The Future of Public Human Resources Post Covid19: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has reverberated through the world and South Africa is no exception. Within the South African context, the impact was severe even in the public sector since most of the South African population rely heavily on public services such as health. During the hard lockdown (level 5) government employees were required to limit their face-to-face interaction with the public in the provision of such services and migrate most of these onto online platforms. This migration was more of reaction than pro-action and thus resulted in most of these services experiencing teething problems, the public raising their voice of dissatisfaction and staff members experiencing low morale owing to these challenges. The crisis has had public organisations to develop, adapt or improve remote work policies and procedures. Public managers struggled to keep employees safe and informed, failed to answer questions like what changes will be more permanent, how will they guide employees and organisational leadership through these changes, what is the technology and communications infrastructure needed for successful remote work and at what is this available to employees? Despite these challenges, opportunities abound in the new-normal and this could create a new culture within the public service of high productivity, accountability and performance management. This article presents a review of the recent literature on public resources management relation in the impact of Covid-19 on public organisations. It sets out to explore the extent to which this literature has responded to impact and how public organisations have responded to the pandemic.