Turning employees into partners in progress

Tony, an entrepreneur with a business about a year old has been experiencing very intriguing situations from his employees. However, only one, the former operations manager had actually committed a crime but the culprit had led six others, three of whom are key staff to the threshold of questionable activities in the company.

This former operations manager of Tony’s firm is no doubt responsible for the theft of N3.2 million worth of goods from the company. But before that crime, he had been giving some other staff in the company a share of the sales proceeds of N50,000 worth of company goods which he took out every week without permission. They thought he was sharing the money among all 14 staff only to discover it was just seven of them including him. Recently the other employees discovered that after giving each of the six of them about N3,000, he would have up to N32,000 still left with him.

Tony’s initial instinct was to get all six of them punished along with the indicted operations manager as they did not even see the weekly sharing formula as being wrong but as profit sharing.  But with advice from Shina, his mentor, a tycoon/industrialist, he had decided to soft-pedal. Rather, Tony held a meeting with all of the six staff involved to discuss on establishing clear-cut rules for the firm.

During the period, these staff members were in Tony’s office, the operations manager and his wife had phoned to threaten Tony. Tony had put the phone receiver on speaker. The three key employees – the production manager, the collation supervisor and the human resource manager had helped in debunking the blackmail being formented by the wife of the indicted operations manager. The woman had done a video recording of the time she and Tony had been in office alone with the hope of getting him to drop charges against her husband. Tony had watched as these three staff tackled the woman during the phone conversation.

After the phone conversation, Tony dismissed the three junior staff- the two collations assistant and the day-shift security man. Tony then asks his three key employees, “I noticed that when the theft of N3.2 million worth of goods happened over three months ago, that none of you seemed concerned. Now I realise that you even may have known or suspected that the operations manager was responsible but you were not concerned at all.”

They all keep quiet, no one wants to speak. By admitting now that they knew or suspected it was the former operations manager who was responsible for stealing goods worth millions of naira from the office and not admitting it, then is tantamount to being an accomplice to the crime.

Tony continues, “But i noticed a slight change in attitude when I introduced profit sharing, in which if targets are met and surpassed, the profit would be shared by all staff.” They all still say nothing.

Looking straight at the production manager, Tony says, “You said some time ago that you started ensuring that the number of factory rejects were reduced after I introduced profit-sharing for all staff but our former operations manager became hostile to you.”

“Yes, that’s right,” the production manager finally says.

Akume also speaks up, “That former operations manager was also hostile to me, he would tell me to delay putting on of labels on the products for no reason but because he was the only who had easy access to you I could not come to you. When you introduced profit-sharing after the theft, he still came to me sometimes later and asked that I delay labelling but I refused and we had an argument, we were still arguing when you walked in that day but I was too afraid to come talk to you.”

“Do you remember, he came to see. He indicted you so much that I almost called the police to come and pick you?” Tony tells Akume.

Akume’s eyes widened. “Boss, there are some things about that man I know that I think would be useful in the court case.”

Tiny smiles. Akume starts to speak and the production manager nods from time to time while Mrs Duduyemi keeps giving affirmation also.

On his way home, using his hands free receiver, Tony puts a call through to Shina, his mentor and tells him all that had transpired. “That’s it!” says Shina.  “I also made that mistake at the onset of my business, I felt because I had invested so much and I was the one who has taken the risks, that apart from the salaries I pay to my employees, every other thing that accrues to the business even beyond what is targeted belongs to me. But when I realised that when a business is successful, employees have played a great role and I introduced general and specific loyalty rewards, things took a turn for the better.”

“Yes,” says Tony. “You did tell me when I wanted to start the business but I felt I could delay it till I have recovered all my initial investments.”

Shina continues, “When a company is successful, first you have to ensure that every employee gets some benefit no matter how small as a result of the success being recorded. It could be in cash or kind. In addition, you have to ensure that employees whose performance is linked to the success being recorded are rewarded specifically. The latter is very important but the former is also important. So ensure all your employees see themselves as partners in progress and not as servants.

If a company is recording success and you feel that certain employees in the company have no part in it and therefore should not get any benefit, then why are these employees still on your payroll? That itself implies that you are a bad business manager, that you have chosen to continue paying people who are of no use to your business.”

OLUYINKA ALAWODE