DINAH GLOVER’s Post

When engaged in the employment whether permanent, temporary or contract, your employer is to ensure your safety in the course of your duty. Your employer must reimburse you for cost you incur during the course of your duty. Safety includes mode of transportation, condition of the mode of transport and its safety. You have the responsibility to also ensure the mode of transportation you are being assigned is safe and good and gives some sense of comfort. Don’t put your life at risk for anyone, not your employer no matter how much you are paid. We have one life. We all will die one day but we owe it to ourselves to ensure our safety and health in our pursuits in this life. I have met many people who are due for medical checks and will say I have this meeting I have to attend, I have this deadline to meet and will do the checks when all is done. I met a gentleman at a pharmacy who upon his conversation with the staff was having gastrointestinal problems. He was losing fluids and wanted an over the counter medication. I approached him and asked him to go to the nearest hospital. His answer was he had a meeting in an hour and needed to take the over the counter medication and will go to the hospital after the meeting. I couldn’t say much. He was in pain, couldn’t walk much. I have wondered what happened to him after leaving the pharmacy. I watched the instagram video of the Nigerian actor saying the risk actors take to entertain us, the rest of the story we heard last night. Why take that risk when clearly it is a risk? Loyalty is good but not one at the expense of our health and safety. Many employees lament over how they are treated by their employers despite the sacrifices they make for them. Know your job description and know how much more you can do ensuring you are going the extra mile in good health and safety. The employer employee relationship is a business not a family affair. The slogan ‘we are family’ only works for the employer. It is a facade. God help us all.

I have started a new chapter in my career. For the past two years, I ventured into an unknown field not familiar in any way and a total 360 turn away from my previous career. It has not been easy. I have faced difficulties in my career but nothing close to what I have experienced in the past two years. There have been sleepless nights, thoughts of how to add up the figures, meet all demands and pressures. The more challenging and difficult the deeper I got into it. Crazy as I am I have ventured deeper to do it alone. Sometimes I think I am crazy. Who goes into a field with so many challenges, who sees danger and still moves ahead? Well, I guess a force beyond me is pushing me deeper. I pray that force is God, I pray he is the one directing me into unknown territories. Am I afraid? No, but I am anxious, what if I fail? Yet what if I succeed? I am told people who provide services that meet societal needs succeed no matter the challenges. Well I am told if your dreams don’t give you sleepless nights then you have no ambitions. So here I am, having sleepless nights yet choosing the path most difficult. One day at a time, I am learning and will always learn and ready for a change. No matter what.

This needs to go viral. We have replaced personal relationships with cellphones

I have always said HR Practice is different from HR Law or implementation of laws related to employees. HR practice requires insight, empathy, human relations and playing the sandwich role between management and employees. The employer (management) decides to sanction staff for being late to work. The HR Manager as an employee will be willing to do the bidding of the employer. But at that moment the HR must put on his/her professional gown of solving the tardiness problem than complying with the employer’s sanctioning directives. The HR Manager’s role is not to tell the Employer what the laws say about sanctions, most likely the company has a legal department whose duty should be to advice the employer in that respect. The HR Manager must embark on: 1. Fact finding - why are staff late to work 2. What can I do (as the HR manager) to reduce cases of staff tardiness and get management accept my professional views on solving the problem. Fact finding procedures are generally known. Meeting with staff to find out why the lateness especially where there has been repeated tardiness by the same person over a period of time. Such meetings gives the staff the sense of being considered important to the company. He/she is not called to be sanctioned but being asked why he/she is late to work. This will boost the morale of the staff. He/she is able to communicate the reasons as he/she will build confidence in the HR Manager. The manager is also able to collate information that will enable her to make better decisions for the company’s good. Tardiness arises aside the usual traffic jam from poor leadership from both immediate and overall leadership, poor policy implementation by management, low morale, difficult relationships among and with colleagues and family emergencies. A staff may not be enthusiastic going to work when work environment is toxic and hostile, unfriendly, task and sanctions focused than being a humane environment. A staff gets up in the morning and will not have the zeal to work or even when present won’t have the zeal to put his/her best foot forward. Adding sanctions to tardiness will only make a bad situation worse. Helping staff to overcome their difficulties, creating the enabling environment for all to work and build staff confidence in management such that they are able to work without supervision will increase productivity. Order can be created in the work environment by teaching employees what is expected of them, apply sanctions to delinquent staff and leadership itself leading the way. Some level of independence and the exercise of discretion while complying with company rules will yield a lot for the company. In this era of online work, physical presence at work should not be the sole measure of employee productivity. Employers must create flexi work hours. What is most important is staff output instead of hours present.

Exactly right.

Leaders make difficult decisions and give directives to achieve organisational effectiveness. These decisions must affect every member of the organization without limits to roles or positions. Leaders/leadership must be seen living the decisions they make no matter how uncomfortable. Firm in implementation of directives. The leader must lead the way so others must follow. If you feel uncomfortable living your decisions, ensuring all follow or feel some can be exempted from complying: get back to the drawing board, check if the decision was well thought out. If the decision is well thought out then identify the restraining forces and find out what you need to make your directives effective. Restraining forces can be within the decision maker eg a people pleaser, afraid to be called bad names, weak at sanctioning etc, identifying them and working on yourself will help you and improve your leadership skills.

One lesson I picked from the Covid period is a lot can be done without physical meetings, I have seen how beneficial, time and resource effective virtual meetings, messaging and telephone calls have become. Saves on fuel and transportation cost. So I have adopted that in employment of potential employees. Emails and WhatsApp have become the new normal for me. This helps reduce biases, stereotyping among others. The positive to this is to know the candidates command over written language and line of thought. It does not necessarily put pressure on the respondent as the format of communication is mostly informal to the extent that many do not know their response is crucial to the employment process. I am able to get to know my candidates on an informal level. It has helped me to know if the communication needs to continue and reduces the time for physical meetings. Employers sometimes get carried away with the appearance of a candidate and I will admit I have made wrong judgements in the past of being carried away with physically impressive individuals with good command over spoken language but end up very poor at their work. I will rather want to know how you can present yourself on paper, how much you can do in respect of your chosen profession in an informal setting before I meet you. I would have formed a more objective opinion before a physical meeting. Let's say, mine is 'The Voice' approach; get to hear how the person sings before seeing him/her. #communication #work #employment

I made a call. Are you Ms ……., yes she responded. I was the one who sent you the email for your telephone number as you didn’t indicate that on your CV. Oh ok, she responded. Are you currently working, I asked. No, she responded. I will like to have an interview, so let’s agree on a date. Ok, she responded. Which part of Accra do you stay (looking at how to make the process more convenient for her); Accra Central she responded. Is the hospital not the one at West Trassaco she asked. Yes, but the vacancy is not at the West Trassaco facility I responded. Oh, she remarked. Oh, you want to work at the West Trassaco facility? I asked. Yes, she responded. I am sorry then. Have a good day, thanks for your time, I said. Have a good day too, she responded.

Relationships are contracts mostly unwritten contract of mutual benefits and sacrifices. When a party to the relationship expects to receive only the benefits without willing to put in the sacrifice the relationship does not work.  I must say I have been taken aback by employees especially those of the late 90s to 2000s borns with their love for money without the desire or willingness to give more of themselves or any sacrifices for common good. Money is good and important, however when it becomes the main focus of life one loses out on other important keys to success.  I have had employees who will want to be paid for every minute service they provide aside their salaries. ‘How much would you pay me if I fix an equipment that I am using to work’, I have to do scan for a client, what will be my pay? Etc and when he/she is told you should not expect payment, he/she concludes he/she is not in the right employment: abandon the job, becomes tardy, gives excuses at the least chance or give conditions before performing a role connected to his/her job with some trying to hold the employer to ransom. The employer provides services to an employee beyond the payment of salaries: conducive environment, tools, welfare facilities as well as referrals, references that exiting/exited employees require to move on in their career. These are invaluable benefits that most employees are ignorant of until they are required to provide. Considering today’s employees expect to be paid for every minute work, should employers start charging for writing reference letters? What kind of references do these employees expect to be given by an employer they failed to support?  Life is  a give and take. Unbuntu. Much as employers depend on employees to succeed so do employees. That is relationship and it is a give and take affair. 

The Ghanaian employees should get to know the kind of terrain Ghanaian employers operate in. Unless the employees have evidence of the success of the business but failed to meet their obligations to their employees, it is wrong to make judgements and conclusions. The multinationals can meet their financial obligations because they get financial support from their mother companies. The banks in Ghana are more willing to give loans to multinational companies even without collateral. Being a business owner in Ghana is a lot of sacrifice and sometimes a punishment. The same people who complain there are no jobs are the same people who tag Ghanaian businesses. A lot of successful companies are so successful on the back of sacrifices made by both investors and employees. What is important is for these investors to recognise these employees when things get better. We (Ghanaian employers and employees) are the only people who can make Ghana successful. The multinationals who are able to meet your desires take out all monies they make in our economy. Just imagine a multinational takes loan from a bank in Ghana (these are monies saved by mostly Ghanaians) to run their companies. At the end of the financial year, profit is declared and the money repatriated to their countries. Imagine the Ghanaian businesses getting those loans and what happens to the profit? If employees do not change their mindset, you will have many Ghanaians who have money to invest refusing to do so. Employment is not created when money is save at the banks. It is created when those monies are invested productively.