Inclusive Hiring as a Strategic Advantage in South Africa’s GBS Sector
- November 28, 2025
On Tuesday 25 November I had the privilege of sharing some insights at the GBS and Digital Jobs Project Learning Day, hosted by Harambee in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation.
My focus was on BPESA’s strategic commitment to inclusive hiring, which you can read more about here. As we close off disability awareness month, I leave you with an extract: The true challenge lies in shifting mindsets. In a sector grappling with attrition and talent shortages, there is extensive evidence that youth with disabilities represent an untapped source of loyal, skilled, and adaptable talent.
The Global Business Services (GBS) sector is uniquely positioned to be a driver of inclusive growth, digital opportunity, and meaningful youth employment in South Africa. As BPESA, our strategic objective is to ensure that the sector not only grows in scale and competitiveness, but that it does so responsibly and inclusively, unlocking opportunities for those who have historically been excluded from the labour market, particularly women and persons with disabilities (PWDs).
We view inclusion through the lens of impact sourcing, where social impact and business value intersect. This approach aligns directly with BPESA’s vision to grow a future-fit, globally competitive, and socially conscious GBS sector.
BPESA’s role as the sector body is to influence mindsets and practices at scale, shifting inclusion from a compliance requirement to a competitive differentiator. Our message to the sector has been clear: inclusive hiring is a business advantage, not a burden.
While we’ve made significant progress in advancing women and youth employment through impact sourcing, we acknowledge that disability inclusion has lagged. We are therefore embarking on a renewed, intentional drive to position persons with disabilities as a vital source of skilled talent that can help address some of the sector’s biggest challenges — from attrition and retention, to accessing analytical, digital, and customer-centric capabilities.
This is not about compliance with employment equity targets or ticking boxes; it’s about creating a stronger, more resilient sector. Every global trend, from automation to customer experience design, points toward the need for diverse thinking, adaptability, and empathy. These are qualities that many youth with disabilities inherently bring.
One of the first critical steps BPESA took to introduce a focus on PWDs was to elevate disability inclusion from a compliance conversation to a strategic workforce conversation. We recognised that the GBS sector already had the building blocks for inclusion, namely structured work environments, technology-enabled roles, and a culture of impact sourcing, but lacked the framework to activate this potential.
To bridge this gap, in collaboration with Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator we developed “The BPESA GBS Inclusive Edge: A Handbook for Hiring and Retaining Youth with Disabilities”, a sector-first practical guide co-created with employers, skills partners, and youth with disabilities themselves.
This sector target of 1.25% hires of PWD was catalysed through our partnership and funding support from the Mastercard Foundation. It focuses on building in-demand, inclusive skills, and we recognise that achieving it requires taking the entire sector along on the journey toward sustainable disability inclusion.
BPESA has incorporated specific disability inclusion targets and hires as core criteria within our Intermediary Funded Skills Programmes, ensuring that all funded initiatives actively contribute to building a more inclusive talent pipeline.
We worked collaboratively with employers and disability experts to understand real barriers and co-design solutions that are realistic for the GBS context and integrated inclusion metrics into our broader impact sourcing agenda, ensuring that disability inclusion is measured alongside gender and youth outcomes.
Many perceived barriers to disability inclusion stem not from capacity but from misconceptions. The belief that employees with disabilities cannot match productivity is contradicted by evidence. When provided with reasonable accommodations, these employees often perform on par with or exceed, their peers and have significantly higher retention rates.
Another common concern is cost. Yet most workplace adjustments such as flexible schedules, accessible materials and small environmental modifications require minimal investment. Infrastructure concerns are also frequently cited, but accessibility does not begin with physical retrofits, it begins with digital readiness, inclusive communication and a culture of acceptance. These are steps every employer can implement immediately.
The true challenge lies in shifting mindsets. In a sector grappling with attrition and talent shortages, there is extensive evidence that youth with disabilities represent an untapped source of loyal, skilled, and adaptable talent. We have real-life stories from our programmes that illustrate how inclusion has led to better performance, innovation, and customer empathy. Inclusion must not be seen as charity, but as impact sourcing at its best, creating shared value by solving business needs such as retention, talent, and productivity while fulfilling social needs by employing excluded youth.
Reshni Singh,
BPESA CEO