Let the truth be told

There are people who when they leave make you sigh
with a sense of loss but there are also those who when they leave
make you sigh with a sense of relief.
Last Friday there was a sense of relief at my workplace as the
managing director at the company that I work for was serving
his last day at work. In the corridors you could hear people
celebrating with words and the saying of the day was, "Good
riddance of bad rubbish." Yet during the same week the PR
officer had placed an article in the newspaper thanking him
for a job well done whilst he was MD of the company. We wondered
whose opinion the PR officer was expressing, it must have been his 
own as an individual because the general opinion in the company
was contrary to that. Let the truth be told.

Here is a man who joined the company when its financial position
was sound and solid and is now leaving the company when it is
operating on a deficit, its gross margins and productivity levels having
 drastically fallen down  steeply as staff morale spiralled down and this
has got nothing to do with the economic environment in the country
because a lot of other companies in the same industry are thriving well
in the very same environment. Why would such a manager be called an
excellent manager? Let the truth be told.

The very first thing he did when he got to the helm of the company
was to trim the organisational structure  by  offering a voluntary
exit package to those who wanted to leave. This was done without
proper research and planning so the new structure resulted in
understaffing in most departments. The voluntary exit package
was not attractive at all so it didn't lure as many employees as
he wanted it to and some of the middle managers whom he wanted
out as part of restructuring did not opt for the voluntary exit
package so he decided to retrench them. The way he retrenched them
had some legal loopholes so the middle managers took him to court
and won the case and for the past three years & up to now they have
been on full pay and benefits while seated at home. How can such a 
manager who caused some employees to be paid whilst doing nothing
for the company be called an excellent manager. Let the truth be told.

The second mistake he made was to rebuke the law by refusing to pay
market related salaries that had been awarded to the employees by an
arbitrator when the matter of low salaries was taken to Labour Court.
When employees went on a tools down strike in protest of his stance in
this issue he fired all of them despite the fact that they were acting within
the Labour Laws and also within the country's laws concerning strikes.
The result was gross understaffing and employees lost trust in him, and 
productivity levels went down drastically although the panel beaten weekly
performance measurement reports showed otherwise.  What he failed to
realise was that for the successful turnaround of any company there has got
to be trust and harmony between motivated employees and management.
Honestly how can such a manager be thanked for a job well done. Let the
truth be told.

The third mistake he made was to hire consultants who had to be
paid handsomely to undertake a job evaluation and grading exercise and
then never implement the grading system that the consultants recommended
when they finished the exercise. Why waste money on an exercise that you
don't want to implement. What excellent job well done was the newspaper
article talking about. Let the truth be told.

The last and gravest mistake he made was to underpay employees ever since he joined 
the company. The underpaying got worse as the years progressed such that
as I speak the salaries of employees in the company are not enough to sustain
them and their families for a week, the transport fares needed by the employees
for them to come to work for a month are more than the net salaries they get.
As a result there is a high turnover in the company, the number of employees
suffering from stress related diseases is very high and the number of employees
absenting themselves from work everyday is very high. All this is a result of
the employees being demotivated and realising that they are subsidising the company
instead of the company subsidising its employees. Everyone who has been to business
school knows the importance of motivating employees so we wonder why that word
seems not to exist in his managerial vocabulary.  All Employees are happy to see him
leave except that one employee who put that thank you message in the newspaper or
maybe the MD put it himself to market himself to prospective employers.

I believe in the power of truth.  One single truth, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said upon
receiving his 1970 Nobel Prize for literature, is more powerful than all the weapons in
the world. In fidelity to truth lies true human dignity and a successful
path torwards positive change.