People and Organization

  In the global context, including Sri Lanka, the glass ceiling occurred in many corporate sectors, even while women make up 52% of the nation’s population, and even though they generally scored high academically, their presence in corporate leadership roles presents a quite different picture. According to the International Finance Corporation (IFC) (2020), highlighted that 9.8% of board seats in Sri Lanka's listed companies are held by women, which is among the lowest percentages in South Asia, and surprisingly, as per the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), 60%  listed corporations have not having single female director at all. So, these numbers represent systemic injustices ingrained in Sri Lanka's corporate culture; they are not only symbolic. Moreover, the impact of this inequality has gone beyond social justice, where Gender diverse leadership has evolved to improve organizations' outcomes, where, according to McKinsey & Company (2023), most Companies in the top quarti...

  The discrepancy between production and burnout has never been more distorted in a society that promotes hustling. Achieving core balance between work life and mental health has become an urgent matter to be considered, where most people are facing demanding workplaces, family responsibilities, and financial difficulties. According to the World Health Organization (2022) , 1 in 5 Sri Lankans has a mental illness, yet less than 1% of them receive proper treatment. According to the National Mental Health Survey (2022) , the most common illnesses are anxiety and depression, with professional stress being identified as a major contributing factor. For example, imagine a Marketing Manager named Miss Jayani, 35 years whom working 10 – 14 hours per day, sacrificing her meals, sleep, leisure time, and seldom ever sees her kids. She's not by herself. Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration (SLIDA, 2021) , emphasized that just 12% of corporate workers had ever sought professiona...

  The Sri Lankan labor market performs soundly at unveiling. As per the Department of Census and Statistics (2025) , the labor force participation rate was 48.8% during the fourth quarter of 2025, while the unemployment rate was only 3.8%, which surprisingly emphasized that we are rich in talent. But in reality, most companies' HR professionals in any industry are having difficulty filling positions, and the causes go far beyond a spreadsheet's numbers, which indicate that something serious needs to be considered. Moreover, there is a structural issue which caused surface-level unemployment rate gap between what graduates can give and what businesses truly need. As per the Asia Pacific Career Development Association (2025) , highlighted key skills mismatch is one of the most enduring labor market failure in Sri Lanka where less than 5% of young people between age between 15 – 24 categorized included 22.3% young unemployment rate which indicated that harsh irony of a country and...

  Team building is the process of improving overall performance by strengthening relationships, communication, and collaboration among group members. It includes planned activities that build trust, make roles clear, and encourage problem-solving. Good team building can boost motivation and productivity while lowering conflict (Tuckman, 1965) . Importance of Team Building Team building is very important for the success of an organization because it builds trust and collaboration among employees. When people feel like they are part of a team, they are more likely to talk to each other openly and help each other reach common goals. This not only increases productivity but also makes people happier at work and boosts morale. Good team building encourages a variety of ideas, which leads to better problem-solving and new ideas. It also helps reduce conflicts at work by promoting mutual understanding. As Smith (2020) points out, organizations with strong team cohesion tend to do bet...

  In 2022, fuel lines extended for miles throughout Sri Lanka, posing a challenge to HR managers that no textbook had prepared them for: how do you manage a staff that is unable to travel to work? As a result of the Global Oil Disruption brought on by the 3 rd World War, geopolitical conflicts between Russia and Ukraine resulted in drastically increasing fuel prices worldwide. As a result, the pearl of the Indian Ocean – Sri Lanka also severely experienced a fuel shortage while dealing with a sovereign debt crisis.   With that, most of the companies would make significant changes overnight, including renegotiating shift arrangements, establishing hybrid work practices, and updating transportation benefits (International Labour Organization, 2023) . However, the Sri Lankan logistics sector would be harshly impacted due to this ripple impact badly, and organizational culture, which is grounded on physical meeting sessions, coffee breaks, lunch breaks, and conferences, woul...

  Agentic AI means a self-directed system that can make decisions, carry out multi-step tasks, and learn from results without constant human supervision, which takes actions in contrast to conventional AI systems that provide answers, such as end-to-end recruitment pipelines, real-time employee sentiment analysis, and predictive attrition modeling in HR.  So with this emerging trend, the Sri Lankan labor force has also fallen at a decisive moment where Human resource management is no longer essential to rely on outdated procedures, given that there are over 8.8 million people in the labor market (Department of Census and Statistics, 2023), while the youth unemployment rate was 26.1% (World Bank, 2023) . Moreover, assistance that would be utilized by Agentic AI is being utilized by the current IT industry in Sri Lanka, which accounts for about 7.4% of the country's GDP (SLASSCOM, 2023) .   As in a global trend, most IT companies like IFS and Millennium IT have used this ...

  Introduction As we all know, global Talent Management is rapidly changing due to its next level. Most of the Organizations relied on identifying and developing talents inside rather than grabbing from outside, which gained a competitive advantage over time. As a result of navigating economic recovery and forward-thinking, organizations would reconsider conventional recruitment-first practices in Sri Lanka. As per the recent stats, Sri Lanka’s Unemployment rate was 4.4% in 2024 which revealed that there is a serious problem in ground level as mismatch in skills where as per the Department of Census and Statistics (2024) , emphasized that there is serious concern that the companies have trouble in allocating people with necessary abilities for the respective position where even sometime they receive large number of applications, sometime at least one applicant would not suitable for a given position. According to the World Bank (2022) , about 40% of Sri Lankan businesses cite poo...

As a result of the hybrid work revolution, Organizational operations have changed significantly. After the pandemic, hybrid work arrangements have become more popular in many sectors in Sri Lanka, where the ICT sector signified it as contributing $1.9 billion in GDP over 80,000 professionals (ICTA, 2023) . Over the flexibility, vicinity bias slightly favors people who work in offices, while sidelining those who work remotely is a real concern so far. However, as per the recent investigation, remote workers have a 19% less chance of getting promoted than their colleagues who work on-site, which proves the above elaboration statistically ( Harvard Business Review, 2021) . Moreover, remote work was addressed as a tool to promote gender participation in Sri Lanka, where women only make up 32% of the ICT workforce. While considering international leadership opportunities, it runs the risk of causing an imbalance (SLASSCOM, 2022) . However, we can identify Strategies to bridge the gap, like...

  For many years, performance management in organizations was closely linked to the traditional annual review. These evaluations mainly focused on assessing employees past performance, often done once a year through formal, time-consuming processes. Although meant to evaluate employee contributions, these methods faced significant criticism due to their subjectivity, inconsistency, and the stress they caused for both employees and managers. Over time, this approach has changed significantly with the development of modern Performance Management Systems (Bristol et al., 2022). Organizations today are moving away from these outdated methods and adopting more flexible and technology-driven practices. This shift reflects the need for HR systems that can keep up with fast-changing business environments. Modern performance management systems emphasize constant evaluation, feedback, and data-driven decision-making. These tools allow managers to track employee performance in real time, un...