Managing People

A vicious cycle has been taking over many businesses amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

First, many homebound workers have been dealing with stress, fear, and social isolation. One global survey, organised by the University of Minnesota, found “a great deal of uncertainty across multiple life domains, causing increased psychological challenges. Respondents generally felt more stressed, depressed, anxious, nervous and more overwhelmed.” […]

Prejudices about unproductive older workers are widespread. They are said to be slower, to be overwhelmed by modern information and communication technology (ICT), and to be sick more often. Based on these beliefs, it appears that employers discriminate against older individuals, which hurts their employment prospects. Moreover, if the beliefs are wrong, firms lose older workers’ potential for added […]

Teams are the fundamental building blocks of modern organisations, as team-based structures have grown from less than 20 per cent in 1980 to 50 per cent in 1990, to over 80 per cent in 2000, and by 2010 nearly all organisations had adopted formal team structures. Business success today depends not on how people work but how effectively people work […]

Today’s healthcare workers are stressed. In addition to dealing with a myriad of difficult situations, such as developing effective treatment plans and overcoming the death of patients, many care providers currently find themselves on the frontlines battling a global pandemic. In the United States, for example, the number of COVID-19 cases has increased by 215 per cent, and the […]

Prior to the pandemic, the Republic of South Africa was already dealing with a largely stagnant economy, an almost 26% official unemployment rate, high HIV and TB infection rates, national power cuts and economic downgrading by various international rating agencies. Ironically, the resilience developed in dealing with these significant issues by organisations and human resources (HR) professionals may have […]

While remote working has been available to many employees for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly accelerated its scalability beyond what could have been imagined. From our research in Australia, most organisations had only a specialised few or no employees working from home before the pandemic. Over the last two months, however, these organisations have had to make […]

Major organisational changes like mergers and acquisitions (M&A), restructures, and spin-offs often leave a bad taste in the mouth of employees. The reason for this is frequently because those responsible for planning and implementing these changes are unable to balance the tension between task and relationship. Or put differently, organisations in change often spiral into a very transactional way […]