Employee Relations
Dr Request Machimbira
When economies shrank, employment did not just shrink in numbers. It shrank in standards and a new species of management was born.
As jobs grew scarcer, a certain wave of management arose: predatory capitalists and monster bosses who saw scarcity not as a crisis to solve, but as an opportunity for malice.
When a hundred people queue for one vacancy, the man who holds the key to that vacancy suddenly believes he owns the queue.
He begins to charge rent for survival.
This is the rise of the mafia bosses, boardroom monsters. It is a phenomenon that escapes labour regulation because it does not wear overalls.
It wears suits. It sits in air-conditioned offices. It speaks the polished language of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), while beneath the desk it runs an underworld economy at the workplace.
It is an economy of fear. An economy of bribes for contract renewals.
An economy where your job is no longer a right earned by competence, but a subscription you must renew with your dignity every six months.
Remaining quiet is a choice. Equally, speaking out is a choice.
When you keep quiet, you have engineered and watered the garden of boardroom monsters. You have tilled the soil. You have given it water.
You have watched it grow and then complained that it is casting a shadow over your life. Silence has been like nitrogen. It has sustained the monster boss’ industry. Without your silence, the monster starves. With it, he feasts.
If the workplace is not a correct one, my view is that an employee must be prepared to lose their job. That sounds harsh and reckless, but let us be honest: what is a job that costs you your humanity?
What is a salary that is paid in humiliation? If you must pay to keep a job, you do not have a job. You have a landlord.
Four years ago, a young brother of mine asked me for US$200. I asked him why it was so urgent. He looked down, shifted his weight, and confessed: he needed to pay his boss for contract renewal.
The Production Supervisor, he claimed, is the one who recommends his contract renewal. He alleges he shares the spoils with the production manager.
It is alleged the production department has around 140 employees on shift work and fixed-term contracts.
Do the arithmetic of extortion. US$200 multiplied by 140, every six months. That is US$28 000 per cycle. US$56 000 a year.
A shadow payroll, harvested from the poorest workers, by the very men and women employed to protect them. I told him he needs to report this.
He said it was better to keep his job and pay US$200 every six months. That is the logic of the terrorised.
It is rational in the short term and suicidal in the long term. For paying, he did not buy security. He bought the next invoice. When we fail to speak out on malpractice, we are complicit.
Through your silence, you finance the monsterism industry. You become a shareholder in your own oppression. You pay the dividend that keeps the monster alive for the next victim. Monster bosses are manipulative. They are master architects of division.
They enjoy surrounding themselves with clans. A clan does not ask questions or blow whistles. It covers. If you are not part of the clan, you become their project. Every day they work on your dismissal project, documenting every little infraction, creating fictitious ones in the process.
They build a paper mountain to bury a human being.
Monster bosses would rather bypass recruitment protocols to ensure they surround themselves with their own.
When you see a boss who claims they have a CV for every position, including occupied ones, you must know you are dealing with a headman who wants to build his clan.
No professional manager keeps a spare CV for a job that is already filled, unless he is already planning the funeral of the incumbent. That is not succession planning. That is succession plotting.
Their charm makes them likeable to the principals whilst creating horror on the shop floor. The board sees a star while workers see a nightmare. Unfortunately, the board only sees the star; the nightmare continues.
Once, in my experience as HR manager, the chief finance officer ensured he got new staff in the department —the accountant, accounts clerks and even influencing the recruitment of a nurse to be employed as a buyer.
It looked like restructuring. In truth, he left a trail of distraction.
The MD supported him until they discovered massive fraud three years down the line.
This Headman Syndrome is a travesty of employment standards.
Boards need to demand standards, including the creation of functional platforms to speak out.
Not suggestion boxes that are emptied by the very monster being reported. Not hotlines that ring in the monster’s office. Real, independent, protected platforms. Monster bosses want you busy after hours and during weekends.
They call you on Sunday to prove you are available. They send emails at 11pm to prove you are obedient. All they are saying is they own you. They do not want an employee.
They want a subject. Employment standards need to be the agenda of every chief executive officer, HR director and board of directors.
If your organisation cannot guarantee that a worker will not have to pay a bribe to keep his job, you do not have a business. You have a fiefdom.
For now, speaking out is the answer. Yes, you may be victimised. But a generation before us lost much more to give us the right to speak.
To waste that right in the name of a US$200 survival is to betray them and betray ourselves.
We have a responsibility to make the workplace a better place, and never to leave it the way we found it.
Dr Request Machimbira is the executive director of Proficiency Consulting Group and the International Wellness Institute. For feedback, email request @proficiencyinternational.com or phone +263772693404.
