Welcome to the New Normal! Or should that be the Old Normal? Perhaps even the Jurassic Normal, from when dinosaurs roamed the earth?
As SA business tries to find its feet in the post-Covid world, it is confronted by an enormously complicated set of circumstances. Anyone who thought the end of the pandemic would bring back a vestige of sanity never reckoned with it being replaced by floods, electricity and water rationing, riots, war and a breakdown in global supply chains.
These are just the external challenges. Internally, companies must work out how to deal with employees who, after two yers of near-isolation, aren’t ready to return to the nine-to-five humdrum of office existence — either because it will disrupt their newfound work-family balance or, in many cases, because they are afraid to go back.
Prof Crystal Hoole, head of the University of Johannesburg’s department of industrial psychology & people management and immediate past-president of the Society for Industrial & Organisational Psychology of SA, says employers must heed employees’ emotional needs.
“The past two years have been a traumatic time for many people,” she tells the FM. “A lot lost friends and family to Covid and that is still at the back of their minds. There is a genuine fear factor about going back into a crowded office.”
Henley Africa Business School dean Jon Foster-Pedley says it’s in South Africans’ nature to put a brave face on things, but “there are people out there suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder”.
Henley alone lost about 25 students to Covid and school staff lost more than 40 family members. “That’s got to have a lasting effect on everyone involved,” he says.
A senior management consultant, who wants to remain anonymous in case some clients think he’s having a dig at them (“Actually, I am”), says: “Any boss who forces staff to return en masse to the office, particularly a busy one, without taking account of individual concerns, is a dinosaur who has no place in the modern workplace. Who said slavery was dead?”
The past two years of working from home have emboldened young employees unwilling to submit unthinkingly to the corporate grind. Unlike previous generations, who were willing to integrate, Generation Z workers, born from 1997 onwards, expect employers to adjust to them, not the other way round.
According to one academic, this social-media generation is more interested in “individualistic values” than corporate ones.
With all these challenges, it’s no wonder some SA business leaders, particularly those brought up in traditional, hierarchical structures, don’t know which way to turn.
“We need a new breed of leaders, with evolving skills, to help us out of the hole in which we find ourselves,” Johannesburg Business School dean Randall Cornelissen tells the FM.
Step forward, business schools. They have provided direction and leadership skills for generations of SA executives and managers. If anyone can offer perspective, surely it’s them?
Adapting to change
Schools around the world are reporting an upsurge in demand for non-degree programmes to help cope with the nitty-gritty of management — including how to deal with staff face to face after two years of remote control.
Like the clients they serve, business schools have undergone seismic change in the past two years. Though no-one wants to call it a good crisis, Covid has forced everyone to confront the way they operate. Executive education and academic programmes have moved from the classroom into the virtual world. Students, be they at home, in the office or even on holiday, can participate almost as if they were in the same room with lecturers and classmates.
Nelson Mandela University (NMU) Business School academic head Sam February says: “Covid forced us to stop and think, to accelerate what we were doing. For some of us, there was no overwhelming pressure to go online. But then Covid came along and said: ‘You’re going to work according to my timeline.’ It showed us what was possible.”
Now the big decision for schools is deciding how to mix virtual and face-to-face teaching. Some opened their campuses to students last year. Others won’t do so until 2023 — if ever. Some plan to go wholly online, with no classroom teaching. They say the past two years have proved it’s the future.
Actually, it’s one of several futures. Market research among employers for this cover story shows that only 14% want executive education to be exclusively online. They are outnumbered by the 21% who want it wholly face-to-face in the classroom. By far the biggest proportion, 46%, want all programmes to be a mix of the two — what is called blended or hybrid learning. The remaining 17% say each programme should be treated on its merits.
There are two kinds of online, or virtual, teaching. One is synchronous, in which students interact in real time with their lecturers and fellow students. It’s effectively a live, on-screen lesson. The other is asynchronous, meaning a pre-recorded session to which students can tune in when it suits them.
Covid forced us to stop and think, to accelerate what we were doing ... It showed us what was possible
— Sam February
Online education has come a long way from 2019 when, in many cases, it consisted of unpractised lecturers droning out of computer screens at uninterested students. Improved technology, and understanding how to make classes interactive, have made a big difference.
“Two years ago, online was considered a substandard education,” says Regenesys Business School COO Indherani Reddy. “Now that there is a better understanding of the role it plays, many companies are addicted to it.”
As the table “Classy options”, shows, synchronous teaching dominated the SA executive education landscape in 2021. Face-to-face was a long way behind, but is expected to enjoy a bigger share this year as more students return to campus.
At Milpark Business School, the campus remains closed to students for now but some companies are hosting in-person executive education courses on corporate premises, says dean Cobus Oosthuizen. It’s a similar picture at Da Vinci Business School, where CEO HB Klopper says mining group Sibanye-Stillwater and financial services company FNB are among clients asking for on-site programmes so staff can “reconnect”.
February says NMU’s Gqeberha campus won’t open fully to students until next year. Elsewhere, some campuses have been ringing to the sound of students for several months.
At Rhodes Business School, director Owen Skae says he’d “forgotten what it was like, hearing the sound of laughter in the corridors and people sharing experiences in person”.
Stellenbosch Business School director Mark Smith believes business schools are “impaired by the loss of the joy and creativity and collegiality of human contact. Our students want to feel that human interaction.”
That’s why the school’s Bellville, Cape Town campus has been fully open for some months, and many of its programmes are now hybrid. Recent visitors have included 60 Spanish students.
Wits Business School director Maurice Radebe says his campus, too, has welcomed students since October as part of hybrid teaching programmes. Not all take up the offer, however. For a synchronous management-advancement programme that began in March, 44 students elected to attend campus sessions, and 60 to stay fully online.
“Some students are still afraid of mixing with others,” Radebe says.
For companies with offices around the country, it makes sense for executive education to take place online, he adds. But increasingly, Gauteng clients “want bums on seats” in the classroom at Wits. “They want their people to re-engage with one another.”
At the Gordon Institute of Business Science, dean Morris Mthombeni says 90% of academic programmes are back on campus. “The place is buzzing again, if not quite as frantically as before.”
University of the Free State business school director Udesh Pillay is particularly looking forward to the return of students. Appointed last year, he says: “I haven’t seen any since I’ve been here.”
At the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), the loss of foreign students has been keenly felt, says director Catherine Duggan. Under normal circumstances, the school’s international reputation, plus the lure of the Mother City, has made GSB a popular destination for MBA and other academic students from around the world.
Covid obviously put a big dent in numbers, but it looked as if 2022 demand would rebound strongly — until November last year, when international panic around the Omicron variant caused some countries to ban travel to and from SA. That ban may have been short-lived, but it came at precisely the wrong time for foreign students who had to make an immediate decision on study destinations.
“It hurt us but I think numbers should be back to something approaching normal next year,” says Duggan.
There’s something else Henley’s Foster-Pedley hopes to see back to normal soon: graduation ceremonies. Public approbation in front of friends and family is a highlight for many students, rather than the anonymous, almost apologetic events that were the norm during Covid.
“Now restrictions have been lifted, some students have asked if we can redo their graduations, to become the celebrations they hoped they’d be,” he says.
A new corporate world
As discussed elsewhere in this cover story package, the shift to online has hit many business schools where it hurts most: in the pocket. Besides the loss of revenue from cancelled business education during the Covid scourge, many corporate clients have demanded reduced fees for online courses, believing them to be much cheaper to run than classroom sessions — an idea rejected by schools, who say the cost of new technology more than makes up for savings on campus use.
For the corporate world at large, the convenience of technology extends far beyond the classroom. Companies have learnt that employees no longer need to traipse around the world — or even across town — to attend conferences and business meetings. They can do that virtually too. Indeed, it’s not even necessary to be on company premises. Many companies reported higher productivity and lower costs after employees were sent home to work during the pandemic.
Staff themselves, no longer stuck in rush-hour traffic for hours and enjoying more time with their families, were happier and more fulfilled. This was the future, the new normal, declared business schools and the corporate world. There was no going back.
Really? Now that emergency restrictions have been lifted, some people want to see a return, at least partially, to the way things were. As Regenesys academic dean Sibongiseni Kumalo explains it: “We are creatures of habit. We want to default to what we know.”
For many bosses, that means ordering employees back to the office full-time.
“For two years, business schools helped train companies to send their people home,” Sharmla Chetty, global CEO of the Duke Corporate Education group, tells the FM. “Now we have to help bring them back again — and not everyone is happy.”
Duggan explains it as follows: “Most senior people want to bring people back to work. People in the middle want to work from home. People have suddenly been called back with no consideration for their circumstances and we are seeing a lot of people quit their jobs.”
As Foster-Pedley puts it, “having got off the treadmill, people have no wish to climb back on”.
Some people’s personal or family circumstances have changed in the past two years, and they need flexibility. Or, as Hoole observed, some may be genuinely afraid of returning to the office.
Some employers, frankly, don’t care. “They are not set up to cater to employees’ emotional needs,” says Hoole. “Their empathy is directed more towards the corporate bottom line.”
She believes employers should let staff talk about their worries — whether it’s the fear of Covid or of re-engaging with colleagues after so long apart. “Working from home forced many people to work in a bubble,” she says, “so our emotional and social skills have got rusty.”
Throw in the personal trauma of lost friends and loved ones and you start to understand the psychological impact. “You don’t realise the effect all this can have on the psyche,” says Hoole.
Jacqui-Lyn McIntyre-Louw, deputy director at North-West University Business School, says: “Employers who want their people to come back five days a week should probably revise their expectations.”
Many won’t. In the US, Elon Musk recently ordered all his employees back to the office forthwith to stop them “slacking off” out of sight at home. Not all bosses share that motive, says the management consultant. “In certain cases, I think bosses feel emasculated by not having a live audience to show how important they are.”
For two years, business schools helped train companies to send their people home. Now we have to help bring them back again — and not everyone is happy
— Sharmla Chetty
There are also good reasons to recall staff to the workplace. For example, it’s hard to instil teamwork or corporate culture when colleagues don’t see each other.
Peet Venter, head of executive education at Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership, says: “Since we went away, there have been more than 20 new colleagues appointed whom I haven’t met. You can’t just manufacture relationships and teamwork.”
Johannesburg Business School’s Cornelissen says many people promoted to managerial positions during Covid have only ever led remotely.
“I feel sorry for people appointed in the past two years who haven’t met the people they work with,” says Martyn Davies, dean of Deloitte’s Alchemy School of Management.
At the Tshwane School for Business & Society, director Kobus Jonker even organised a training session for staff “because we’ve lost our former social cohesion through working from home”.
“I don’t know if it’s temporary,” he adds, “but there has to be a refocus on social skills.”
Davies says remote working makes it harder for companies to properly assess candidates for promotion or management development. “Careers are underpinned by personal networks. Can they be built virtually? I’m not sure they can.”
This isn’t the only workplace relationship obstacle facing bosses. There’s also the small matter of the generation gap. It has always existed but, through Generation Z, it has widened alarmingly, say managers.
The days of young people assimilating into organisations, often in pursuit of lifelong job security, are vanishing. A 2022 global Deloitte study of the “Zoomers”, as they are sometimes known, found that 40% want to leave their jobs in the next two years — 30% even if there is not another job to go to. In SA, the numbers are 35% and 22%. Globally, nearly 40% say they have rejected a job or assignment because it did not align with their values.
“Young employees want a sense of knowing that what they do is meaningful,” says Wits Business School’s Radebe. “They are purpose-driven.”
Cari Schwerd, an accountancy professional researching workplace practices for her doctorate of business administration thesis, says younger generations value work-life balance, reduced working time, working from home and multiple jobs. To retain them, employers must “adapt to changing generational values”.
As companies navigate the return to ‘normal’ after Covid, business schools can provide direction and the leadership skills for a changing corporate landscape
— What it means:
Management College of Southern Africa academic director Zaheer Hamid similarly observes: “Managers and leaders need to adjust approaches and perspectives when it comes to managing people and talent in a post-Covid world.”
He says the fight for talent has moved beyond salary and benefits, and into work flexibility and employee satisfaction. “As a business school, we should be driving the narrative of new managerial and leadership models which support such a leadership need as the context of work, people and businesses has changed.”
His colleague Paresh Soni adds: “Gen Z employees will present managers and leaders with an opportunity to reinvent their style and approach to managing the modern workforce.”
As Rhodes’s Skae explains it, “leaders are there to serve the organisation and everyone in it. If they are seen not to be doing so, employees, particularly young ones, won’t buy into anything they say.”
Actually, both sides will have to adapt. Fulu Netswera, dean of the faculty of management sciences at Durban University of Technology, believes the corporate sector is “faced with a generation that does not appreciate the importance of rules. But business needs rules.”
Still, that doesn’t mean old-style executive dictatorship. “The idea of blind obedience is no longer relevant,” NMU acting director Hendrik Lloyd explains. “Leaders must listen, not just give orders.”
But the real challenge, says Mthombeni, is to ensure leaders “understand their context and understand employee voice empowerment. Managers need to look out for tastes of individuals and then look at the boundaries of flexibility in their organisation.”
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