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| Wednesday, 01 February 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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In the course of my training, both as a graduate and a professional, three subjects made significant impressions on my young mind. Indeed I internalized their principles to the extent that I didn’t have to study to score a B in each of them. These courses are Cost Accounting, Management and Financial Management. They are not just theories; they provide lessons that are practical, which can be applied to real-life situations with ease. In other words they are not abstract. Therefore any organization, whether in government or the private sector that fails to apply the principles taught by these subjects can only operate at sub-optimal levels. Business organizations are models built on principles and assumptions underlying them. Any disregard for these principles and assumptions can only lead to the destruction of the institution. This point is being made here to remind those who run organizations, whether private or public and who regard Management and other principles as theory, that perhaps the failure of their organizations can be traced to their non-adherence to the principles underlying corporate governance. Undoubtedly, this is an expansive area to cover so I will limit myself in this article to the emerging corporate culture of overtime or long working hours and their effects on the individual worker, business growth and development. Before I proceed, let me share a personal experience with you. I was the head of financial control department of a bank in the early 90s. One of my major responsibilities was to prepare the monthly management report, a component of which was the Variance analysis. It was in this process that posting errors were discovered, investigated and corrected. It was also during the course of investigating these errors that we found out that over 90% of the errors were postings made after 6.00pm by officers who worked overtime and who were regarded by everyone including the head of the division as the “committed and exemplary” staff. For those who are bankers, you may want to ask, what happened to call-overs. The call-overs became mere rituals and the officers in charge saw them as unnecessary demand on their time when queried. It was also the norm for staff who worked late into the night to be rewarded and promoted over those who worked and closed at the normal times. So in that organization working long hours was the accepted norm and was preferred to qualitative output and timeliness. Unfortunately this culture is growing astronomically in key sectors of our economy today despite improvements in information technology (both hardware and software) with serious consequences for our growth and development. I thank God that we passed a law that nobody should post after 6.00pm subsequently and also re-arranged the system of call-over before I left the bank. A little bit of theory now. In cost accounting, production management and indeed principles of management overtime or working for long hours are not encouraged. Some of the disadvantages are: - - - - - - The resultant effects of these setbacks are: - - - - - - - - Most importantly, staff delay work that would have been undertaken during normal working hours and engage in non- productive ventures such as visiting friends, spending long hours on the telephone and other social activities unrelated to the job. As a result of this, their jobs suffer and the bills mount on telephones and fuel etc. Inefficiencies and rent are therefore built into the cost of production. Such workers return to their normal duties in the evening fatigued and disoriented to catch up with the day’s assignment. Of course, such jobs will be rushed with little or no regard for quality; at that time the race is really against time. I am revisiting this issue in view of the trend now in some critical sectors of our economy in which this practice is gaining momentum as mentioned earlier. The yardstick for measuring performance appears not to be the quality of work but the number of hours a worker can put in after the normal working hours. Or how regularly can he be in the office over the weekend. In some organizations, meetings even start as early as 7.00am and to avoid the chaotic lagos traffic, an executive who closed the previous day at 10.30pm, got to his house at 11.30pm and slept at 12 midnight wakes up the following day by 5.00pm so as to be able to attend management meeting by 7.00am Medical experts, psychologists and even Chief Obafemi Awolowo ( one of the few notable workaholics Nigeria has produced) informed us that to function effectively, a man requires a minimum of eight (8) hours of rest. Our executives arrive at their offices in the morning half asleep and sometimes with migraine. In their drudgery they take important and far reaching decisions about their organizations and her businesses. With this state of affairs do we still look for reasons why most organizations are not growing (in real terms) but dying. It is true that there are other reasons that impede the growth of an organization. Impediments are of two types: uncontrollable (external) and controllable(internal). Uncontrollable factors include government policies, inflation, exchange rate, interest rate, trade union activities, country risk, counterparty risks etc. The subject of this article however falls under the controllable and prudent organizations apply serious efforts at reducing to the barest minimum the effects of internal risks. Some employees have a seven day working week while others do not go on vacation for several years; infact some don’t go on vacation at all. It is true that there are times when it is indeed unavoidable to work overtime or to engage in strategy sessions that will stretch into the night. I have no problems with that but a situation where overtime and working on weekend is the norm, then management of such organizations need to review the quality of their staff, job functions and job descriptions. A review of overhead accounts, dormant accounts and general ledger accounts with huge balances may be necessary. This is because fraudlent cases have also been traced in the past to workers working “overtime”. Work which should provide happiness, joy, fulfillment etc is now militarized and mechanized with majority of the workers being nothing but zombies. Work has lost its flavour and the desired output lost in the process. The aggregate of these is sub-optimal performance on the part of employees and by extension the organization. According to Aristole, “ happiness resides in activity, both physical and mental. It resides in doing things that one can take pride in doing well , and hence that one can enjoy doing. It is a great mistake to identify enjoyment with mere amusement or relaxing or being entertained. Life’s greatest joys are not what one does apart from the work of one’s life, but with the work of one’s life”. Work , in this context refers also to the ethics and rules that come with work or working. Also merely staying in the office or one’s desk for long hours does not translate to working to achieve the goals of the organization. Work is not to be undertaken just for the sake of working. On the part of the worker, he /she should “ take pride in doing it well” while the employer should ensure that appropriate work study and work measurement techniques are used to ensure that some workers are not overworked while some others just earn a rent. Employers should also discourage, to a very large extent the issue of working overtime even when it is not paid for.
Let me leave you with The Noble Nature by Ben Jonson:
Finally, the time has come for Nigeria Labour Congress to insist on the observance of the best of labour practices in Nigeria to protect the worker, the organization and the country. Thanks for having read this article,
Taslim Anibaba(FCA) Comments are welcome and can be forwarded to tanibaba@yahoo.com or tanibaba@nigeriavillagesquare.com
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Posted by Robot| 02.02.2006 04:34