Human Capital

Since the dawn of the computational age, human beings have pursued the creation of machine intelligence. In fact, the question of what that Artificial Intelligence (AI) would look like and how it would impact our lives and the world around us has even been explored in our entertainment media – from the idyllic futuristic world of technological marvels in Star Trek on one end of the spectrum to the more pessimistic apocalyptic future of The Terminator on the other.

According to the latest Employment Outlook Survey, South African employers report limited hiring intentions for the second quarter of 2020. While 8% of employers forecast an increase in payrolls, 5% anticipate a decrease and 85% expect to make no changes. Once the data is adjusted to allow for seasonal variation, the overall outlook for South Africa stands at +2%, unchanged from the previous quarter.

Free food and drinks on a Friday once worked as attractive company perks. However, things have changed dramatically. Today, top talent expects more from employers. They want a competitive salary and stand-out benefits that offer real value.

A new type of leadership is building high-performance teams. What does it actually mean, and have you ever thought about WHAT makes a successful team?

COVID-19 is wreaking havoc amongst us, not because it’s causing global physical and economic meltdown, but for exacerbating another pandemic we’ve been dealing with for decades: loneliness. Science has long recognised that loneliness is emotionally painful and can lead to a host of side effects including heart disease, stroke, cancer and Alzheimer’s.

In 2021 alone, The Great Resignation saw 47 percent of high-performing employees leave companies to join another - for better perks, for greater resonance with their values or for more flexible, remote working - or to seek the fertile, fast-growing pastures of digital nomadism. And in terms of those who stayed?

On 12 November 2021, the Constitutional Court held in favour of mining employers in a historic secondary strike judgment (Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and Others v Anglo Gold Ashanti Limited t/a Anglo Gold Ashanti and Others [2021] ZACC 42).

Two years since the world shut down and companies and employees scrambled to set up work-from-home, we are once again in a transition period as the world opens up a little and organisations grapple with how they will organise their workforce.

The recent fire which broke out in a government building in central Johannesburg lead to the tragic loss of lives of three firefighters who were attempting to put out the blaze. The lives, and health of safety of employees working in the building were also put at risk.

The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, commonly known as the CCMA, is a statutory body which aims to “advance economic development, social justice, labour peace and the democratisation of the workplace”.