Articles
Debunking the Talent Retention Myth
The second National Employee Engagement Survey debunked some key myths about the retention of employees in South African organisations. The critical learning from the second Survey was that companies can no longer assume that career paths, brand loyalty and rewards will retain their valued employees.
Instead, companies need to recognise that financial rewards are not a catch-all and that employees in the new world of work have developed an open, flexible attitudes to their relationship with employers.
by Ruwayne Kock and Kent McNamara
Seven tactics to engage young employees
Ruwayne Kock and Dr. Kent McNamara conducted a national survey to determine the current levels of employee engagement within South African organisations. The findings form part of a pilot employee engagement survey. In this article, they share seven practical ways of helping you to engage young graduates within your organisation.
by Ruwayne Kock and Kent McNamara
Managing talent in the South African public sector
Given South Africa’s social and economic development challenges, general human resources management (HRM) practices may not be adequate to address the challenges of transformation and executing the expected developmental role.
A review of the literature and practices regarding the envisaged role of the Public Service in what is characterized as a developmental state is undertaken here, and the existing inadequacies with respect of attracting and retaining skilled employees are highlighted.
The argument is offered that talent management should be adopted as a complementary HRM practice to achieve Public Service objectives. This is necessary in the context of a shortage of skills and the need to redress past racial biases in the Public Service.
by Ruwayne Kock and Mark Burke
The alignment between effective people management, business strategy and organisational performance
The aim of the study was to determine the nature of the alignment between people management effectiveness, business strategy and organisational performance within the banking and insurance sector in South Africa.
From the field study, it was evident that the majority of the participating companies fell short of people management best practices and were therefore unable to support their business strategies, which were in line with best practices. The organisational performance data was insufficient to determine the nature of the alignment between organisational performance, people management, and business strategy.
The South African banking and insurance industry needs to realign their people management component to support the appropriate business strategy and to produce a desired level of organisational performance.
by Ruwayne Kock, Gert Roodt and Theo Veldsman
My career development journey to an authentic work identity
This paper describes the author’s lived experiences as a marginalised professional. It offers a nuanced understanding of his career development journey to an authentic work identity.
This analytic autoethnography, situated in a multicultural, democratic South Africa, describes how historic moments in the country’s political evolution influenced the author personally: his sense of belonging and his various roles socially, as well as at work.
The paper tracks selected stories in the author’s professional career journey to an authentic work identity, as indexed by the themes: I am a Black South African; I am a gay professional; and So, who am I at work? On reflection, the author realised how the bounded nature of authenticity allowed psychological safety while exploring congruency between his multiple work identities.
The autoethnography demonstrates how multiple accounts by the same author may be a valuable way of contributing to the literature on authentic work identity. This autoethnographic work extends the authentic identity literature of marginalised professionals beyond the narrow authenticity‒inauthenticity binary of most organisational studies. The paper introduces limited authentic work identity as an ameliorative self-concept in organisations.
by Ruwayne Kock