Who do you work for?

By Ratidzai Nkomo

After exploring the reasons Why People Stay in their Jobs in this section, it is necessary to identify who employees really work for.

Are employees motivated to work because of their organisation or their managers? This is a question that management should think about as they work on issues pertaining to increasing productivity in their organisation. An understanding of this is the main lever to addressing performance improvement. In many ways it will become apparent how important managers that posses superior leadership capabilities are in increasing performance.

Motivated by leadership

In previous surveys conducted in multidisciplinary industries, the majority of employees stated that apart from working to support themselves and their families, they worked more for managers than for their organisation. Managers were the reason they felt highly motivated to perform to their utmost capability. Managers who had superior leadership skills increased employees’ confidence in the business, and increased employee involvement with the organisation and encouraged a better understanding of the organisation’s direction and goals. 

Participants in the surveys stated the following as some of the characteristics that managers with superior leadership displayed:

• Ability to engage in open two way communication 

• Recognising a job well done 

• Facilitating opportunities to challenge, mentor and coach employees

• Willingness to allowing employees some control over their work/ work environment 

• Encouraging employees to fix any negative aspects of their performance 

The foundation of these characteristics lies in communication. Getting managers to talk to employees is a powerful tool. 

Poor management

For the last couple of years many Zimbabwean organisations have demonstrated poor quality of leadership and management skills. Many companies had come to a place where they were not relying on their main business activities for income, but relying very much on non-core activities, and hence performance issues took a back bench. Consequently there was no real emphasis on productivity and performance. 

Now that companies are reverting back to core business, this has seen a great need for leadership capabilities that stimulate productivity.

Building good leaders

Building leadership capabilities is a strategy for increased job satisfaction and productivity that organisations should pursue. Improving leadership will result in an increase in the confidence that employees have for their organisations. Effective and appropriate leadership and performance management skills are key factors in determining the quality of performance in an organisation. 

Organisations need to realise that the manager sets the tone and is the major influence on the employee in the work environment. The immediate supervisor or manager plays the determining role regarding employee retention and the quality of employee performance. 

For leadership and performance management to be successful and impact both employee productivity and retention in a positive way, superior leadership abilities are required for all managers. It is therefore extremely important for organisations to invest in developing the leadership skills of all their managers.

Read more facts and figures on Zimbabwe in our WorkBarometer. And why not take our Salary Survey? You could win a prize.

Ratidzai Nkomo is a Human Resource Development Manager for a listed company on the stock exchange. She writes in her own capacity.