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This HR issue is a serious problem. It has got so bad that it is
no longer a laughing matter. Employers and friends would sit around a table
entertaining each other with tales of the incomprehensible or ludicrous antics
of their staff or subordinates and everyone would laugh. These days, the tales
no longer elicit laugher; they have the sobering effect of deepening the shared
realisation that we are in real trouble!

People will always have complaints about their staff. It is as
natural as parents complaining about their teenagers. What comforts parents is
the knowledge that those rebellious teens are just a phase their children are
going through on their way to adulthood and responsibility. What frightens
employers is that this HR issue does not seem like a phase. It has taken on the
appearance of an end, or a trend that is gathering momentum. What do we do? And
what are we talking about anyway when we refer to ‘this HR issue’?

The principal role of HRM – Human Resource Management – is to
have the right people, with the right skills, doing the right jobs, at the
right times, to the right standards. It is about finding and deploying the
person who best fits the task required. Sometimes, finding people would include
identifying potential staff, people with the right attitude and capability, and
developing them through training to fit the task.

Deploying people would include inducting them to the workplace;
preparing their workspace; sharing the policies, procedures, rules &
regulations with them; planning for how much manpower is needed where and when;
managing staff performance by rewarding hard work and keeping discipline; and
caring for staff welfare.

Once upon a time, it was a simple matter to find the right
person – simply invite people who had been specifically trained for the task
through apprenticeship or formal education. Interview them to make sure they
had the right attitude towards service and hard work. Check their references to
make sure they had good backgrounds and then put them to work and address their
grievances when they came up.

Their sole expectation was regular payment of their wages; many
did not even expect that they would be treated as human beings, just as hands
to do the required work. As work progressed from manual to skilled labour, the
formula more or less remained the same.

Today, ask around. Ask anyone, be they in business, government
or petty trading if they can find the staff they need. Most will answer with a
resounding NO!

We are not talking about a lack of applicants for work – they
abound in almost unmanageable numbers. Recruiting companies can tell you a tale
or two about thousands of applicants appearing for a handful of jobs. You can
find staff easily, simply not the staff you need. Employers spend inordinate
amount of time interviewing candidates for vacant positions. These days,
employers find themselves spending a remarkable amount of time convincing their
unreliable but good staff to stay in their employ, because it is becoming
increasingly difficult to find capable staff, reliable or not. They are also
confronted with the unbelievable scenario of having a member of staff who,
although desperate to find a job after months and sometimes years of being
unemployed, becomes nonchalant about their duties after just a couple of weeks
on the job.

Limited by lack

It is nothing new. It is all about education – academic and
non-academic learning – and about wisdom.

What employers are discovering is that their staff are people
who care only about themselves and not about where they work; who come in
without skills and move on the minute they are trained. They have people who
have not factored work as an enabler to help them buy houses or cars, or to pay
for the care and education of their children. They expect it to all happen
somehow. They have employees who see no harm in letting their employer down,
abandoning work abruptly or not handing their responsibilities over to someone
else who is capable of doing the work.

Why is it an issue that employers cannot find the right staff?
How will enterprises and businesses grow if there are no people they can trust
to do their work well? We will be constrained to keep our dreams small, and our
workload manageable; limited to what we can supervise ourselves.

A good friend has branches of his business selling products all
over the country. He only makes money in the units either managed by himself,
his family members, or family friends. In the rest of the branches, if he is
not losing money to fraud, he is losing it to lack of customer service by his
staff.

Recently, more and more clients are calling me to diagnose what
they need to do to motivate their professional staff to perform their roles and
deliver business results. The staff earn good salaries and are paid regularly.
They have all the benefits due to them by law and more besides. They also have
supportive and approachable managers and leaders to go to for help and
guidance. What are they lacking that has not been provided?

This is a serious problem! The challenge before us is how we can
initially overcome this HR issue, and eventually solve it before it permanently
stunts our growth as a people and as a nation.