April 2020

Dimensions of Human Resource Management Evolved with the Outbreak of COVID-19

By Jyoti Koirala, Suman Acharya The COVID-19 can be blamed for the greatest workplace transformations after 2020. This outbreak in this 21st century will break the existing system i.e. working, exercising, shopping, communicating, educating, and learning. This change will slowly force the organization to make modification to our human resource policies and strategy. The point need to be noted that this “social distance” is the change factor that created in the history for transformation. The work from home is...

Labor Markets During the Covid-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View

By Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Michael Weber We use a repeated large-scale survey of households in the Nielsen Homescan panel to characterize how labor markets are being affected by the covid-19 pandemic. We document several facts. First, job loss has been significantly larger than implied by new unemployment claims: we estimate 20 million lost jobs by April 8th, far more than jobs lost over the entire Great Recession. Second, many of those losing jobs are not actively looking to...

Coronavirus will make US cities feel the pressure of pension debt

Municipal pension debt is among the many aspects of the economy that have been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 not only exposes, but also further threatens the already-weak fiscal health of municipal retirement plans. Inaction on this front could mean insolvent pension plans dragging some of the nation’s largest cities into bankruptcy. After all, when the stock market takes a hit, so do pensions. This is because most of the typical pension funds’ income is from returns...

Ghana’s Social Protection And Public Choices In The Days Of Covid-19

We cannot know how society protects its weakest and vulnerable, those at the bottom of society from deprivation until a catastrophe such as COVID-19, the 'unseeable, undead, unliving blob', to use the words of Arundhati Roy, is unleashed on us. Read also South Africa. The dichotomy between what pension scheme members want and what they get Ghana has a sub-optimal social protection system, its inadequacy due to our informal and poor information system. COVID-19 has amplified these weaknesses, unleashing a...

UK. Coronavirus crisis hits occupational pension schemes

Members of generous final-salary workplace pension schemes could see their guaranteed benefits jeopardised by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many such schemes are in deficit: they lack the money to make good on all the pension promises made to employees . In the short term, the outlook has improved. The Pensions Regulator has now given employers longer to make up this shortfall since many firms are suffering from the pandemic. This will help employers squeezed by the virus. But...

South Africa. The dichotomy between what pension scheme members want and what they get

The one thing an investment linked living annuity (also known as a living annuity, or illas) does not do is give pensioners a secure income flow. Few pensioners are likely to be financially secure until death. The advent of Covid-19 and the junking of South Africa’s debt makes it far worse when share prices and dividend payments drop. Most living annuity pensioners had already received a serious body blow even before the virus and the downgrade of South...

Australia. Deloitte Digital develops chatbot for swamped pension funds

Due to Covid-19 disruption, superannuation funds are being swamped with enquiries. In a rapid response to client demand, Deloitte Digital has managed to develop a ‘Covid-19 Super Bot’ to help funds manage the huge rise in the number of requests coming their way. Read also Tesla appoints former head of Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund to its board For most superannuation funds in Australia, the nature of enquiries flowing in is considerably predictable. But following the Australian government’s recently announced...

US. Trump pressed to halt federal pension investments in China’s ZTE, Hikvision: Reuters

Lawmakers and former officials are making a last-ditch push to persuade the Trump administration to halt plans to invest billions of federal employee retirement dollars in Chinese companies that Washington suspects of human rights abuses or threatening U.S. security, according to sources and documents seen by Reuters. Read also Coronavirus will make US cities feel the pressure of pension debt The campaign, which includes letters and calls from Republicans and a sharply worded memo shared with White House Chief of...

Ireland. Over 1 MILLION people now claiming social protection payments

The number of people now claiming some form of social protection payment has exceeded 1m after another 50,000 people received the COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection has issued the €350 weekly payment to 584,000 people who have lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus, adding to the 212,000 people in the Live Register. A further 46,000 employers have signed up to the newly expanded wage subsidy scheme, with over 281,200...

Kenya needs better social protection programmes during Covid-19

While scrolling through Twitter, it is likely that you will come across a post appealing for food aid. As Kenya recorded its 197th confirmed Covid-19 case in early April, many enterprises had reduced their operations, or closed down, causing massive losses in livelihoods. The economic impact has, in turn, increased the prevalence of food-insecure households. Although Kenya has set up a Covid-19 Emergency Fund, it does not currently support provision of food for the most vulnerable households. On Friday,...