The circle of employers is facing challenges with the quality of new employees received in the market today. In the past compared to now, newly recruited members of staff were eager to work, to build careers and leave a legacy.
Employers say today’s youth are focused more on making quick money and acquiring things their elders acquired in a life time. Our reporter visited some employers within Kampala City to understand these state of affairs. She went to the five divisions of Kampala and talked with Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and some bigger investment organizations. Most of the employers spoken to asked not to be named, for fear of a public backlash against them.
The first stop was in Kawempe Division where we visited a prominent manufacturer of beverage products. The manager in charge of operations was open and spoke at length about how they recruit, monitor and evaluate employees. He was even ominous and said that the lazy youth could make Uganda’s economy collapse.
“We tend to recruit every year. At least we take one hundred new people in. But we also lose at least 250 each year. Most of these are young people who have finished school. They do not match up to our expections,” Manager Farouk Semwanga said.
In describing how this occurs, Semwanga added that most of the young people they employ come with a mindset of making money easily. He gave an example of a recently dismissed employee who was notorious for absenteeism but was punctual on pay day.
“We pay every Friday. So this young man would feign illness across the week, but for all the six months he spent with us, he was never ill on Friday when we paid,” Semwanga added.
At a big Salon in Makindye, we found a lady called Robinah Nakyanzi. She was not keen on letting us know about the specific ongoings of her Salon, but she had a similar distaste for the work ethic of today’s youth.
“They want quick things. They want to marry quickly, they want to make money quickly, they want a car quickly, they want a house quickly. They basically live a life of wanting jackpot. Some of these things make them enter into things that are not good for them,” Nakyanzi said.
She revealed the experience of her relative who she called Nancy, who rejected all kinds of jobs because she said that they did not have money.
“She is seated at home. I asked her to work in the Salon, she said her friends would laugh at her. I asked her to work in a restaurant, she said her friends are likely to see her there. But I kept telling her that her friends cannot determine her bread. This life we need to find what to eat. A Salon will pay you 10,000 a day and give you lunch. At least you use 4,000 on transport and keep 6,000 for your self,” Nakyanzi added.
Isaac Musoke, a business consultant who spoke to us on this matter says, “perceptions of high rates of youth unemployment are slowly shifting from poor government policy to the actual attitudes of youth. You can find several youth on social media wasting their time the whole day doing nothing. Yet if they moved around looking for somewhere to cut grass, they can get 5,000 shillings from each, maybe 20,000 a day.”
In another business installation in Nakawa, we spoke to a Ugandan of Asian Origin who owns a computer show. Mr.Patel says he has also observed the lack of interest in work by several youths in the country. But he said, his approach to the problem is to recruit every six months.
“I do not rely on them for years, that is not a sustainable approach. I am employing every six months,” Patel said.
In trying to understand this behavior we sought the views of a counselor who noted that attitude is shaped by people’s background.
“It depends on what they see their parents do, or their friends do as they grow up. If they are in a home where the parents were not hard-working, they will be as lazy as the parents were. There is also a need for schools to inculcate hardwork within their students. That can help change this attitude,” Ismael Tibasiime said.
The future of the current generation could be shaped by their work ethic. In Asia, the focus of work is on output, not on time spent. In Uganda the focus is on how much hours someone has completed as they hurry to go back home.
