Human Capital

Today, more and more businesses are confidently outsourcing business functions, or parts thereof to service providers whom they trust to do the job faster, more affordably, and more effectively than they can themselves.

Employers need to think twice before they simply suspend an employee. If the suspension turns out to be unfair, the employer may need to fork out more money than bargained for. There are two types of suspensions in the workplace, namely precautionary suspensions and punitive suspensions.

The latest statistics from the International Labour Organization (ILO) reveals that in 2020, close to 9% of global working hours were lost due to COVID-19. This equates to 255 million full-time jobs – approximately four times higher than jobs lost in 2009 during the global financial crisis.

Conversations about the war for talent in financial services have persisted for many years. Competition to attract skilled individuals has always been intense, with high demand for talented professionals. This competition has intensified recently as hiring activity accelerates to meet today's significant challenges.

The employment of foreign nationals must not adversely impact the rights of unskilled South Africans and excluding South Africans from employment opportunities may constitute unfair discrimination. The recent High Court ruling confirmed that businesses who seek to employ foreign nationals must show that they have tried to train South African citizens to meet their needs when applying for corporate visas for foreign nationals.

Section 198A of the Labour Relations Act (LRA), also known as “deeming provision”, has been a contentious issue since it came into effect in 2015, and even more so since the Constitutional Court judgement around the Act in 2018. There are so many different interpretations of the law that it can be difficult to understand how to apply it to specific situations. Using a Temporary Employment Services (TES) Provider can further complicate matters, which makes it critical to have the right TES partner on board.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic the world has been affected by many events that are now the new normal and businesses will now have to make strategic changes to the way they operate. These events are geo-political - the Russia-Ukraine war; logistical - supply-chain bottlenecks; economic - high energy prices, demand supply issues - global commodities pressures and chip shortages, rising inflation and possible recession.

A world in which women thrive is a better world. Although gender inequality remains rife globally, significant strides are being made on one of society’s most influential platforms: the boardrooms of big businesses. There is consensus that change in workplaces in Africa and around the world generally start at the top, at board level.

South African industrial action has become synonymous with violent, unlawful conduct, as was discussed in the recent case of Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union & Others v KPMM Road & Earthworks (JA 147/2017) [2018] ZALAC 28 (31 October 2018).

There are strong ties between stress, mental illness and substance abuse, with each of these influencing the other to some degree.