I make no apology

Angry about contractors?

Attending a broader departmental meeting yesterday morning, someone anonymously posted a message in the Q&A section of the presentation with the following premise. That the agency had hired contractors at highly inflated salaries who worked less and had no responsibilities thereby leaving the agency hamstrung on recruiting actual staff.

Many were in agreement with the comment, but it was one viewpoint that could not be left to slide. I have been contracting since 1995, in fact, I was persuaded to go contracting my then CIO who felt that there would never be full utilisation of my wealth of knowledge, and I would easily be frustrated in a permanent role.

For the season, for a reason

In all the years of my being a contractor, I have felt no less equal to the task along with feeling an integral member of the teams I worked in. To address the comment, I wrote, “Contractors are actual staff, albeit temporary, they have been engaged by the agency to help fulfil the goals being discussed the in the conference and that it was quite unhelpful to create an us-and-them situation where we should be banding together.” Soon, I had more agreeing with me than those who did with the original posting.

Contractors get a bad rap, usually through no fault of their own apart from the few rouge ones. We are paid competitively negotiated market rates which might seem high, but we fundamentally cost less in administration, overheads, and management, whilst bringing in skill, expertise, and other perspectives.

We do not have the employment benefits of permanent staff along with burdening the employers with fiduciary requirements by law and other statutes. The arrangements are neat, allowing for clean breaks by mutual and individual arrangement. The establishment so easily terminates the contract as they can renew or recall after a break of working there.

No apologies, none at all

As per my own experience, I am there to contribute and regardless of the tendency to differentiate staff status, many industries need all kinds of staff and everything is down to need, skill, experience, demand, negotiation, and the ability to get involved with the people you work with.

Now, if anyone thinks contractors are paid too much, in a free enterprise world they can also decide to become contractors rather than chafe at the choices of others on the one hand and the market requirements that create the need for such personnel on the other hand. What I will not brook is the denigration of contractors, nor would I apologise for being a contractor. So there!

The politics of arrogance in the office

My mercenary career

I have been doing office politics for longer than I care to be concerned, it is probably why I have preferred the role of being a consultant rather than an employee, there is a sense of independence it entails without having to pander to hierarchies of management and human resource departments.

Obviously, you still somehow report to someone within the organisation and it is the organisation’s decision to either retain or terminate your contract. I would be the first to concede that I am not your pliant mercenary, supine as to be invertebrate and given to masochistic tendencies.

Autonomy matters and where it is non-existent, I would well be on to something else than endure the situation. Gosh! I have standards and the traditional ones of respect, courtesy, and consideration rank highly in my book.

A nasty trait of arrogance

Quite recently, I have run against a cohort of intellectual arrogance that deadens the capacity for the comprehension of basic facts. They have decided in their fiefdom that they must retain absolute control that even the most reasonable argument leaves them unpersuadable. It is a sorry sight to watch.

When engagement for understanding, cooperation and facilitation simply elicits infantile truculence you are left with the wise saying of Peter Drucker, the once upon a time eminent management consultant, “discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it.”

Not the easiest thing to do, but it goes a long way to fostering professional and work relationships if you willing to listen, understand, appreciate and allow. There is always another perspective to the way you see or do things if you get off your high horse.

Decade Blogs - Pearl Ijeoma Ezeokeke - The Employer Atrocities of She

Decade Blogs

Amongst my many friends on Twitter, I was happy when Pearl Ijeoma Ezeokeke agreed to write for my #YourBlogOnMyBlog Series commemorating my Decade of Blogging.

Blog - To Celebrate My Decade of Blogging

I read this story, and I gasped, in shock and in recognition; if the authorities heard of every occurrence of this, Nigerian newspapers would have no spare space for news.

It is the issue of employer – employee relations, where the former literally has omnipotence over the latter on all matters of life, decision and existence to the extent of egregious and unconscionable abuse.

From the late or non-payment of salaries through mental torture and bullying to aggravated grievous bodily harm, all done with impunity and with no consequence or accountability.

Besides the obvious, it highlights the way people tackle spousal infidelity, taking it out on the vulnerable party and the way parents crudely apply themselves to sex education through the use of terror, fear and threats. This is a riveting read.

Pearl Ijeoma Ezeokeke blogs at http://olorungemstone.com and she writes in 140 characters via @PearlEze

She

She had woken up on the wrong side of the bed that Saturday morning. Truth be told, she always woke up on the wrong side, like she was fighting demons and in-laws in her dreams and brought the whole shindig out into the real world. They all knew it was going to be a bad day, they could tell from her demeanour, but did not know what was in store, did not expect it.

They had just had breakfast, and since it was a Saturday, her daughters did not have to go to school so they escaped to the swing and white sand outside. The eldest was seven years old, and they had all witnessed how violent she could get when she was in such a mood. As usual, their father was away. He was not home very much.

One wonders if it had to do with the fact that his wife was only able to give him girl-children, three now. His mother wanted him to leave his wife and find a woman who could give them sons to carry the family name. It did not matter that he had three other brothers it was their tradition.

She knew he was sleeping around. She knew he was unfaithful. She knew he was having sex with the house helps every single one of them. She had no proof whatsoever, but she knew. They say women have a sixth sense about these things.

The girls heard the shouting and screaming coming through the front doors. For a few minutes, they kept on swinging, acting as if nothing was happening. Like they didn’t know that someone was on the verge of being beaten to a pulp inside the house. It had happened before, more than once. They were scared and helpless – from whence doth their help come from?

She started screaming their names from the kitchen. There was no escaping now.

When they got there, they found her on the ground, the pretty house help beneath her. She had her by the hair and was banging her head on the floor. The eldest daughter rushed to her and tried to stop her hands from such wickedness, but she was like one possessed. The girls started crying. Weeping. Then she looked up at them and scolded them to shut up!

Her eyes, there was something about her eyes… Evil lived within.

She got up and moved over to a corner in the kitchen where mortar and pestle sat. The girls had not seen it there what with all the ruckus. She bent down, scooped pounded fresh chilli pepper from it, and then went back to the house help. She held her down and forced her leg between the house help’s legs to push them apart, then looked at her daughters.

“If I catch anyone of you with any boy or any man, I will do the same thing to you.”

Then she proceeded to show them what she would do.

-o-o-

I celebrate you on this decade of blogging. Your consistency and dedication is absolutely admirable and worthy of emulation. My prayer for you is ka o n'aga aga.

Nigeria: A remark on the skills pool

A reflection of poor standards

It is rather unfortunate to say that the matter of the correct usage of English as presented in the blogs I have written about Babcock University might well be the tip of the iceberg of poor standards of education in Nigeria at all levels.

Our obtusely patriarchal setup stops people from questioning authority when wrong, prevents people from demanding accountability and quality in service provision and lulls people into a sense of complacency and acquiescence when the untenable is visited upon them.

This generalisation finds true in many circumstances especially with the case of many employees who have not been paid their wages for unreasonable lengths of time and have no recourse to any legal redress or actionable means to compel compliance.

Betters replacing Nigerians at home

The educational matter however touches on both formal and vocational elements of the delivery system such that in certain sectors of vocational discipline Nigerians are losing out to fellow West Africans who have mastered the skills better, have a sense of purpose and objective and are probably willing to undercut in terms of pay others who demand more but offer little.

Certain employers have found that many supposedly educated employees with graduate degrees in business and other disciplines do not have the requisite skills expected of people who have had university education.

The expectations of initiative, independence and minimal supervision of presumably expert personnel is dashed, that senior managers with the vision and direction for the organisation find themselves micro-managing their reports as if they are unskilled workers.

It is a sorry state of affairs if an employer has to resort to sympathetic employment of people who are kept on board for the fact that they have families to feed rather than because the employees are assets within the organisation earning their keep.

Education is the key

A complete overhaul of our educational system is required from ground up, from primary school education where pupils should be not be taught by rote but given the tools to comprehend the how’s and why’s of what they do in school.

Where teachers are not seen as demigods ready to mete out punishment with the whip as children are herded and nurtured as stubborn goats with the hope that the fear of violence might spur them on to grudging success.

The methods of measuring success do need to be re-evaluated, the brainiest kid should not be the one who has been able to regurgitate to paper what was in the notes verbatim but one that shows a clear understanding and comprehension of the requirements to answer the questions or provide solutions to problems creatively, sensibly and with a sense of original thought.

Children need childhood

Children need vibrant childhoods that allow for work and allow for play, the opportunity to read, explore, discover, question and debate without the fear of being rebuked because some age-old custom is being queried.

These fundamental childhood experiences are what give birth with ingenious and amazing minds and ensure that opportunity is equal and accessed with confidence later in life.

Our bad traditions of learning

Adults too have to adapt; inquisitiveness and precociousness should not be immediately be read as insubordination and the disrespect of authority, even adults can be wrong and they should be ready to admit that fact without the fear of losing face.

Engage, don’t ostracise; nurture and mould, don’t pigeon-hole; teach, don’t force-feed; lecture, don’t dictate and really, do let the children laugh – they do not have to suffer just because our childhoods were less colourful and lacking in excitement or adventure than what they might be ready to experience.

In this kind of atmosphere, no child will be left behind because the strengths of each particular child are known early in life allowing for the right guidance and help such that later in life they are aligned to the talents they possess rather than following from preconceived path of development that leaves them bereft of their abilities, personalities and sense of purpose.

The breed of child we need

Just imagine the number of students who on seeing the errors on the Babcock University website would have constituted a panel to edit, proofread and correct the mistakes being confident that they have a stake in the university without the fear of retribution but the expectation praise for doing the right thing.

We should be able to take on any institution for the sake of ensuring things are done properly, correctly and to a standard of quality that exhibits the presence of initiative, drive, ambition and vision.

Nigerian children can do this but only if they are nurtured in ways that allow us to become world-beaters in everything we do – it would not come with the kind of educational system we have now and the graduates being churned out of the universities today.