Human Capital

Wellness days, Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs), flexible hours; employers have spent years building programmes that address health, mental health, work-life balance, and more. Everything except the one thing actually keeping people up at night: money stress.

As artificial Intelligence (AI) reshapes recruitment at every level, we are cautioning boards and organisations against assuming the technology can do the same work at the top of the house that it does elsewhere in the hiring funnel. AI adoption in recruitment has accelerated sharply over the past two years. Industry data shows that usage has roughly doubled in the past year alone. The vast majority of companies now use some form of AI somewhere in their hiring process.

Hybrid work has transformed how organisations operate, but it has also made disengagement far less visible. The challenge for today's leaders is no longer managing attendance - it's sustaining accountability, purpose and performance when teams are no longer under one roof.

From the Stoics and Ancient Egypt to Rome and Artificial Intelligence (AI), perhaps the greatest wisdom lies in learning to distinguish appearance from reality

Building inclusive leadership pipelines is a business imperative, not a diversity exercise. South Africa’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) industries sit at the centre of economic growth, innovation, and competitiveness. They shape the technologies, systems, and infrastructure that drive business and society forward.

For boards of listed companies, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) succession is often framed as a debate about background. Finance or operations, commercial flair or financial discipline? The tendency is to treat the top job as the natural culmination of a particular functional path. The evidence suggests that this thinking is increasingly outdated.

Most entry-level hiring in South African retail and quick-service restaurants still begins with a CV. That first step removes the majority of people who could perform well in these roles. As a result, employers reporting difficulty filling store-level vacancies are working with a far smaller pool than they think.

Chapter 4 of the Labour Relations Act (LRA), read together with item 6 of Schedule 8 of the LRA, effectively allows employers to dismiss employees who have embarked on an unprotected strike. However, the law makes it clear that an unlawful strike does not automatically give the employer a right to fire the strikers.

The labour market in South Africa faces two constant challenges - persistent skills shortages and a high unemployment rate. Despite the market being flooded with job-seekers, businesses often struggle to find suitable talent when they need it. This is why Temporary Employment Services (TES) providers are crucial for connecting employers with ready-to-work candidates. However, a stereotype persists.

Over the past decade, mortality among Discovery Health Medical Scheme members has declined by 5.6%. This improvement reflects a combination of earlier diagnosis, stronger treatment pathways, broader access to high-quality healthcare and sustained behaviour change. It demonstrates an important principle: better health outcomes are not accidental. They are achieved through deliberate action.