Kenyan Bosses. How To Motivate Your Staff
Being an employer can sometimes feel like being a kindergarten teacher. It can be quite frustrating when you walk into the office on a Monday morning and find your subordinates sitting around idly. When you ask them what the matter is, they innocently respond:
“We have no work to do,” or worse, “Nobody has given me any work.”
This could be true; it’s Monday morning, and the previous week’s tasks were probably completed on Friday. But this doesn’t make you any less frustrated as a boss.
There are several possibilities why employees would act this way. They may feel underpaid, so they have learnt to put in the bare minimum of effort. They may find no pleasure in their work, so they do no more than they have to. They may be exhausted from their side-jobs, and therefore, have no energy to invest in this one. They may feel that their work is not noticed or valued, so they don’t bother to try. They may have previously worked in the public sector. Or, of course, they could just be lazy.
As a boss, you could choose to handle these ‘nursery children’ at their level by installing a ‘monitor’. You could select a supervisor to walk around and assign tasks every five minutes, or every time they notice their workmates are idle. This method is very effective, but can lower morale since the workforce now feels policed. Their productivity will go up in the short term, but eventually, they will find ways to work around the ‘prefect’. While this increases their actual work (since they are unwittingly using immense effort to dupe the boss), it backfires since more effort is used on skiving work, and less effort is used in actually doing the work.
A far more sensible approach is to give each employee a very detailed job description so that they know exactly what falls under their docket. Then, once a week, preferably on Monday morning when everyone is too blue to work, spend a few minutes with each employee laying out the tasks for the week. This helps in two ways: the employee feels important because they have regular one-on-one time with the boss; and you as the boss are assured that they always have something to do.
The downside of this arrangement is that it is quite time-consuming, and requires a great deal of organisation on your part. But you could always delegate this task to your PA. And … if you decide on this approach … you should probably get a PA.
There’s a much easier way to get your employees to take initiative, and that’s by rewarding them. You could have a simple ‘employee of the week’ system where the most productive worker is recognised. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated. You could simply give them a thousand shillings or two, or buy them lunch. If you have an open-plan office, you could assign a special corner with an excellent view, or an office with an actual door. The employee of the week gets to use the special corner for a day, or to sit in on a managerial meeting. You’d be surprised how effective this is at getting your workers to … work.
A more sneaky method is to set a strict time code. Many workers are very good at idling all day then performing their tasks after hours so that they can earn some overtime. Even more workers come in early and leave late to create an illusion of being industrious, yet they spend the extra time online or chatting with co-workers.
As the boss, you could insist that nobody arrives at work before 9 or leaves after 5. It may seem counter-intuitive, and may even be a risk for the first few days. But after a week or so, your workers will realise just how little time they have to finish their assigned tasks, and they will spend less time slacking off and more time doing actual work. To help this idea along, you could set weekly targets, on the condition that they are met within the 9-to-5 bracket.
To get your juniors to work, threats and tantrums are useful, but a little cunning and a lot of candy is far more effective.
By Crystal Ading’