Why It is Necessary To Revamp Organizational Culture through Employee Re-branding
By Mwangi Wanjumbi, Newtimes B. S. CEO & Chief Consultant/Trainer
As I am writing, this piece, we have just come out of a very agonizing experience in our firm. One of our 2 landlines has just been restored after more than two weeks of being cut off from the rest of the business world. We were only accessible online and through mobile facilities, which regrettably do not appear in our section of the yellow pages directory.
We suffered this not because we had any unpaid bills or anything of the sort. Rather, we seem to have failed to play ball with those assigned to control and maintain phones around our operations base. Nonetheless, we hope and pray that this may be the price for us to pay to secure a smooth future with regard to communication.
All the same, the treatment meted on us reminds me of some occurrence many years ago, when still maturing in our rural village. There was a common wall poster hung somewhere in the local shopping centre. The same depicted a person who was not very clever. He was high up on a tree sitting on the same branch that he was cutting. One can only guess what may eventually have happened to him as the branch gave in to the consistent penetration of the axe he was using.
Sadly, this analogy is very common in many workplace situations. In our case, we had been asked to provide extensive external wiring (about 100 m), so that one of the lines which was habitually defective could be fixed. Ironically, when we could not respond, the other line, which has never had any problem for several years, went dead as well.
We obviously reported the faults immediately. But, it is only after eventually writing to complain formally, that we were saved from buying the cables that we could never have accounted for, thereafter. In addition, our staff had to be assigned the job of walking to the vendor to pressurize them to perform their roles, every single working day of the more than two weeks. It seems that the whole organization is socialized towards treating work as extension of favors to their remaining land line customers.
Meanwhile, the vendor was not earning any income, either from us or those attempting to contact us during the period that we were out of communication. Ironically, each of the vendor’s product range compliment one another. Indeed, they are like a conveyor belt. But, never mind, the business we were losing on our part.
Of great concern however is that the technical operators concerned may have no idea of the damage exposed to the employer’s brand. Probably, they do not even know how their own salary is earned by the employer. It is also interesting how the whole customer service chain wasted invaluable time before eventually addressing the problem (even of one line).
Sadly, many others were and are still suffering similar fate. The cumulative effect of these experiences may be cause of worry for both the distraught customers and the vender too. Worse still, it impacts negatively even to the national economy. But, who cares?
Incidentally, based on our familiarity with corporate entities especially during training interactions, there is great and worrying disconnection between the employee and the employer brands. Usually, the employees’ work motives and the objectives of the employer are totally at variance, whatever the industry. Moreover, the employees’ motives are mostly driven by extrinsic motivation, therefore carrot and stick approach.
This scenario is dangerous for organizational continuity in this knowledge era of the 21st century. The same does not promote employee growth, and can therefore not enable them to unleash their performance potential. Apparently, these challenges can never be addressed adequately only through improvement of performance skills.
That is why we have for some years now been successfully conducting what we refer to us organizational culture change/employee re-branding solutions. The same enable the participants to adopt new paradigm shifts, which lead to improvement of both the performance skills and attitudes at the same time. So far, feedback indicates that we have not let down any organization that has embraced these unique solutions.