The Sunday Mail
Taurai Changwa Business Forum —
THE human resource of a company is perhaps the most crucial component of its existence. Though technology has tried to replace, or at least limit, human involvement especially in industry, humans have proved indispensable.
The calibre of the personnel that companies hire ultimately determines their success or failure. Microsoft founder Bill Gates always credits his workers for his success.
So, too, does South Korean mobile phone company Samsung, which hires workers – most of them geeks and nerds – who they think will provide the company with a competitive edge over its rivals.
But recruiting the right employees is quite a challenging task. Questions are always asked of whether it is prudent to recruit from within or to employ workers from outside the company.
It all depends on the company’s culture. There are firms that value their own organisational culture to such an extent that they are unyieldingly unidirectional.
They would rather promote a worker who has the required experience, knowledge and competence from within the company in order to ensure continuity.
Conversely, they are those who believe that the longer an employee stays in a company the more he becomes irrelevant, especially in a market where the company’s output continues to be shaped by dynamism.
In other words, such long-serving workers are considered to be “deadwood”. A new person joining an organisation might be valuable insofar as he or she can point out some cultural aspects of the company that are stifling its growth and development.
They will surely come with different perspectives on how to run and improve the company. Such ideas might be welcome. So-called deadwood workers are only useful in a situation where the company relies on certain ethos that cannot afford to be compromised.
So, for human resources personnel, the science of recruiting staff becomes a function of type of the organisation, its strategy and culture. It therefore becomes critical for HR to understand the role new staffers are supposed to play in an organisation.
Where a company needs to take a new trajectory, new ideas might come in handy. In such circumstances, they might not be need for the new recruits to adjust and adapt to the old culture, but to chart a new path.
But rarely do companies replace workers wholesale. Some HR practitioners insist that blending different types of employees help combine institutional memory and an appetite to develop.
But the work environment is equally important. A challenging environment naturally allows workers to flourish, but stale environments usually turn workers into robots who merely turn up for work for a salary.
It would be misplaced to expect such workers to be beneficial to the company. When a company can no longer tap into the creative energies of a worker, then that workers ceases to become useful; in fact, this would be the clear definition of deadwood.
For workers who are recruited from other companies that have different ethos and a different culture, it is important to assess where they can exactly fit in their new environs.
Well, it’s better to have a good worker in a bad environment than to have a bad worker in a good environment. Unfortunately in Zimbabwe the sad reality is that there is a criminally incompetent clique that is rotated among organisations, especially parastatals.
This is why many countries are developing codes of corporate governance that are meant to winnow and sift staff that is recruited at key institutions.
The United Kingdom, for example, developed a code of corporate governance that recommends that every director submits their application for nomination annually.
Executives are also forbidden from serving on the same board for a period of not more than nine years. Deadwood can effectively make organisations in efficient.
Clearing the deck becomes very important where it exists. Experts often say that executives and managers who have nothing to contribute to an organisation almost always have king-sized egos, which is also a liability.
A big ego can be a real roadblock as it has the potential of preventing the vision of the company from being implemented. So, for businesses to survive and operate efficiently and viably, recruiting the best staff is non-negotiable.
Blending the old guard and new enterprising workers can be the best tonic depending on the circumstances. It has to be emphasised that workers that cannot contribute anything to the survival and growth of a business are as good as deadwood, and they need to be weeded out.
This is a fundamental lesson that local companies have to take to heart.
Taurai Changwa is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe and an estate administrator with vast experience in tax, accounting, audit and corporate governance issues. He is MD of SAFIC Consultancy and writes in his personal capacity. Feedback: [email protected], Facebook page SAFIC Consultancy and WhatsApp +263772374784.
