THE BEAUTY IN CONTRAST

 Life has two sides-the stern and lax. The contrast in life “A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…” Ecclesiastes 4 to imagine that everybody has a serious side as well as a lax one. Moses Mukisa says “There is a call in every crisis” Ironic, huh?

 Jerry Komagum goes on to assert that within every school bully is a soft traumatized heart. The beauty of the contrast in life is that it cuts across all sectors. JP Morgan one of the men that built America stated that every business man, however rich, has a price! You just have to find it. Something he proved when he purchased “US Steel” from Andrew Carnegie at $480 million!

Oh! the beauty in the contrast of Life!

Let’s redirect our thoughts to a simple contrast of a teacher and a stand-up comedian (both noble professions). Guessing that you can distinctively tell which one is lax and the other serious, think about why you would rather spend thirty minutes listening to a comedian rather than a teacher. Simple, the comedian uses a satirical approach to bring forth a major point whereas the teacher does exactly the opposite. The former will in most cases tell a funny and hilarious story of a lady in a taxi and from this story one is able to learn a lot. In contrast, the latter normally uses an approach of the major issues before bringing in the satirical approach.

This acknowledges that every life issue is best addressed if attacked from beneath. From the basics, the simplicity, the lax bit in everything and then onto the complexities of life. Proponents argue that the best way to market a product is to relate with the customer on a personal level (depositing into their emotional account) before moving onto the complexities of the product.

Management similarly follows a similar principle. The ability to understand and address Human resource related issues is surely handicapped if we put the complexities at the fore front. There is need to understand them from the basics of their life onto the complexities of bettering their performance. Only when we make endeavors to understand what pertains the individual lives of our human resource and appreciate how they influence their performance will we be able to better their performance.

Master how to make contrast work in your favor!

ORGANISATION TO MOVEMENT

A week ago I attended a motivational session where Moses Mukisa gave insight on how to sustain an organisation for over 500 years. He shared about the difference between an organisation and a movement with the church as his major example of a movement given the fact that it has been in existence for more than 2000 years. On this note I will share some tips on how we can convert our human resource into a movement using the same tactics Christ used to grow and develop the church.

The Business Dictionary defines an organisation as a social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a need and pursue collective goals where as Merriam Webster defines a movement as a group of diffusely organised people or organisations striving towards a common goal relating to human society. One would therefore wonder how they can get their human resource from just working towards collective goals to further getting diffused into each other working towards a shared goal. With an existent thin line between the two, this is how Christ did it;

Jesus while on earth called together twelve disciples that helped him spread the gospel in some parts of the Jewish and gentile lands while he taught and prepared them on how they would continue to spread the gospel after his departure. Mathew 16; 18 “…Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…” Managers and employers ought not only to use the assistance rendered by the human resource to enable them reach their targets but also develop task force that can continue to move the organisation forward even in their abs ensure.

 In Mathew 6; 9-13 he teaches the disciples how to pray the right way. Many times our human resource goes astray which may at times necessitate training. The manager should therefore teach the human resources “how to pray” by taking them through refresher courses or even pre-induction training in order for them to sustain the organisation. The Lord’s Prayer also enabled the disciples understand the basics of their faith which implies a need for the human resource to understand and own the vision of the organization.

In John 14; 16 Christ promises to send the disciples a helper to help them spread the gospel. Even after delegation of work, managers ought to play a mentorship, patron ship and supportive role with the human resources in order for them to ably sustain the organisation.

The church as a movement continues to grow and spread all over the world and this is greatly attributed to the foundation on which it was built. Therefore organisations that are rooted with human resources having a sense of “a movement” stand higher chances of crossing over to different generations.

MANAGING A MULTI GENERATIONAL WORK FORCE

The lord our God in Ephesians 2; 14 encourages us to live in peace no matter our differences! One would reflect upon the viability of this message, especially with today’s work places having an average of four generations according to Forbes. Difference in communication styles and mindsets being the major sources of inter-generational conflict today, managers continue to battle with minimizing and mitigating these conflicts.

With the baby boomers preferring the rigid face to face communication, technological advancement has come in as a major aggravator of the conflict since it allows the millennials practice their online communication. Similarly, the boomers’ competitive and hardworking mindset in contrast to the millennials’ cooperative and smart working does not narrow the conflict any thinner.

On that note, managers need to negate the blanket stereo types concerning the different generations and handle them in respect to their personal needs. Darren Kyeyune, a millennial sports journalist believes the first step to reducing these conflicts is appreciating the existent cross-generational differences. The managers should therefore be flexible enough in their expectations from the different generations. It would be a fable for a manager to believe that a baby boomer can learn to work with the windows XI operating system with as much ease as a millennial therefore implying a need to appreciate their differences and manage them accordingly.

Cross generational transfer of knowledge is very crucial and this justifies why many managers today need to adopt workplace mentorship programs where the millennials and the X-ers can be mentored by the boomers. Furthermore, there is need to adopt a number of work patterns such as flexi time and telecommuting that would enable generations like the Millennials who strongly subscribe to the new psychological contract ably perform work tasks from anywhere. Such patterns are even more helpful to the x-ers who in this age dominate parenthood.

“The glory of the youth is in their strength” Proverbs 20; 29. This is why managers need to actively engage the Millennials at work since it is their God given right as youth to keep engaged. Research proves that Millennials will enjoy their jobs more especially if they are greatly subjected to contextual work performance where they perform tasks outside their job description. Millennial engagement at work can further be spiced by involving them in teamwork since they are highly intrigued by team involvement.

Just as conjugal rights wouldn’t be enjoyed in the same recurrent style, Millennials have a natural tendency to easily get bored and lose interest in case of monotony. This implies the need for managers to apply different approaches of job design such as job rotation to keep their flames burning vigorously within.

With a new generation “Z” cropping up, it is paramount for managers to re position their approach towards handling multi-cultural conflicts in order to save organizations  lots of labor turnover, low productivity and poor staff rapport in the future.

A MULTI GENERATIONAL WORKFORCE

 The world`s population is continuously becoming multi generational as we grow to over 7.4 billion people. As a result, our workforce is greatly experiencing conflicts due to the difference in generations and mindsets.  We closely focus on how these different generations we have are continuing to influence our work behavior today.

Baby Boomers (51-70)

They are referred to as baby boomers because they were born during a boom of births after World War II. Stereotypes around this generation are that they are very difficult to manage because of their superiority complex and belief that they have been in the game for long.

 With these boomers dominantly taking over the public service and political offices in countries, their experience always comes in handy as it is “the best teacher” and guides them in making good political decisions for the Country.

 Furthermore, the boomers play a vital role in the cross generational transfer of knowledge through interaction with other generations. With their rigidity and negative attitude towards change, many of these baby boomers have outlived their stay in the workforce by going past their retirement age which has also led to increase in youth unemployment.

The tough global economy has therefore led many into individual ventures such as agribusiness whilst some continue to tassel out with employment.

Most saddening is their pre-dominant ignorance about technological advancement that results from their negative attitude towards learning new skills.

Generation X “X-ers” (36-50)

These were born right after the baby boom during a period within which their parents worked so hard to stay afloat and take care of the many children that had been born during the baby boom. This perhaps explains why the X-ers strive to have a very strong sense of family that they did not have. X-ers are motivated by good causes. This is evident in the fact that most social enterprises and Non-profits are started by their generation.

 They greatly value constructive feedback and prefer flexible work schedules since most of them during this age have families and desire to have a work-life balance. Their preference for flexibility often leads some of them to start their own businesses in order to have control over their work lives.

 According to “Work Place Warfare” by Ellisa Collie, the x-ers are best placed at work places because they are the most suitable for leadership since they combine their knowledge with the experiences that are passed on from the boomers.

They have a positive attitude towards change and this has enabled them adapt to the ever changing technological world giving them a favorable spot in this competitive workforce.

Millennials “Generation Y” (16-35)

With countries such as Uganda having 78% of its population below the age of 30, it is ironic that the Millennials occupy a small portion of today`s workforce. Many employers attribute this to their alleged arrogant, unethical, selfish and lazy work styles. If these allegations are anything to go by, it should be noted that they originate from the fact that the “Generation Y” has grown up with mobile phones tied to their ears and computers right in their faces. This has made them very lazy since whatever they want is just a click away from the internet.

 On the other hand, employers that have mastered the art of handling Millennials are reaping big due to the generation`s strong desire to learn, great multi-tasking ability, extreme creativity and high productivity.

 Furthermore they are awesomely comfortable with technology. They require constant financial and morale stimulation and this explains why the financial sector experiences a 25% millennial labor turnover annually according to Bernard Salt.

There is great need for managers to understand and appreciate the needs of these three different generations and work towards harmonizing them for a higher quality of productivity.

 

KEEPING IT AFFECTIVE

"How did we get here?", Is a question often asked by many couples when the relationship gets rocky.

 Well, you could evaluate your feeling and commitment towards your job and find yourself asking yourself the same question! Many people find it hard to move back to the affective commitment in their relationships when they slide over to the continual. Juliet Engole an infoprenuer believes the best way to maintain an affective commitment is to identify what sparks and brings about the affection and always work towards maintaining that. Similarly, any individual that has affective commitment towards their job needs to work towards maintaining that one aspect that brings about the affective commitment.

Jane once worked for a tours and travel company that she had serious affective commitment for and this was because of her undying love for travel. Her commitment towards the company immediately shifted to continual the moment she was moved to the sales department. This supports Engole’s claim of how much we need to maintain the one aspect that brings about affective commitment. Similarly, in a relationship, if you are greatly attracted to your partner because of her physical attraction, both the parties have to work towards keeping the physical attraction in order to keep the relationship burning with affective commitment.

Managers all over the globe continue to ask themselves how best they can maintain the commitment. Today I capitalize on the following.

Involvement in Goal setting; Employees participation in the setting of goals and targets in the organization greatly increases how good they feel about the job. Imagine your husband greatly informs and consults you about all the decisions he intends to make for the good of the family while giving great consideration to your opinion.

This strengthens the bond with your husband and therefore greatly increasing the affective commitment. Similarly employees’ personal contribution in the goal setting of an organization through effective communication would greatly increase their organizational commitment

Employee Engagement; There seems to be a thin line between employee engagement and involvement in goal setting. However an employee is highly engaged if they go past their job description to do activities and tasks that are not necessarily locked to their job description. High employee engagement greatly increases one’s affective commitment and therefore managers need to work so hard to get the employees willingly engaged. The question is how?

 Research has it that employees will only greatly engage if they are at positive terms with each other and have a sense of belonging. This brings in the aspect of team building!.

Many workers today work in settings where they feel no sense of belonging and this is attributed to the kind of relationship they have with fellow workers. It is therefore the obligation of all employers to involve their workers in team building activities like after work parties, sports, personal life follow up, employee assistance programs, personal development and many others.


 So today I propose the question;- how are you relating with your employees?

ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT

“Heaven on Earth” is what it feels like; you literally think about her during day and in your sleep, waking up to a call or text message from her gives you reason to live calmly through this ruthless world. This is all because of the undying affection you have towards her.

Similarly, most workers love their jobs undyingly because of the affection that they feel towards them. Meyer & Allen (1994) refer to affective commitment as the perception of workers emotional attachment towards their jobs. Just like in most romantic relationships, affective commitment at work is highest during the first months of work. Various couples have confessed that they were more probable of taking a bullet for each other in their first months together which ironically is less probable now. Workers will do anything to be identified with their job with some scaling to extents of sleep talking about it.

Unfortunately for most, the affective is normally short lived with them rushing over to the “continuance commitment”. This characterizes the worker being bound to a job only by boundary factors such as pension plans and even salary. It has a negative implication on job performance since the individual is not in any way attached emotionally to their work. “Continuance” also referred to as “calculative” is a workers perception of the costs associated with staying or leaving the organization. Similarly many people stay in relationships today because they have children with their partners and view the probable loss of custody as a serious cost associated with moving away from the marriage. We see these kinds of people persevering in marriages all the time even without affection towards their partners often leading to infidelity which can closely be related to moonlighting as well as failure to perform marital responsibilities which can closely be related to poor performance at work.

Furthermore, commitment can be “Normative”. This can be defined as that perception workers have towards the obligations they have to their employers .In a recent survey several workers confessed that they are very loyal to their employers because they funded and contributed towards attainment of the former’s higher levels of education like master’s degrees or even doctorates. In many relationships today, partners stick through each other’s drama because they are obligated to them for a number of favors that they have enjoyed. Hellen recently confessed that she cannot move out of her marriage despite her husband’s violence because he has educated all her relatives and she feels indebted to him.

What disturbs many managers today is whether these levels and types of commitment happen completely chronologically. Well they don’t! Different types of commitment are inspired and brought about by different circumstances and can easily be controlled and maintained by managers and workers themselves. Similarly in romantic relationships, one can control and have power over the way their partners feel towards them.

At what level of commitment are you?

CONFLICT OF CONTRACTS

Would you rather be treated as an adult or a child? Feel total dominance over your subordinates, or operate on a same level basis? Well the latter is for employers to answer and the former for the employees.

Stanley ,has worked with the same company for over eight years ;and feels he does not want to work elsewhere since he has given his all into the same company which has in turn met all his needs and constantly rewards him for his loyalty. He is caught within the old psychological contract, where his employer is alluded as a parent caring for all the needs of the child ”Stanley” and in turn he has no option but to bare allegiance to his employer.

The old contract is characterized with a lot of control and compliance on the side of the employer and employee respectively. Amazingly, Stanley is not even highly qualified but is viewed as a very valuable asset to the company.

On the contrary, Sheila has failed to work and settle with only one job because of many reasons one being that she feels she is too qualified to limit herself to only one employer. For that reason she interacts with her several employers on an adult to adult basis and only enjoys benefits for her vast knowledge and intelligence.

 However much Sheila loves her jobs, she has not enjoyed even an ounce for her love and meager loyalty. Ironically all her employers view her as a serious liability that has to be cut.

Stanley & Sheila represent millions of employees that operate under the old and new psychological contracts respectively. Today’s labor market is dominated by multi skilled and multi employed individuals hungry for intellectual growth and this accounts for an increase in the application of the new psychological contract.

 Whereas it has its shortcomings such as high labor turnover and high job insecurity, proponents of the new have arguably proven a higher chance of survival in the labor market in comparison to the submissive traditional workforce that are stuck with in the old contract.

The bigger question therefore is; Can we merge the two contracts to form an unstoppable one that would be the future of employee management?...