Human Capital

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 The evidence suggests that this thinking is increasingly outdated.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.

We have concluded a first-of-its-kind benchmark study focused on how employees experience technology across eight major institutions in the Financial Services Industry (FSI). The Employee Technology Experience Index (TEXI) measured employee sentiment across eight core technology categories. It used a standardised scoring methodology. The findings reveal the scale of the cost.

Seventy years ago, some 20,000 women marched to the Union Buildings. They took a stand against a proposed law that would strip them of their freedom of movement and ownership of themselves. The law would force them to carry passes that dictated where they could live, work and exist.

When COVID-19 emptied offices in 2020, remote work wasn't a carefully designed workplace strategy. It was an emergency response. Kitchen tables became desks, meetings moved online, and businesses adapted faster than many thought possible. In the years that followed, flexibility became a defining feature of many workplaces. But for some, the pendulum is swinging back globally once again. Amazon introduced a five-day office expectation in January 2025.

From hot flushes in the boardroom to violence at home, some of the experiences affecting women’s working lives remain difficult to say out loud. We believe employers need to create workplaces where those conversations can happen without embarrassment, judgement or fear. I have seen how easily a woman can sit in a meeting when a hot flush begins.

South Africa's hospitality sector needs nearly two million workers by 2032. The talent exists, but the pipeline needs work. The hospitality industry has a habit of describing its talent problem in passive terms. The gap exists. Standards have slipped. Graduates are arriving underprepared. It is as though the situation is weather. It is something that happens to the industry rather than something the industry has, in part, created.