2 September 2018, Kathmandu
I have been an observer as well as a practitioner of management in Nepal for a pretty long time. Nevertheless, it was quite a shocker for me when I landed in what can be called a “management trap” just three years ago. I had already experienced the trap at least three times earlier in three different companies. Yet this one was a little bit catchy and complicated.
I deeply realized that my and my employer’s aspirations and expectations didn’t match at all. Interestingly, this realization dawned upon me after two long years of working there. By all means, I was provided a proper Job description on managing the work properly but my employer wanted much more after two years.
Those tasks were not part of the original job description and, in a sense, they were demanding from me 24 hours vigilance and focus on the work. It is not that I had been either promoted to a new role or given any increment in compensation for additional tasks.
Had I known this would happen or had I been even told verbally and in writing, I would have taken things in my stride and would have been perfectly fine with it. Perhaps I would have accepted new demands from the employer thinking that it’s “my fate to do this”. But after two years of grinding my life on the line, I believed it was better to let go than to lose myself in the process of burnout with this kind of expectation.
Time and again, most of the HR (human resources) managers had taken me for a ride and shown me golden dreams and when those dreams didn’t materialize, I decided to change ships each time.
Then came the HR agents who promised me jobs for different companies with exceptional payment. None of them materialized because the agents’ commission from employers didn’t match my salary expectations.
I still get calls from HR managers or agents for a new job and I try to avoid them as far as possible. This market may not have jobs for all of us but it has been kind to me so I search my own jobs as per my interests, that is if I feel the need of a job at all.
The management world in the country has fallen into a kind of vicious trap which I am going to explain. I have lots of thoughts about the ways to rescue the unemployed as well as the tortured employees of Nepalese corporate world. My simple concern was: what probably could be done to save such hapless employees in order to bring them out of the gloom they felt enveloped by and how to deal with the frustrations such people feel from their employers or their ill-fated unemployment.
The issue, however, is coin-sided and goes the other way around as well. How can employers be helped to hire the best employees who best fit into their organizations?
Till now, the hiring and employment process has been a trial and error experiment for both the employers and employees. As a result, on one hand, substantial organizational resources are wasted; on the other, employees’ time and energy are also wasted in an unsuited job for many years. After much trouble, both employers and the employees realize that the case was that of “job mismatch”.
In Nepal, generally organizational resources are spent on employees for a full time of day job which typically extends for eight hours per day for white-collar employees. The working hours can stretch beyond eight hours based on the amount of payment made for working “overtime” usually to blue-collar employees.
The general default for an organization for maximum productivity in those 8 hours or beyond is that the employee gets has five components or say five expectations of the employers. These are: 1. the employees are motivated to work; 2. are able to set goal or follow work targets; 3. can stay focused during the stipulated working hours; 4. have the ability to take the best decisions for the organization and its profitability and success; and 5. the can work in teams effectively to be fully productive.
Other unstated assumptions are : 1 Employees can make choices that put them in control regarding their work; 2. They can split the goals into subparts so that they can achieve the goals rationally and stepwise; 3. They have the ability to visualize the choices regarding the jobs to be executed so that they can work effectively; and 4. They have creative freedom to visualize the type of decision that may lead to a particular kind of profitability and success. One last silent assumption, or the fifth in this list of “other assumptions”, is that the employers expect the employees to be part of the team and are psychologically safe with them to perform unitedly.
Thus there are lot many assumptions and presumptions which organizations expect from employees for their effectiveness. The funny part is that both employees and employers are demanding, and implicitly expecting, the same things as outlined above but they have divergent perspectives, and see the same things with different eyes and from different angles.
I have borrowed the above concepts from the books of Charles Duhigg. These may just be hypothetical too if you have not felt any connections but the point I am trying to make and drive home is: Can the employers and employees come together and talk and brainstorm about this and work out a realistically workable plan to equate productivity expected by employers with the effect desired by employees?
The prevalent corporate culture in Nepal is comparable to the polities of monarchy and autocracy. ln our corporate environment, we don’t ask or ever try to equate employee and employers expectations. However, if we don’t do this now, we are in the danger of leaving the employers thirsty for excellent employees and employees hungry for employment itself.
We have finally reached that stage in Nepal when where employers are hiring based on the reference. Future employees are also searching for some people who can refer them to the employers for hiring.
The mistrust between employers and the future employees is such that the middlemen are playing games with them both. The HR managers rather than going to the next level such as Strategic Human Resources Management are now acting as mere headhunters. These managers willingly acting like puppets and they dance to the tunes played by the CEOs, instead of doing some effective work.
Ironically, the HR managers have also got stuck in this vicious cycle of job mismatch. Therefore, when they themselves are not satisfied with a particular employer, they also jump ships rather than dealing with the problems in the organization.
I have observed, and at times have been a victim of, the mismatch between jobs and expectations, and the resultant turmoil and chaos. Such a state, in turn, leads to a vicious circle of management black hole.
Personally, I am confident that I will not face it again because I have already distanced myself from the HR agents and HR agencies. But the large new workforce in the market is still openly affected to the hilt. The net result is that most of the smart brains are slowly losing hope in Nepal and its HR systems, without having any glimmer of hope.
The story of the mismatch of jobs, aspirations, and expectations on both sides of the spectrum is not something that has happened only to me personally. My case is representative of the deep malaise afflicting the Nepalese corporate culture, which needs to be admitted openly, discussed frankly and sorted out urgently.
The dangers that had been lurking unnoticed in human resources management in Nepalese corporates for a long time have come to the fore and threaten to wreck the Nepalese corporate world.
(The author is a Consultant Strategic Manager based in Kathmandu.)
