Whats Your Strategy For Ensuring Product Knowledge?

Have you ever noticed that when you visit service providers you encounter employees who tell you they have no idea about a product that the company is selling? I have had many encounters with employees who are clueless about the company’s products. In some instances you also get companies launching products into the market when the majority of their employees are in the dark.

Imagine the amount of business companies would be generating if every employee is fully conversant with company products. Each employee will be a brand ambassador of the company. Each employee will be actively promoting company products even if they are off-duty because they will have enough knowledge about the products. This is not what is happening on the ground in many organisations.

How should this be handled? I remember years back when I was working for one organisation every employee would be tested for product knowledge every quarter.  You would be picked at any time of the day and be required to sit for the product knowledge test there and there. There would be no prior warning and employees would be chosen randomly. The tests would be changed constantly and so in a year you would right four different tests. This kept every employee well updated on company products. The organisation also made an effort to ensure that employees are well updated on products and services new and old. This information will be readily available through the company intranet and other company forums. Getting a score below 80% would attract disciplinary measures. This program worked wonders for this organisation including revenue growth and top of the drawer customer services.

In most organisations in Zimbabwe, employees and even people in customer service has very little knowledge about the company products. This is precisely why you find that you get refereed from one person to the other when you inquire about certain services. Organisations need to invest in educating every employee about their products and test employees regularly on product knowledge.

Organisations need to realize that customers get frustrated when they are receiving assistance from people who have very little knowledge about company products. With competition beckoning in every sector of the economy organisations with better product knowledge at every level and every department will fare better than those that take this important aspect of the business for granted.

Lack of soft skills: The biggest challenge to Zimbabwe’s economic recovery

The biggest challenge facing our country is not the lack of money but the lack of soft skills in our managers. We have highly skilled people who have been praised all over the world for their work ethic. Our own assessment over the years indicates that technically Zimbabweans are gifted but they lack one group of skills that is needed in a struggling economy: soft skills.

Have you noticed that most organisations that are clamoring for more money from banks and shareholders do not have the basics needed to run a successful business?  Organisations need both technical and people management skills as a starting point before borrowing money. Some organisations have borrowed money and they still fail. Once they fail they blame the country’s politics and economy when the fault lies within the organisation. Organisations must do proper due diligence of the soft side of business before borrowing money or acquiring new equipment. Without this shareholders will continue to lose money.

Across all sectors of our economy the technical skills depth required to handle any job are available. Managers however lack the skills to manage people. Here we are talking about people management skills. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that no single university in the country or even outside teaches people management skills. Yes, universities and colleges teach human resources management which is not the same as people management. Most universities and colleges teach technical human resources skills that are normally taught to human resources professionals. What is required is for universities and colleges to teach people management skills focusing on how to deal with people and understanding that people are not objects. Managers need to understand that people have emotions and they should be handled differently from machines.

Most managers lack the Emotional Intelligence to handle people at an emotional level. The lack of such skills has led to so much disillusionment in many organisations. In Zimbabwe you rarely come across employees who say their managers look at the emotional side of the business. This leads to low employee engagement which in turn affects the level of employee productivity. Low employee engagement is an issue that should be handled at the highest levels within the country. Industry leaders and politicians rarely talk about the impact of low employee engagement on productivity.

Most managers use threats to manage their subordinates. However, if they are educated in the psychology of people they would know that threats do not produce the best in people. If threats worked there would be no thieves. What they need to understand is that behavior is a function of its consequences. People do what they do because of what happens to them. Managers need to understand that for instance if significant positive performance improvements were to happen they need to apply both positive and negative reinforcement. However the reinforcements works only if they are certain and immediate. Look at this, if AIDS was killing people on the spot, there would be very few infections taking place. The reason why people continue to be infected is because the consequence is in the future and is uncertain because people can die of other causes besides AIDS.

Apply the same principle to how we manage people. In most instances employees are promised bonuses at the end of the year. This has very little impact on performance because the consequence is in the future and very uncertain as the company can decide not to pay the bonus for other reasons. Therefore employees will not change their behavior if the consequences are in the future and uncertain. Managers unfortunately manage people as if they are managing people who do not know what to do or people who do not want to do what they are told. Only managers with the right emotional intelligence will be able to get the best out of their subordinates.

It is also critical for managers to appreciate that naturally, individuals are different and they have certain preferences in the way they behave. Having a deeper understanding of your subordinate’s personality profile can help in reducing conflict and increasing effective communication with the subordinate. It also helps the manager to have their own personality profiled so that they can have a better understanding of their own personality.

Due to the low emotional intelligence in our managers we now find work situations that are tension filled, toxic and have no regard for customers. Managers generally have a mistaken belief that being tough and rough when handling employees indicates that they are good managers. This is a terrible mistake as most of the poor performing managers are normally those perceived to be the tough guys who are failing to get the best out of their people.

Organisations will benefit significantly from having managers with the right level of emotional intelligence. Organisations should make it mandatory for managers to go through a one week intensive people management course which includes pre-workshop assessment of Emotional Intelligence and their Personality Profiling.

Zimbabwe Employee Engagement Trends Report 2013

Introduction

The road to recovery from the recession that characterised the Zimbabwean economy between 2001 and 2009 is proving to be long, winding and bumpy.

Driven by recovery in domestic demand and government consumption, the World Bank estimates that real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 20.1% in 2009-2011i. This growth was fueled by strong growth in mining (107%), agriculture (35%) and services (51%). Growth in the manufacturing sector (22%) was less aggressive.

In 2012 and 2013, economic growth slowed down. The growth figures for 2012 and 2013 were estimated at 4.4%iii and 3.4%iv respectively.

On July 31, 2013 Zimbabwe held harmonized elections. President Robert Mugabe won the election with 61.09% of the total votes cast, and his party Zanu PF won two thirds majority, with 160 seats in the House of Assembly out of 210 seats. Government proceeded to launch the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) as the economic blueprint for the period October 2013 – December 2018.

Undoubtedly government faces formidable challenges as it attempts to resuscitate the economy.

In a recent statement, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) claimed that as many as 300 employees are losing their jobs every week.

The Zimbabwe Independent recently quoted a July 2013 National Social Security Authority (NSSA) Harare Regional Employer Closures and Registrations Report for the period July 2011 to July 2013 that showed that 711 companies in Harare closed down, rendering 8 336 individuals jobless.

The African Development Bank through its country profile on Zimbabwe argues “The economy continues to experience structural challenges emanating from the limited sources and high cost of capital; uncertainties arising from policy inconsistencies, especially with respect to economic empowerment and indigenisation regulations; dilapidated infrastructure and obsolete technologies.” It continues “The poor performance of domestic revenue inflows against the background of rising recurrent expenditures will continue to constrain the fiscal space. With the continued use of the multi-currency regime, monetary policy is not expected to change significantly.”

Whilst employees would have hoped for quicker results – increase in income, increase in employment opportunities and more secure jobs, the reality appears to be very been far from this.

Interestingly however, defying this gloomy outlook, employee engagement went on to increase on a year on year basis.

Executive Summary

The Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd 2013 Employee Engagement Trends Report is the result of surveying 4,115 Zimbabwean employees about their levels of Engagement and work experiences.

The following report explores five key areas:

1. Benchmarking Employee Engagement



Fewer employees are engaged today (60.59%) than in 2011 (64.26%), when employee engagement peaked. Interestingly, the 2011 peak coincided with the peak recovery in the economy.

Comparatively, Zimbabwe continues to have a significantly higher percentage of Aligned Skeptics when compared to Europe. 38% of Zimbabwe’s workforce are Aligned Skeptics, compared to only 12% of Europe’s workforce. As this report will show, we have consistently observed this trend since 2010.



2. Shifts in Employee Engagement Drivers

a. Zimbabwean employees rate remuneration and rewards slightly higher (1.19%) compared to 2012. Although slightly higher, these extrinsic (functional) motivators that have traditionally been seen to drive work performance have not reached satisfactory levels. Our assessment suggests that low perceptions of remuneration and rewards continue to negatively affect engagement levels.

b. Engagement levels continue to be dampened by poor communication in organisations. Compared to 2012, 0.81% less employees seem to believe that they are informed about matters that affect them or that management keeps them informed about developments in the organisation. Fewer employees also seem to believe that they have opportunity to air their concerns and that communication in their organisations is two way.

c. Employees feel more positive about leadership in their organisations. In particular they feel that their leaders are capable of running their organisations. More employees seem to believe their leaders lead by example as well as adhere to sound corporate governance.



3. Three theories on current trends in Employee Engagement

Industrial Psychology Consultants attributes this increase to a combination of three theories: relativity at play, employee coping mechanisms, and sampling methodology of this survey.

4. Determining if Employee Engagement Measurement is still relevant



In spite of this unexpected upswing, measuring employee engagement will continue to be the most reliable metric of any company’s overall climate and health. Business leaders should begin taking steps now to ensure that this trend will hold in their organisation.

Business leaders should also begin to assess how they can link employee engagement to other key drivers of the business such as labour productivity, customer satisfaction, revenue growth, cost management and profitability.

5. Recommendations for Improving Engagement

Based on this, three recommendations are offered on actions leaders can take to foster Employee Engagement within their organisations.

The Winners

2013 ZIMBABWE BEST EMPLOYERS PRIVATE SECTOR

1. Seed Co Zimbabwe (Pvt) Limited.

2. Propak Hessian (Private) Limited

3. Brands Africa (Pvt) Ltd

4. NicozDiamond Insurance Limited

5. BDO Zimbabwe Chartered Accountants

6. Ecobank


7. Securico Security Services



2013 ZIMBABWE BEST EMPLOYERS NGO SECTOR

1. Catholic Relief Services

2.Transparency International Zimbabwe

3. World Vision Zimbabwe

Celebrate when employees resign

One thing both employers and employees have never appreciated is that an employment relationship is not “permanent” and is never to meant to be permanent because the business environment is dynamic. If an employee comes with a resignation to your desk, you do not need to persuade them to stay. If they were genuine about whatever concerns they have they would have discussed this with you without the threat of a resignation. Once you get a resignation letter acknowledge it quickly and wish them well in their future endeavours. Effectively I am saying do not counter offer when an employee resigns no matter how good they are. You will ways find a replacement. In any case never rely on one employee to do a critical job in your organisation. Always develop other people who can assume any role in your organisation at any given time. Invest a lot in developing a multi- skilled team to deal with any challenge your organisation may face.

Employees who use a threat of a resignation to bargain for a better remuneration package are not good for your organisation. I believe all genuine employees will negotiate in good faith and if you can’t agree so be it. If an employee brings a resignation letter as a threat accept the resignation and ensure they are out whenever they are ready to leave. There is no need to be vindictive by putting very difficult conditions for them to leave. Remember each resignation is an opportunity to renew your organisation. You can look at other bright and capable people within your organisation to take over when such people leave.  So when they leave you must hold a party in honour of what they contributed to your organisation during their service to your organisation. There are lots of positive aspects to a resignation.  Only immature managers try to harass the employee after the resignation.

It’s also a bad policy to rehire people who have left your organisation. It is advisable to rehire previous employees if they left to pursue further studies and they left after fulfilling their contractual obligations. In a country where we have so much talent that is waiting to be developed why should you recycle employees? This belief that some employees are irreplaceable has destroyed some organisations. You must make sure that your employees know that each and every one of them can be replaced the same day. This will force you to develop enough talent. Some organisations have been caught off guard when employees resign to such an extent that they literarily beg the employee to give them more time to look for a replacement.

It is also important to note that when employees resign and join other organisations and you have been treating them well they will spread the goodness of your brand.  Looking at the bigger picture, you must also remember that when employees whom you have well trained join other organisation they are seeking an opportunity to even contribute more to the development of the country. Effectively you train your staff so that they can contribute to the development of the country irrespective of the organisation they work for. If you take this approach you should never be aggrieved when an employee resigns. The same employee may be your customer in the future so why should you harass them when they want to further their career elsewhere. You should be very proud of yourself when your employees go out in other organisations and excel.

It is also important to note that in the current environment very few employees actually give the required notice period. We have however seen organisations that force employees who no longer belief in your brand and what you to serve the notice period. If you force your employee to serve the notice period when they want to leave immediately you may harm your business than protect it. How can an employee whose mind is elsewhere give hundred percent to your cause.  We are seeing more frequently people resigning with immediate effect without giving the required notice. Do not be vindictive. If you were prepared that any of your employees can leave anytime you should be able to let them go. Do not harass them or tell them to leave immediately. Ask them when they would want to leave and allow them to leave. It is a sign of good leadership and preparedness to allow people to leave your organisation whenever they want to without strict conditions.

Normally people will resign once they have exhausted their leave days so you may not be able to recover anything from their terminal benefits. It is a fact of life, we have to live with.

We have also seen some bosses haunting the employee once they leave the organisation by saying bad things about your subordinate. These bad things are said to both people within the organisation and those in the new organisation where this particular employee now works. It is a sign of leadership immaturity to be petty to that extend.  You should be able to wish your employee well wherever they are going.

So the message is you must be able to celebrate when your employees tendered their resignation.

Memory Nguwi is the Managing Consultant of Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm. Phone 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number 077 2356 361 or email: mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com

Managing For Results

In a challenging economic environment like ours, the only way to ensure the continued viability of companies is to focus on performance and reward it accordingly. What should be on the minds of executives is how they can effectively measure and manage performance at all levels within their organisations. More and more organisations are implementing performance incentive schemes for their staff and these companies have already started seeing a turnaround in their performance. The only way to guarantee future success is to focus on issues of performance and rewards. However, many companies often miss it in that it is not only rewarding performance that is important but effectively managing it. As a manager, you need to motivate your team to get things done. Motivation is beyond remuneration or handsome incentives. As a manager you need to bond with your staff. You also need to develop relationships that inspire employees to get involved and do more.

Many organisations these days have mercenaries. Their employees are there just because they want to be paid at the end of the month. Performance in this case is driven by the fact that the employee wants to make “ends meet.” When you ask these employees how work is like, there are really upfront and tell you, “I hate my job!” Whilst there may be many other reasons why employees grow to hate their job yet still do it, a primary reason is a poor subordinate – boss relationship. Very few managers have the requisite people skills needed to effectively manage their subordinates for performance. This only makes sense because very few managers have been trained to do so. Many managers have been taught to manage by objectives and metrics to monitor performance, and they have this misconception that bonding with your team members will be seen as a distraction at best or weakness at worst.

Leaders should develop personal relationships with their subordinates. The productive manager is less like a football coach with a whistle around his neck and more like a belayer helping climbers reach the next goal. While it is true that companies with abundant resources can afford to use fear as a motivator and absorb the cost of more frequent hirings and firings, this approach frequently ends up with a demoralised workforce, high staff turnover and poor service delivery.

Many employees are emotional hostages to their work places. They are hostages to emotions such as anxiety, fear and ambition. This negatively impacts on performance. George Kohlrieser (George Kohlrieser, 2001), argues that to escape from these emotional hostage situations, each employee needs a secure base — a person, place, goal or object that provides a place of protection, gives a sense of comfort, and a source of energy. This is where managers are most important.

As a manager, you are there to motivate people to respond to the changing goals and circumstances. You define and direct what needs to be done and you inspire employees to accomplish that. Too often, your subordinates do not give you the results you want because there is no relationship between you, the manager, and the employee. An example would be employees’ response to change. Employees do not resist change itself, rather the pain of change and the fear of the unknown that comes with it. As a result, employees think more defensively, they hold back and resist pursuing success and playing to win. In the workplace, leaders who show concern and interest in their employees' lives and have a predictable set of rules, create a healthy attachment that empowers others to embrace the risk of pursuing success.

Employees want to be cared for. They want to feel that their manager genuinely has their interests at heart. Effectively managing for performance will require that managers move beyond simply giving instructions and demanding results. I am not suggesting that managers should act as “caregivers” or “parents”; rather that these insights help managers work with people's strengths and tendencies, rather than against them. Isolating an employee with authoritative demands and intimidation triggers a sense of isolation, threat, and fear. Then the brain slams the brakes on the ability to take initiative and makes it harder for people to think productively.

Behavioural psychology teaches us that humans will behave more favourable to crisis situations if they feel they have support. Strongly subordinate superior bonds can help teams survive and thrive in crisis situations. In the same light, a thing that managers often miss is that employees will respond more favourably to a rebuke, for example, where they feel that there is a positive relationship between you and them. When you look at it, developing relationships is also psychologically rewarding to those who give it, generating a sense of reward and connection.

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Harnessing the power of teams in organisations?

One of the key challenges facing organisations today is building effective teams that will help the organisation achieve its goals. The need for teamwork at all levels of the organisation cannot be over emphasized. For organisations to achieve superior performance, employees need to work together. However getting people to work together towards achieving a common goal is a challenging assignment for all managers. Part of the reasons why we undertake employee engagement surveys is to help managers assess and improve teamwork in their organisation.

What is a team? There are two key characteristics of a team; the presence of a unifying task and interdependence among the members in accomplishing the task. Besides these, the environment in which a work team operates also plays a key role in the success of any team effort. Putting together an effective team is not an easy task. In most cases people pretend to work together on the surface but there will be deep-rooted divisions within the team that need attention for the team to succeed.  It is easy to talk about teams when in actual fact it is a group of individuals who share nothing in common besides having the same paymaster.

If only organisations could understand and harness the power of collaboration in group relations, there would be a marked improvement in performance. Ordinarily employees are geared to work in teams and the primary role of management in this case is to integrate team practices into everyday work patterns. However, before embarking on this exercise, it is important to assess and understand the teamwork environment in the organisation. Without a thorough understanding of the said environment in the organisation, team building efforts may fail because you might be addressing the wrong team issues. There is also a need to understand team-working styles of each team member. This information can be used as a basis for giving feedback to the individual and fellow team members. The strength of this approach is that information gathered herein normally leads to self-awareness and self-correction.

Effective teams, to a large extent, rely upon the psychological capacity of team members to work together. Individual team members need to have an appreciation of their role in the team and how it affects the effectiveness of the team. The members need to have a clear sense of the goal the team is trying to achieve.  They need to have a collective sense of reality, where each one clearly understands not only their role but also that role of other team members.

In a presentation to the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations Symposium, Susan Long (2000) noted that most people in work teams or organisations saw their role as the single most important without which the organisation would not operate effectively. It is this kind of attitude that forces people to be single-minded in dealing with work colleagues or fellow team members to the detriment of the team.

Considering the number of different groups individuals are members of and the roles they play in these groups at work, there is potential for difficult inter -group relations. The effectiveness of any team efforts revolves around the ability of individual team members to integrate the different roles, values, and the way they exercise authority in groups. The way people exercise authority is very critical in the success of team working in organisations. Without clear authority and boundary definition, work teams spend most of their productive time engaged in counterproductive behaviour.

For a team to be effective there must be a way of containing the anxiety arising from working in a group. When a group of people meet especially in the work place a number of group dynamics take place and, if not handled properly, can destroy the team. You are probably wondering about situations in your own organisations where people rarely work together towards achieving the organisation’s goals. In most cases it will seem there are personality clashes when in actual fact, it is all to do with group dynamics related to how people exercise authority in groups. The bad attributes of the team are often projected onto other people or departments within the organisation. This is normally a source of frustration and conflict that characterizes work teams in organisations today.

Without the ability to understand the deep-rooted psychological basis of group relations, team building efforts will continue to produce lukewarm results.

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The New Sliced Bread

Psychometric tests are fast gaining popularity as the tool of choice for various uses such as Recruitment and Selection, Staff development and Team development. Many organisations are now opting for psychometric tests as they have realised that they are a powerful way of ensuring the best candidates are selected by assessing their ability and preferred behavioural styles. Organisations can use these tests for career planning and matching employees to jobs, identifying academic abilities and aims and aspirations covering work and life outside work.

Psychometric tests aim to measure attributes such as intelligence, aptitude and personality. In recruitment they are used (in conjunction with other methods) to help determine how a candidate might perform in a given role. With the current situation in our country where, if a vacancy comes up, hundreds of people apply for it, psychometric testing can be a very effective tool in the selection process to determine the most suitable candidate. Given that the majority of managers regret their hiring decisions almost immediately, not forgetting the cost of recruitment, it makes sense to make sure you get it right from the onset. Psychometric testing improves the efficiency of the recruitment process, thereby reducing the time and money spent on unsuitable candidates.

The main purpose and key responsibilities of a role need to be considered, and there is a need to separate the desirable, essential and peripheral skills/attributes before committing to psychometric testing. After this you can then determine which psychometric tools to use. Psychometric tests allow you to measure and analyse specific information that may otherwise be very difficult, or time consuming to accurately gauge. There are various tools which can be used, not only in recruitment but in the retention and development of staff as well. For example, personality or behavioural profiling can be used to gain an insight into particular traits, areas of strength, weakness, work style and preference. We all know the saying,

‘employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers.’

If you understand how individual employees might respond to different situations, you can adapt your style to bring out the best in your staff. This can all be achieved through the use of psychometric testing.

Psychometric tests can be used in profiling for internal promotions or re-organising work flow. By reallocating tasks amongst staff members to suit their abilities and preferences, you can increase job satisfaction and organisational efficiencies. When everyone is put in a position where they are able to fully utilise their natural abilities, there is a higher chance of them being more productive as well.

Overall, psychometric tests can be used to the employees’ and the organisation’s benefit. The expenses involved in psychometric assessment are minimal when compared with the costs of high-turn over, under-performance or misemployment of staff. Both parties stand to gain, depending on the objective of the tests. The organisation will benefit by getting the best skill to fulfil its need, thereby guaranteeing longevity and sustainability. The employee will benefit by being placed in a department, or being given work, which best suits his profile. This results in a win-win situation.

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