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Shelter Chieza Change Management
It’s easy to attribute the downfall of a company to poor management. A lot of companies have filed for bankruptcy under this guise. Most managers today are under immense pressure to succeed. The management issues they are facing currently are not the same as those experienced 5 years ago. If we were to interview the Supreme Court judges that made a decision on employee termination, you will understand that the challenges of today are much different from what was experienced way back.

Today’s manager must appreciate that the only thing that is constant is change itself. A manager that is able to forecast the upcoming changes can survive change.

It’s good that we can now do business with anyone in the world, after all the export market has its own fair share of rewards.

Instead of producing for the local market managers are now being forced to think globally.

But this has come with its fair share amount of headaches for managers. At some point, we had companies that were producing only for the export market.

Their challenge was that with 80 percent of their sales taking place outside the country they had to manage branches based in different countries with different cultures, languages and time zones?

As a manager, you need to be tech savvy. It’s not enough to just have an intimate knowledge of information technology.

Communication would give you major problems if you are not conversant with using the internet for communicating, sending documents and researching.

As you are chatting with your branch supervisor, you can send them documents to browse or you can work together on projects from start to finish.

Management programmes are available if you wish to study further. A manager is under immense pressure to upgrade themselves constantly in information management courses. You cannot rely on word of mouth advertising or referrals if you want to participate on the global market.

Having a working website with high search engine rankings becomes a necessity in order to enhance your visibility.

One of the current challenges that managers are facing is minimising the fixed costs. In most industries, the Chinese imports land at a lower cost price.

Many businesses have struggled to lower their operational costs. The manager is then faced with the challenge of ensuring that they keep up with countries that have very minimal costs of doing business.

Of all areas of management of an entity, the biggest headache for me is managing the human resources.

As more and more people are employed within the company, diversity challenges come up. As a manager you have to deal with people from different cultures, races, genders and ethnicity.

Your communication must be cross-sectional. Be careful that your tone is well balanced and does not prejudice other people’s religion and culture.

The current manager needs some e-management skills which are a combination of management principles together with ICT skills to achieve organisational objectives.

I get a little worried with labour representative bodies that are making a huge outcry over the current Supreme Court ruling.

I personally think that this ruling was long overdue. In most progressive economies, gone are the days when an employee is paid eight hours a day.

An employee must be paid based on their productivity. The social media has been a blessing to the business but has tremendously increased the manager’s monitoring roles.

The human resources manager must work around the modalities of retaining talented staff and ensuring that the “excess fat” is discarded.

Do not get into the trap of viewing the human resources management function as a non-strategic cost centre instead of a core, profit-contributing function.

Gone are the days of undermining this management role. Today’s manager is loaded with responsibilities and expectations.

In my opinion, the role of today’s managers is becoming more and more difficult. You have to be well trained and experienced to tackles the challenges.

It is becoming more and more challenging to get into the top management achievers of a company.

Till next week, may God richly bless you!

◆ Shelter Chieza is a Management Consultant. She can be contacted at [email protected]