LAST week, human resources expert Memory Nguwi (MN)spoke about how companies can foster innovation in the workplaces. Nguwi was speaking at the inaugural Ideas Festival hosted by In Conversation with Trevor in Nyanga. Our business reporter Blessed Ndlovu (BN) spoke to Nguwi, who said the policy aspect was key in encouraging innovation in any economy. Below are excerpts of the interview:
BN: Can you take us through how companies can foster innovation, especially in a Zimbabwean context?
MG: I would urge people to have some form of policy that allows people to bring up ideas across the whole value chain of the organisation. That policy must be very clear on how employees are going to bring the ideas, and if they bring the ideas, what is going to happen to them.
What others are doing is, if the employees bring the ideas, and they are bankable and can be implemented, they get incentives in monetary terms. If they are big ideas, they get a significant reward for doing that. So that process from beginning to the end must be nurtured.
They have got what is called an ideas committee, which is a multi-disciplinary committee within the organisation. That then looks at all the ideas and looks at those that are bankable. And we do not pay you at the time of implementation; we pay you at the time of making sure the idea is bankable, so that they keep coming.
BN: The policy aspect, should it be at organisational level alone, or we are also looking at national level?
MN: At the national level. I think it is more of a policy framework that encourages people to innovate. But you see, one of the challenges with innovation is that if you are looking at transformative innovation, which is something that I would look at the national level, it needs a bit of research. So, in some instances, just to start implementing a prototype kind of idea it needs a lot of money. So, maybe the government can put up a structure where there is funding for innovation. What matters is how bankable and transformative is the idea, especially in this educational development. Registration of patents must be promoted, basically from primary school up to university or tertiary education. People must be educated. In actual fact, I would start with a course or some awareness course that is in pre-school where people must know if you invent something, you need to make sure that it is patented.
BN: What are the benefits that could accrue to companies that promote innovation?
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MN: The benefits are massive. The first one is that you do not lose your market share. Naturally, you find products and services in a competitive market. Some die, some get overtaken by events, or they just become redundant because of market changes. So if you are an innovative company, you move from product to product. Remember, products must follow what your customers want. You do not invent for the sake of inventing.
BN: You mentioned that the quality of human capital is in high correlation with the level of innovation. Can you explain that?
MN: The quality of human capital that we are talking about is not necessarily the education of the people. It is the capacity of the people to find solutions for them, daily solutions to the problem that communities face or the country faces. That is the kind of level of education. We are not talking about qualifications. If you look at the Global Talent Index, they actually do not measure in terms of how many qualifications you have. They measure you in terms of the quality of education that we have. They measure you in terms of the number of patents that you register. They measure you in terms of how capable the country is to attract, for example, other talented individuals from outside the country. Those are some of the dimensions that you find.
BN: What can you say are the key human resources challenges that the Zimbabwean market is grappling with?
MN: The first one would be low productivity in the sense that it is becoming more costly for companies to produce products. This could be as a result of lack of technology.This is because it requires certain technologies to be able to be efficient.
If our information and communication technology industry was vibrant where some of these technologies were going to be localised, it was going to be much easier for these organisations to bring this knowledge. So it is very expensive to bring knowledge from outside because what most people do with their knowledge is that, once you buy, you get a licence, so you renew every year. So, it becomes very expensive. Then the other issue is low productivity and also labour cost generally are high in this country.
Being in a heavy labour cost that is high does not necessarily mean people are well paid. It just means relative to what you are producing. If you are producing less and paying people a lot of money, it is relative to what you are producing. It depends on the labour cost they are having. The thing that drives productivity is labour and capital. So, on productivity, generally, when you look at the results that are being published by companies, you find the volumes have gone down, but they are still maintaining the same level of people, probably the same level of capital or more, which means they're are producing more with less, or are producing less with more resources.
BN: Any other challenges?
MN: I think one of the biggest challenges is attracting entertaining staff. I was looking at an announcement, I think from the United Kingdom, where they announced that the minimum wage is now US$11 per hour. That translates to about US$88 per day. If you collate that, the average salary that a middle manager would earn in a very paying organisation or probably what most of the senior managers are earning is around US$2 800 to US$3 000. That is why you are finding professionals are leaving good jobs to go and earn that money. But unlike here where you probably work in an 8am to 5pm job or in some instances, especially if you go down non-professional kind of work, you work almost 24 hours a day. So there is more work, you have less rest. Most people do not find it very strange. So, attracting and retaining staff is very difficult because people are being attracted to go outside, even take lower level manual jobs. That is the challenge that we have. You also find that quite a number of companies are downsizing, especially when you look at mining, for example, because those guys don't set the global price.
There is nothing else that you can do about except to manage your own resources internally and it depends on how quickly you make the decision. If you do it too late, you would lose lots of money that you may not be able to recover. So, I see going into 2024, a lot of retrenchments happening. A lot of companies are struggling to attract the right type of employees. Salaries will remain subdued and largely because organisations can not afford.
BN: Speaking of retrenchments, what has been the impact of that on the industry?
MN: You will notice that most of the organisational transformation layoffs do not work because when people are retrenching, they do not necessarily target people, who are not adding value. They either target you based on your own tenure or they target you because you are not in good books with your manager. So, they target you. So that is why you find organisations, soon after retrenching, they also rehire other people, new people, because the gaps are there. If you are working for an organisation now, probably if you have five years’ experience in that organisation, you have established relationships with these people, with your customers and those relationships cannot just be broken because they have been retrenched. So, imagine you bring in a new person, who wants to build a relationship that you have built over five years, and you want them to do one, they cannot do it within even a year. So that is why most companies that have retrenched, do not really get any benefit out of it, because most of the layoffs actually donot work. In actual fact, the research shows that companies that retrench do perform worse after retrenchment.
BN: The industry is struggling with issues to do with sexual harassment. Why do you think this is becoming prevalent and how can we contain this?
MN: We are currently carrying a research on sexual harassment. We have got about 700 respondents so far. What is showing is that roughly about 12% of employees have had some form of sexual harassment, predominantly females. The unfortunate part of it is that they donot report. We have done two previous surveys; it is showing that most of the sexual harassment is in recruitment and also in promotions.
Most people are desperate for jobs, some because of poverty and things like that, are willing to go an extra mile to be abused to this extent. Imposed sexual harassment relation does not last that long. A few months, if you are lucky, a year, after that they go to another person and this person now becomes jealous. That is when they start reporting. They do not report immediately because they are afraid to lose their job.
BN: How can we navigate around this?
MN: Most organisations are not explicit on their policies on sexual harassment like how you report and if you report are you protected. Most of the time if you report they are told you are lying. For most people, that stigma of just being told you are the one who started it, is forcing most people who get abused to remain abused or remain violated. That is the challenge that we are seeing.
