Many of us
believe that displacing the ANC leadership will change things. Hell, if we are
lucky we might even vote out the ruling party altogether. Give the DA a shot, or Cope,
or even the Green Party. That should
make things better for us all, right?.
Well, yes. In my humble opinion it would be hard to imagine that the new guys would be able
to do worse. They would arrive, like the makeover magicians on the reality channels,
wave their wands and “poof” everything would be better, sexier, the next day.
The “realists” among us would shake their heads and say: “Nah, don’t be silly
give them a year or two to implement…”
Sadly,
however, I have learned firsthand that a miracle corporate makeover of that
magnitude would be a tedious, almost impossible exercise. Completing the fix in four short years before
the next elections, would be a tough job. A job where the changes, the
escalation in service levels will have to be propagandized to the maximum, in
order for them to survive for another term.
When fresh
faced varsity graduates land their first HR jobs they are full of enthusiasm.
They talk of tweaking the incentive strategies, skills development programs,
evaluation systems, disciplinary systems and the like. Wonderful things that
would create a hippy happy work environment which would fuel the hunger and optimize
productivity.
Now don’t
get me wrong, I believe in these things too. They are important things, they
are the things you can control, kind of. My point is that they do not yet realize that implementing
these wonderful things out of the HR Book of Truths, is but a very small part of
it.
The problem
with our government and its employees is the culture. It is a culture of taking,
of laziness, of don’t care, of greed and crookedness. It is a rotten thing. It
is rotten thing which, on this scale, is too well ingrained to get rid of completely. It is a disease and it is
highly contagious. Each and every employee is an unknowing carrier of it. Worst
of all, it may lie dormant for some years and suddenly flare up again.
I say this, because we had such a problem at my company.
One of our branches had the disease. We tried absolutely everything. In the
end, I had turned the HR Book of Truths upside down and shook it, but alas, it
had nothing more to offer. We realized that
although there was regular employee turnover at our problem branch, as long as
a few remained, the disease would get passed on. Lucky for us they went too far,
got caught and through a long and expensive disciplinary process, we managed to
get rid of them all. The whole lot!
And now? Yep,
you guessed it. All smooth sailing.
The real solution
is to fire every single person on the state payroll and then put
everything back together again, taking
skill level, experience, company fit and all those blah-blahs into
consideration as it should be. That’s how you get rid of such a disease. Take the corpse into the field
and burn it.
Obviously (should be sadly) we cannot do that, however. We cannot simply discharge the few million employees of the single largest employer in South Africa. That's just a few dozen too many unemployed all at once. In any case, our much respected Labour Law which is practically in a sexual
relationship with the workforce would be less than accommodating
towards such a move. Not to even mention the unions, the clever lot which is our trade unions would spew
their usual lot of nonsensical drivel, force the country to a standstill and
drink Moet en Chandon to celebrate the victory of the poor.
So, no burning anytime soon. The Book of
Truths is what we’ve got... and it is not good enough.
It does make one think. Consider this then the next time you evaluate the leaders of our country. When they
step into their positions, they all have to deal with a massive problem of
compounded rot. They may have lieutenants who’s loyalties are questionable and
they all have opposition who is constantly waiting to pound and smear. It is tough and it is a dirty business and in
the end the worth of our leaders just might show on the amount of soot they
have on their hands when they leave.
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