The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a profound impact on the economy, with significant psychological and social effect on global populations. The scope of COVID-19 warrants a classification as a ‘grand challenge’ (Bacq, Geoghegan, Josefy, Stevenson, & Williams, 2020). Given the global state of mental health because of COVID-19, a united cooperation in research for shared data access, expertise and capacity-building is required as a response to this ‘grand challenge’.

Debates on whether to lock down cities or countries have revolved around economic concerns primarily, with less focus on the psychological and sociological consequences of these lockdowns. Different patterns of responses, including employers, employees and states, are contextually dependent on the unique cultural, economic, social and political features of these places. Hence, we find that the Asian response differs significantly from that of the United States, for example. Even within a continent, diversity of experiences and responses occurs as is the case in Europe (Balmford, Annan, Hargreaves, Altoè, & Batemen, 2020). Context, therefore, matters and our research is embedded in a South African context, which is characterised by high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality pre-COVID-19. Some of the South African business responses to COVID-19 have been to focus on economic survival by ceasing production, re-structuring and cutting expenses, especially staff wages, which has led to significant job losses.

South Africa presents an interesting case study to measure employee agility and resilience levels for the following reasons. The country has a high unemployment rate when benchmarked globally. The pandemic has exacerbated this rate to almost 50% (Statistics South Africa, 2020b), making it one of the highest in the world. Each employed South African in the formal sector on an average supports up to three other adults, making it one of the highest dependency rates in the world. Compounding this are some of the highest rates of (racialised) income inequality in the world (Statistics South Africa, 2020a). South Africans experience high rates of violent crime, chronic stress, violence against women, racism and trauma, which perhaps could only be rivalled by some South American countries (Lamb, 2019; Peltzer, 2000). Prior to COVID-19, the focus of the South African government was developing entrepreneurship and the informal and small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) sector as means of job creation, skills development and the economy (Urban & Ndou, 2019). COVID-19 has devastated up to 60% of this sector (Kalidas, Magwentshu, & Rajagopaul, 2020).

Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic is significant, the South African experience of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB) epidemics (which have had higher death rates), which arguably caused deeper restructuring of society, is an experience that sets it apart from many other countries. In other words, South Africans are used to economic and social hardships. The sudden and deep disruptions of the lockdown jarred an already fraught and fragile South African society.

It is against this background that we do a ‘temperature reading’ of the agility and resilience levels of permanently employed South Africans during the current pandemic. Our research design is analogous to a physical temperature reading that is conducted to determine the state of one’s physical health at a particular moment in time. We want to ascertain the levels of employee agility and resilience of employees during profound social disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic in a rapid way that gives an overall sense of the ‘well-being’ (as measured by agility and resilience levels) of South African employees. There is less focus on developing complex statistical models to determine and assess causality, and the focus is more on ascertaining an overall and quick sense of agility and resilience levels at a particular moment in time. An ‘abnormal’ reading is an indicator that something may be amiss, or even relatively normal indicators during abnormal times may allow us to conjecture as to why this may be the case. Most of the temperature reading studies were conducted outside South Africa, and inferences were made from these global studies (Alves et al., 2020; Helgeson et al., 2020).

At the time this survey, no other study assessing these measures during the pandemic was conducted. Recently, a number of COVID-19-related employee surveys have been conducted in South Africa but none has assessed agility and resilience levels of employees (Cant, 2020; Matli, 2020). Temperature reading surveys are important during times of rapid change because they point to potential areas of concern for scholars and practitioners, whilst at the same time inviting reflection on how to better refine survey and research design for future studies (Cozby & Bates, 2015). The urgency of the context also means that as scholar-practitioners, it is important for us to act quickly so that we can best position our professions to serve both organisations and employees in South Africa.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, employees in the formal sector have had to work from home, change work-related processes, juggle family demands, especially as they navigate the balance of multiple roles across work with personal lives. It is not surprising that a plethora of both popular and scholarly works on resilience and agility have emerged during the lockdown, as scholars and practitioners attempt to make sense of organisational and employee experiences of the pandemic (Childress, 2020; Chong, Handscomb, Williams, Hall, & Rooney, 2020; Havnen et al., 2020). COVID-19 and the resulting social distancing policy had an unprecedented negative impact on organisational financial performance globally and nationally (Ozili & Arun, 2020).

Many organisations are facing challenges of work re-structuring, re-organisation and re-pivoting so that they become fit for the purpose. Organisational survival and effectiveness depend on the ability of organisations and employees to withstand and adapt to significant challenges, that is, on their resilience. Resilience in organisations has been acknowledged as a vital competitive advantage, and as a result, research on how to promote and improve resilience amongst employees is increasing (Bardoel, Pettit, De Cieri, & McMillan, 2014; Lengnick-Hall, Beck, & Lengnick-Hall, 2011). The increased interest in employee agility and resilience stems from a wish to strengthen organisational systems and infrastructure, and to ensure organisational sustainability, which depend on the extent to which employees are able to maintain performance levels (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011). Agility and resilience skills help employees deal with change more effectively and positively. Organisations with high levels of agility have workforces that are innovative, fast to adapt to change and flexible (Muduli, 2013).

Against this backdrop of the impact of COVID-19 on organisations and employees, time is of the essence for industrial-organisational (I-O) psychologists to urgently intervene with evidence-based solutions and thus dissuade organisations from the lure of the ‘magic bullet’ (Rotolo at al., 2018). The purpose of the current research study was to conduct a point in time temperature reading of employees’ agility and resilience to enable nuanced and tailored interventions. During this crisis, it is an opportunity for the South African I-O psychology community to contribute to understanding the ways in which the pandemic is shaping organisational life for South African employees with relevant credible, transparent and ethical research (Van Zyl & Junker, 2019).

Employee agility and resilience have gained attention in the literature through investigating organisational change and information technology (IT) system implementation (Breu, Hemingway, Strathern, & Bridger, 2002). Qin and Nembhard (2010) defined workforce agility as the ability of employees to respond strategically to uncertainty with an emphasis on its greater salience in enterprises which rely heavily on the workforce to transfer cutting-edge technologies into products. Muduli (2013) conceptualised an agile workforce as well-trained and flexible, adapting quickly and easily to new opportunities and market circumstances. Employee agility is beneficial to the organisation’s performance (Muduli, 2013) and the ability to navigate change (Warner & April, 2012). Organisational agility is considered as a contributor to a company’s success, and thus employee agility would be valued by the organisation (Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Blume, 2009). Thus, employee agility and resilience will be a key ingredient to enable organisations to re-organise for survival. The current context of deep disruption may be the COVID-19 pandemic, but further deep societal disruptive events will continue. These may range from further pandemics to unknown and unanticipated future societal upheavals. Measuring levels of agility and resilience during the current societal crisis may allow us to extrapolate how organisations and employees behave during times of sustained crisis. Agility and resilience are measures of how we are able to adapt to change rapidly and ‘bounce back’ from hardship experienced during disruptive and rapidly changing contexts. They are, therefore, apt measures to do a temperature reading of agility and resilience.

Previous studies on agility across business fields have suggested that employee agility is a crucial component of organisational agility. Chonko and Jones (2009) suggested that organisational agility results from the people who comprise it working together in ways that benefit the individual, the organisation and their customers. As organisations begin to transition from the initial panic stage of shutdown to adaptions to work from home, with COVID-19, this creates a new reality. There is a need to understand the impact and responses of COVID-19 and the agility and resilience capacity of permanent employees in South Africa.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, much has been written about the importance of employee resilience and agility in terms of navigating unpredicted change, absorbing and adapting the challenges (Childress, 2020; Chong et al., 2020), ways to develop resilience and agility (Neuroleadership Institute, 2020) and leadership competence development after COVID-19 (Dirani et al., 2020). Yet there is an absence of research data providing a temperature reading on the current reality of employee agility and resilience in South Africa.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a temperature reading of South African permanent employees’ agility and resilience levels. Hence, the research question guiding the study is as follows: ‘what are the employee agility and resilience levels of employees in South Africa?’

Much has been written about the concern of mental health of global citizens and the need for urgent wellness support (Pfefferbaum & North, 2020; Xiang et al., 2020). For I-O psychology scholar-practitioners, there has been an urgent appeal to focus research within the COVID-19 pandemic on wellness, health and safety of the employees (Rudolph et al., 2020). In response to the quest, this research offers quantitative data on the current state, a ‘temperature reading’ of COVID-19 on employee agility and resilience in South Africa. Human resources and industrial organisational psychologists are uniquely positioned to provide guidance about how COVID-19 will likely impact employees and organisation by providing evidence-based recommendations for navigating the challenges and opportunities of this crisis. Whilst a temperature reading is more suggestive than conclusive in its findings, it is nonetheless an important intervention to understand a rapidly and currently evolving situation. It flags potential areas for HR and I-O scholars to hone in on to further unpack employees and agility of employees during periods of profound social disruption.

Thus, the starting point was to take a ‘temperature reading’ to determine the impact of COVID-19 on employee agility and resilience. For the purposes of this research, the constructs for agility and resilience at an individual level were based on the development, validation and practical application of an employee agility and resilience measure (Braun, Hayes, DeMuth, & Taran, 2017), as the measure was used to take the ‘temperature reading’. According to Braun et al. (2017), agility was defined as a skill of proactive rethinking or redefining to overcome obstacles. As defined by Bridges (1980) cited in Braun et al. (2017), resilience is ‘the emotional and psychological transition to change’. We suggest that before organisations embark on their post-COVID-19 recovery plan to navigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to know how this pandemic affects employees in South Africa.

The quantitative, non-experimental research method was deemed most suitable to answer the research questions (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the data analysis. Using the indices from the survey, the study derived mean composite scores for each of the dimensions of agility and resilience. For example, in the case of agility, the responses to the five questions measuring agility were transformed into a single mean score representing the entire dimension of agility. This technique was conducted for all seven dimensions, which allowed for further analysis. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis was conducted on the dimensions of agility and resilience (DV) and demographics, employment and organisational characteristics, impact on employees and employees’ responses to COVID-19 (IV) (Craven & Islam, 2011).

The population included all people permanently employed in South Africa. The sampling strategy utilised was nonprobability with a purposive design (Etikan, Musa, & Alkassim, 2016). A total of 229 respondents completed the questionnaire; once the data were cleaned, the final sample size was 185 (N = 185).

The survey questionnaire comprised four parts. The researchers developed the first three parts; part 4 is a standardised measure. The four parts were as follows: (1) demographics, six questions covering age, gender, employment, education, work sector and organisational size; (2) impact of COVID-19 on employees, four questions on the impact of COVID-19 on workload, salary and feasibility to work from home and workspace; (3) employee response to COVID-19, three questions with a 1–5 Likert scale on the risk of job loss, need to outperform peers, organisational communication and one question with a nominal rating scale on upskilling because of COVID-19; and (4) the standardised instrument of Employee Agility and Resilience (Braun et al., 2017) measures 46 items with a 1–5 Likert scale across seven dimensions: agility (14 items), resilience (nine items), individual renewal (three items), collaboration (eight items), creating positive relationships (four items), openness to experience (three items) and social support (five items) (Braun at al., 2017). A measure of Cronbach’s alpha was used to describe the internal consistency and reliability of the questions used to measure the above-mentioned psychometric constructs. Permission was granted to use the Employee Agility and Resilience survey instrument (T. Braun, pers. comm., 18 May 2020).

Once the LinkedIn gatekeeper letter was obtained, an application was submitted for ethical clearance from the University Research Office. The researchers placed a notice on LinkedIn, which contained information about the title, purpose, study procedures, time commitment to complete the questionnaire, the inclusion criteria used to determine eligibility, contact details for the researchers and a link to the SurveyMonkey questionnaire. Data collection was done from 25 June 2020 to 20 July 2020, and during this time period, South Africa was in lockdown level 3. All principles of anonymity, confidentiality and non-maleficence were adhered to in the study. Participation was voluntary. Respondents had to give informed consent for participating in the study and they were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any point without any consequences for themselves.

Once the survey was closed, the data were exported and analysed using Stata software program.

As with all research, this study has limitations and the following should be taken into account when reviewing the research results. The convenience sample that was used to gather self-report data from permanent employees via LinkedIn was biased to professional employees within the KwaZulu-Natal province. A further limitation was the self-report measures, which may have impacted the results as the sample may have given favourable responses. Nevertheless, the study provides useful and important insights, a ‘temperature reading’, into the impact of COVID-19 on employee agility and resilience in South Africa. In addition, caution should be made to generalise these findings as the COVID-19 circumstances are different in each country.

As this was an exploratory ‘temperature reading’ study, future research should apply more representative sampling techniques to access a generalisable sample of the general population. As organisations enter into the COVID-19 recovery strategy, there will be merit in adding measures of employee wellness to track the individual renewal dimension as well as leadership and organisational culture as mediating and moderating variables, ultimately, in a longitudinal research study.

The high-level practical implications are to use the ‘temperature reading’ results to raise awareness of employees’ own agility and resilience and then build interventions, especially in the COVID-19 employee-care and organisation recovery plan. Recently, there has been a dearth of resilience-building self-help; in the absence of organisational authentic empathy, these self-help initiatives can perpetuate the ‘us and them divide’, which exists in some organisations. Based on these results, the specific practical applications would be to:

The overarching purpose of this article was to determine employee agility and resilience capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic and understand employees’ responses to the pandemic in South Africa. The research findings contribute to the knowledge base and practice of I-O psychology. These results add value for leaders, I-O psychologists and HR professionals who are either reviewing or starting their post-COVID strategies, highlighting the vital focus on tailored employee agility and resilience solutions with partnerships. HR and I-O professionals are in important positions within academia and organisations in South Africa in order to design and implement employee agility and resilience evidence-based initiatives using empirical data.