Is flourishing at work something employees must build alone? This Emerald book argues decent work, capabilities and mattering matter as much as individual strengths, and asks how to create “flourishing work.”

Two people can have the same qualifications and resources, yet very different chances to do work they value. The capability approach helps us see why, and what it means for well-being at work in Africa.

What if work did more than provide an income? Watch the launch of Capabilities at Work on Vimeo, and read the open-access book on how organisations and leaders can create fair and meaningful work.

Does work give people the opportunity to grow, contribute, feel valued and live well? That question is at the heart of Capabilities at Work, a new open-access book from Cambridge University Press, edited by Prof. Jac van der Klink and Prof. Ian Rothmann.

Optentia’s Short Learning Programme in Research Design is being rebuilt into microcredentials: short, assessed units of learning that each certify one research skill. Read what microcredentials are, why they matter for researchers, and who is developing them.

Optentia and the NWU Career Office have developed a new online short course that equips NWU alumni to mentor graduates through the transition from university to working life. Read about the course and the seven other short courses Optentia offers, and download the brochure.

Six free broadcasts, one conviction: science should help people grow and flourish. Explore research design, mentorship, ethics, job insecurity and capabilities at work.

Dr Vedhna Dayanand-Lalla initiated the recent NWU colloquium, which explored Ubuntu, the capability approach and decolonial thought as ways to reimagine human flourishing in South Africa. Read how participants argued that South Africa cannot transform what it refuses to rethink.

Seven days, visitors from two continents, and one long-awaited book launch. Read the story of the week Capabilities at Work came into the world.

What does it truly take for academics and teachers to flourish, not merely cope? Three of our PhD researchers have just been given the green light to find out.

What if we measured work not by what it pays, but by what it lets you become? Capabilities at Work (Cambridge University Press, 2026, open access) brings voices to one bold idea — that work should let everyone be and do what they truly value.

An international conversation on work, well-being, and what people have reason to value. Join us on 23 September 2026 — in Centurion or online — for the launch of Capabilities at Work.

Today you receive; tomorrow you give. At today's certificate ceremony, Optentia and the NWU marked the completion of four mentorship courses — and set dozens of new mentors and mentees on their way.

Scholarship meets frontline practice. Meet Dr Vedhna Dayanand-Lalla, whose work bridges gender, empowerment and the capability approach.

Capability Month begins on the first day of Spring — a season of new growth, and the right moment to ask what allows people to flourish.

Some jokes take twenty years to become tender. In 2002, a room in Potchefstroom held South Africa's first conversation on burnout — five speakers, one psychiatrist with a wicked pen, and a set of cartoons that has since become a way of keeping company with friends now gone.

Heritage Day asks where we come from. This September, Optentia's Capability Month asks where we can go.

Planning is well underway for the launch of Capabilities at Work — a new, interdisciplinary perspective on work and well-being built on the Capability Approach. On 23 September 2026, at Momentum in Centurion, we bring this research within reach of the universities, industry and policy voices who can turn a new paradigm into practice.

We helped unemployed people prepare for the labour market — until one of them gently asked, "but what now, there is still no work?" This is the story of how that question opened up another dimension of our work: not only preparing people for jobs, but also preparing the labour market for people.

Mentorship isn’t weak — it’s judged by its worst versions. Done deliberately, it targets the exact gap our graduates fall into: the broken bridge between a degree and a job.