performance. The TDI was first calculated in June 2015 and continued to be refined during 2015/16 to minimize any risks in its ongoing application, as it previously had never been developed, tried and tested before in the transport sector. TCT has already begun to realign its service delivery and quantify the impact.

Innovations has been applied in

The innovation is being applied across all functional areas of TCT. The index is used at the planning and pre-implementation stage to interrogate the proposed impact of planned policies, programmes, projects and investments as well as at the post implementation stage where it calculates the actual index annually reflecting actual effectiveness.

Obstacles and Solutions for Innovation

Initially there was significant resistance as data exposes the harsh realities of how history has resulted in a very costly urban form and resultant transport interventions. However, the TDI established the factual “state of transport in Cape Town” which encouraged the commitment towards improved and targeted service delivery. Further, TCT held many engagements with transport professionals within government, academia, industry and political oversight committees to build confidence and trust in the TDI. This methodology and Index has also been shared with national and international stakeholders who have now recognized TCT as an international leader in the transformation of integrated cost effective service delivery in the transport industry.

Outcomes and Assessments

The established metric has already begun to benchmark intervention so as to halve the user groups access priority costs (safety, crime, flexibility, congestion and fares) measured as a percentage of income. Such reductions should translate into increased public transport passenger number, and lower congestion and congestion associated costs.

TCT has already decreased the peak period transit fare window, and the TDI indicates a probable decrease in direct costs of up to 2.3 percent for low income groups in a specific area, and around 1.2 percent for Cape Town overall. The TDI indicates that a proposed additional Bus Rapid Transit route could also show a decrease in the cost of flexibility of about 22 percent for low income groups in that area.

A metric of the mobility maturity and transport performance in Cape Town is calculated annually based on the AD Little - Future of Urban Mobility 2.0 index, ranking cities relative to each other. The desired outcome is to improve Cape Town’s ranking.

Methods Applied

The “Flexibility Cost” for user groups in each area was determined using Geographical Information Systems. This parameter determines accessibility to public transport modes to quantify Cape Town’s process of achieving a citywide transportation network by 2032.