To Work Or Not To Work, That Is The Question!

"To work or not to work, that is the question"

A mighty 20% of work force in textile sector jobs in Pakistan come to work place with one major ambition in mind which is "Am not going to work today while sitting in office".

There are a lot of reasons behind the lack of interest in jobs, lazy attitude at work and lack of initiative prevailing in people coming to work. People might not have the right aptitude for work, they might lack basic job skills and their educational back ground would not match to their job descriptions, they have been given a position as a personal or political favor or they could not find proper job and landed in an industry in which they are misfits by all means.

Textile sector by default requires a lot of hard work and professionalism from people who are earning their livelihood from it. As it is export oriented and production intensive business, there is a great deal of emphasis on the adhering to product development and production lead times. From a basic concept/design creation to transforming that concept in to a physical product which can sell well in all major markets across the globe, an extensive team effort is required to come up to the expectation of buyers around the world in terms of product quality, creativity, reliability, production lead times, logistics support and customer care excellence.

Serving the textile sector for the last 20 years in Pakistan with core competence in International sales and marketing and operations management, I have seen that a lot of people (20% as described above) are not inclined to give their 100% to their jobs for various reasons and their self made justifications to not to work.

The reasons vary at different job levels, some of the reasons are far from reasoning and at times very funny.

Let's review the few types : -

1. The sick and misery struck lot:

                                                                These are the ones born with almost every fatal disease one could imagine starting from heart, kidneys, liver and lungs abnormalities. Every second week somebody dies in their families. I have worked with few people who had to come up with their grand dad and grandmother death news at least thrice every year. The most strange and alarming fact is that their beloved ones either die on Friday or on Monday to let them avail long weekend for mourning. The worst part is they have really sick people in their family and they need off from work and need loans to look after them. One of the production managers came with a loan and leave application for his wife's critical surgery, two months later we came to know that the guy is not married and went to Dubai with friends to party.

 

2. The Late Comers:

                                                These types are found at each and every level of management but with varying and interesting lame excuses to be late. Some of the organizations have strict timings supported by thumb scan and retinal scan attendance, so these cut salary of all of their late comers as per their policy and you would find only a hand few of people coming late despite having genuine problems at times. The problem arises where the attendance is either manual or there is no deduction of salary from late comers. Most of them have a car having starting trouble almost every day, their children get sick every third day, they get sick every third week and some of them have strange allergy issues which only occurs in certain months of the year.  Some of them get their sons circumcised two times a year. The worst cases are people doing their own business and job at the same time. Sometimes we get to know that a guy is on family vacation without the family and after effects of travelling cannot allow him to be in office on time in the morning and push them to leave early as well.

 

3. The Field Team:

                                                Textiles mills not having their own printing or dyeing, have to rely on external processing of fabric for which they need planning and execution managers, quality control managers and quality auditors to ensure their goods are printed/dyed/bleached as per their customer given specifications. These guys stay in the field and spend less time in office and they have the liberty to go to a mill direct without coming to office and here starts the game of lies and funny excuses. Somebody will tell you on phone that am in a mill and discussing designs with printing manager and yet you hear his son screaming and crying aloud and at times the wife would ask when are you leaving to do the grocery. Sometimes a guy would be asleep at home and yet his email would suggest am in a mill getting a design printed in my presence. Most of these guys can do 2-3 jobs at the same time and if get caught would come up with funny excuses like sudden family emergency, had to do this to look after orphans in the family and long stories beyond your intellect and understanding. Only a hand full of companies have managed to monitor presence of their team in the field through GPS devices and hand held smart phones which pinpoints the exact location of their employee in the field, rest are still trying to develop a monitoring system via satellite GPS.

 

4. The Sales And Marketing Team:

                                                                                The blue eyed employees, the ones who would get you more business and would contribute a lot to the overall growth of the company. They have extensive in-land and abroad travelling as they meet customers, sourcing houses and attend International Textile trade fairs. They have the highest salary and are given the appropriate protocol and respect in the company. They hardly get sick, they hardly need an excuse as they are visiting customers all the time and this activity can cover their family vacations, they can rest if they want to at their own and at times their girl friend's home. They can do personal party in the name of customer entertainment. They can buy gifts for their wife or girl friends and submit the bills as the gifts for customers. They need luxury sedans to ride as they need to pick up customers and show them the mills and marketing offices and similarly can use these cars for the dates as well. They look very busy while they relax most of the times, all they need to do is achieve sales targets and then no questions asked. Nobody questions them for late arrival or earlier departure as it is understood that they are busy in marketing activity. Rest of the departments teams (accounts, finance, production, Human resource) simply hate them but the cant do anything about stopping their luxuries as long as they keep company in profit.

5. The Production Team:

                                                The senior managers and department heads ensure their presence only when CEO is around or has called up a meeting. They have fleet of managers in their team and can afford to be away from their desk in the name of product development and visiting dyes, pigments and chemical suppliers in the same connection. They work with their own team from a cleaner to a senior manager and can always blackmail the management to flee with their fleet/team if a lot of questions are asked regarding their timely presence and quality of work. They often get invitation from chemical suppliers for sponsored foreign training trips (training includes how to party abroad at someone else's expense) and they would like to attend all the world machinery fairs in that connection as well. For stitching division, if work force is short, they would highlight a problem in the fabric or an accessory to buy out time and they make every product making so complicated so that they can easily do production as per their convenience and make more margins in cost of production with the contractor hired by the company. They have technical reasons to not to do a job or to delay it.

 

6. The Finance team:

                                                They are the eyes and ears of top management, they survive by converting every investment in to an expense before the board of Directors. They are on time most of the times and when they need to be away, they are having a meeting or lunch or dinner with bankers. Their timely arrival is seen as an example and their timely reporting can make or break careers as they have the art to make a profitable deal in to a huge loss by just playing with numbers. All the other teams including the marketing and sales, tries to be friends with them and do not confront with them. They only work when CEO directly gives them a task for routine matters, they have the necessary talent available in the team to let them relax. They are the true example of a white collar job.

 

7. The Human Resource Team:

                                                                Unfortunately they do not have a choice other than to be in office on time and leave on time as well as they are supposed to monitor timings of everyone else in the company. They can only be away to meet people in the name of head hunting and visiting other factories within the same group. They are first ones to leave the office as well and survive on reporting the timings and official activities details plus activities after work of employees to the top management. The can last long in any organization. Their supreme task is to delay the loan applications, increments, bonuses with an excuse that company is not doing well and company as a policy is not going to spend in these areas. They are having the best lame excuses, they are the champs in this field!

 

8. The Purchase Team:

                                                They are not to be bound by timing policies, they need to visit Suppliers to monitor work and times to collect their own commission as cash or cheque payment. They can sleep at home, run their own company and sell goods to company at which they do job. They manage their work well and can afford holidays any time they wish. They can afford to have anything they need by ringing a supplier and anything from a deep freezer to a mid-sized car can be delivered to their homes, their holidays are planned by their suppliers and they have the golden excuse to be in the field for days. They only work with their own developed suppliers and hate recommendations. They can put a cover on their incompetence on not enough resources given by accounts, shortage of goods in market, the supplier which produces a certain item no longer exists, they delay purchases to the last moment and suddenly arrange things at a much higher price than the market norm and consider this act as a favor to the company.

 

9. The Administration Team:

                                                                They are the miracle makers, their job is to make every task impossible first, then come up with an idea to bribe somebody and then get the job done. They are always on Holy Work of the company and can come late, be away on assigned tasks, can some late and leave early and still be in good books of management. They are the most un-organized department but have an excuse for this as well as they always portray that they are over-loaded with work.

 

10. The Product Development Team:

                                                                                They are creative people and creative people need a lot of time to complete their piece of art. They come in late and always have an excuse to be in the market for research and development effort to see the prevailing trends. They take a lot of time to complete a design creation and if their slow working is questioned they would revert by saying "Creativity needs time and only a designer can understand this" They never set a standard time to complete a task, it can be completed whenever they wish to complete it. They have technical excuses to justify the delay.

 

 

11. The Love Birds:

                                                They will either fall in love with one of the colleagues or somebody away from work which pushes them to be away from office, or be busy at mobile or skype chats. Whenever they get married, they tend to give more time to work :)

 12. The Sports Lover:

                                                They will religiously watch cricket no matter what happens to their careers, on a crucial match day, they will not work whatsoever!

 

The writer is a veteran in Textile Industry in Pakistan in the field of International Sales and marketing and in Operations Management. Currently serving as a Chief Operating Officer for a major textile group.