It is important to seek clarity by finding balance in everything.
When we are not clear we act based on assumptions and the result is compromised. We do need to never stop trying to find balance so that things keep going in the direction of the ideal and value is increased.
In the workplace, value, if we are not careful, tends to be viewed only as monitory and this creates a lot of problems and makes it a big challenging to sell something more holistic and sublime.
That would be something that takes all variables into consideration and so plays the business game in such a manner that it is balanced and healthy.
When we explored the subject of happiness and how it contributes to performance, we knew that we risked making some readers think that the employer had nothing to contribute.
That the employee needed to find their own happiness, perform, and thrive. Yes, it is possible for an employee seeking more than work out of work to find their path through crookedness.
They will create their own weather and take it wherever they go and to some extent they will affect the average company energy when it comes to performance and well-being.
The mystic, Sadguru has this to say about the difference an individual’s work makes in a group or community.
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This is personal work on the self to be conscious, healthy, happier and thriving in performance.
He says, ‘if we can make just 1% of the population meditative, the remaining 99% will slowly transform themselves. Such is the power of human consciousness.’ Such is the power of personal work on the self even in the workplace because one’s achievement spills to the rest of the organisation and contributes positively.
It is, after all not a waste of time to focus on the self even under conditions that are difficult, hence Mahatma Gandhi’s wisdom that, ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ This is not just a motivational statement, motivational as it is, but something that can be broken down to show the science behind it and hence the truth.
Employees in the workplace would then know that they do not have to shift the responsibility of change and thriving to the organisation but can do something even if the organization is not getting it yet. Ideally, organisations should, indeed be working in that direction of exploiting the potential of human capital to produce excellent results.
A company’s average positive quotient (PQ), for example, is a result of different people’s state of positivity.
Shirzad Chamine’s work on this subject is out there for everyone to see. It is indeed true that working on the self and increasing one’s PQ will shift the company average PQ. This subject is fully explored in Chamine’s book, Positive Intelligence.
How then does this contribute to the issue of employee commitment in the workplace and the employer’s role in this equation? Can we say that employees can just forget about the employer’s role and run with this ideal and the employer sits back and enjoys the benefits of that drive? By no means.
The employer has a role to play because, while an individual or two’s commitment affects their own state of balance, it is not enough to lift up the company average balance.
This is the balance this article wishes to explore today to say that the employer has a big role to play which is the role of facilitating the achievement of the ideal. If you have been following my writing you would have noted that most of my examples come from the village.
So, I am reminded right now of the way herd boys in the village conducted themselves around the issue of the cattle they looked after.
There was a huge sense of ownership that pervaded this space. Herd boys just referred to the herd of cattle as theirs. When the herd went missing and they met you to ask if you had come across the herd they would say. ‘Have you seen my herd of cattle…?’ There was no such thing as ‘Have you seen my employer’s herd…?’ I still do not know how this important principle of ownership and commitment came up in the village. It happened and it worked.
There was a relationship that grew between the herd boy and his herd and you saw this in the passion they had for their bulls when they were involved in bull fights.
The boys got emotionally involved in these and bull fights would sometimes degenerate into herd boys’ fights.
This was the level of attachment that grew. I am thinking as I am writing that there are lessons to learn for the current employer from this village set up and at the top of the list is the principle of ownership.
Does it help improve employee commitment and what is the role of the employer in cultivating it?
Yes, an individual employee seeking more than work out of work may travel this path on their owner, but we cannot rely on that to lift up an organisation.
A conscious effort has got to be made to create an environment that invites employees, psychologically to have that sense of ownership which comes with a sense of belonging and increases participation which consequently increases performance.
Two weeks ago we touched on the subject of informal or self-employment and how it seemed to naturally give that sense of commitment and full participation.
Exploring that further, one gets the sense that while there is that general commitment and grit, there can be gaps in terms of customer care.
Commuter omnibus drivers and touts that work with them are generally notorious for poor customer care in Zimbabwe and South Africa, for example.
This means that we cannot just lift crude lessons from their space but need to explore and see what we can learn and improve.
We have a situation whereby self-employment seems to be on one extreme and formal employment on another in terms of commitment and our task is to use the two to find the ideal.
Our next episode will seek to explore the subject of ownership and see how it can be explored to give organisations a mark in performance.
We know these, if not carefully treated, come as tired subjects that can easily be dismissed as being bookish, academic and pedantic.
We think though, that they have not been explored fully and that a lot can be gained by going back to them to re-imagine them.
- Bhekilizwe Bernard Ndlovu’s training is in human resources training, development and transformation, behavioural change, applied drama, personal mastery and mental fitness. He works for a Zimbabwean company as human capital executive, while also doing a PhD with Wits University where he looks at violent strikes in the South African workplace as a researcher. Ndlovu worked as a human resources manager for several blue-chip companies in Zimbabwe and still takes keen interest in the affairs of people and performance management. He can be contacted on [email protected]
- Co-authored with Kelin Kundai Zvomuya who is an HR consultant at Human Capital Experts and is a holder of a degree in Psychology. Zvomuya has worked as a talent acquisition consultant and is currently an HR consultant. She can be contacted on [email protected]
