Cecilia Nyawut, an usher at a clinic in Juba applied for a new job opening at an international franchise simply because someone had told her that the potential employer, a five-star hotel that was coming to town didn’t need potential recruits to have expertise. “I reluctantly dropped in my application – since my friend told me that they didn’t want any experience,” Nyawut recalls.
“After the interview, the management told me that I have an attitude suited to handling cash.” Nyawut didn’t understand what that meant, but she later learned that it referred to trust.
I find Nyawut at her desk, nibbling at her pen as she punches figures into the accounting software before raising her head to smile. “Working here is a dream for me, considering that I applied, looking for any position, not knowing that I would end up in charge of all the cash in the hotel,” says Nyawut, who was among 184 staff recruited based on attitude, assigned to a department, and trained for a specific role over a period stretching several months before deployment.
Nyawut’s leap from an usher Promise Hospital, a clinic in Juba, to general cashier at a five-star hotel, despite lacking the skills and experience for the new assignment, is enabled by an emerging trend – some employers are intentionally and increasingly ignoring technical skills and knowledge after years of being let down by technically gifted, yet often hard to manage staff that, often, is filled with absenteeism, tardiness, disrespect to superiors, and that often looks down upon certain jobs. The trend seems to favor of attitude and trainability of staff and the recruits’ ease at dealing with equally, often, difficult clients, thanks to decades of war and refugee life that left trauma in the lives of many.
DIFFERENT TRIGGERS AND APPROACHES
Different organizations are taking different approaches as they seek certain attitudes, and some are simply stumbling upon the solution. For St. Patrick Clinic, this started a few months into the establishment of the clinic.
“I was invited to an occasion at my in-laws’ home over a weekend. I couldn’t make it because there were patients who were admitted and two of my staffs didn’t show up for work – their phones were unreachable. To my disappointment, my in-laws fined me thousands of South Sudanese Pounds (SSP),” says Patrick Angu.
Soon after, he bumped into a former classmate inside a bank – KCB bulluk branch. “After exchanging greetings and contacts, we talked about our careers, and it’s here that I jokingly told him to send me a few of his students to help me out. A few months later, when I called him, he said he never thought I was serious, but since I had followed up, I should give him two weeks to weed out the bad from the good and see if they would be interested.” Henceforth started the shift from advertising for nurses and clinical officers to seeking direct recommendations from a lecturer in a nursing and clinical training institute in Maridi, more than 100 miles away from Juba. “I just told him to send me students who are willing to learn. Using my experience, I was able to teach them a lot of new things,” says Patrick who now has three nurses and two clinical officers running the clinic 24/7 in shifts. Patrick explains that apart from personal attitude to work with patients, attitude to life is as important. “I have to keep thanking my friend for his judgments because all the people he sent me are humble people who do not believe in quick riches through short cuts.”
Nyawut’s employer, Radisson Blu, which opened doors this year as the first five star hotel in South Sudan, didn’t seek recommendations as St. Patrick did. Before entry, Radisson Blu had specialists study the employee industry and think of the best recruitment interventions.
“During our recruitment process, we looked for the people with the right attitude to undergo skills training and work in the hospitality industry,” Narayanan Varma, the Human Resource Manager, Radisson says, adding that they invested “a lot” in man power before opening their doors.
Even the media is waking up to the need to recruit based on already formed attitudes rather than on hopes to change rigid mindsets built over the decades of war, though this is largely not often official policy. Some journalists remember in 2014-2016, when veteran journalist late Alfred Taban, founder of Khartoum Monitor, frantically made calls to journalists asking about the whereabouts of his editor. The editor returned and left again. Another time, another one of his editors simply absconded from work. For newsrooms where the editor is also the sub-editor, that can be debilitating. “Attitude is a big problem. I prefer someone with the right attitude. She may lack the skills, but as long as she can be trained,” Irene Ayaa, the co-founder of the Female Journalists Network.
Starting out on this road may involve sacrifices. One sacrifice, for Patrick, was having to scale down inpatient admissions without losing those patients forever as he needed to monitor and test the new recruits.
“When the first two arrived, a nurse and a clinical officer; I had to scale down operations to focus on guiding them. I stopped admitting patients because I wasn’t sure if they (recruits) could handle the night shifts alone. I claimed that the ward rooms were to undergo renovation, but, luckily for me, they (recruits) were not only well taught in the institute, but also had a lot of resources for references, which smoothened the practical process for me.”
A HAPPIER WORKPLACE?
The approach may not work in every instance. One evaluation study of Britain’s National Health Services, by the University of Leeds, Values Based Recruitment: What works, for whom, why, and in what circumstances?, didn’t find conclusive evidence:
“On the basis of our study we cannot support the assumption that VBR has led to improving the recruitment of individuals whose values are better aligned with those of the NHS. Nor have we established whether VBR enhances the quality of healthcare provision. Recruitment was perceived as an initial, but not the only source of influence on the values of individuals. NHS workplace practices and organisational cultures were seen as more influential in shaping individual values. VBR did not, on its own, lead to changes in the values of the NHS workforce.
But in South Sudan, there’s some early evidence of success. Employers using this approach are seeing positive impacts in the workplaces. Apart from fewer absences, less friction at work, people with the right attitude could stay longer in an organization and wow clients. One day, when I am at St. Patrick’s clinic in Gudele, a suburb in juba, a rainbow-color dreadlocked pre-teen, chewing gum, walks to the front of the queue of the pharmacy shop and shouts at the dispenser. “Hey, Bill! My father said you should give him Action tablets (a common headache reliever) for 100SSP.” The clinical officer, Bill Tombiko, sitting in for the pharmacist that is busy stock-taking, looks at the surprised patients. “Come, bring your money”. The pre-teen passes the money to Tombiko as the other patients look on with apparent displeasure with some murmuring why Bill was prioritizing a ‘manner less’ pre-teen. Tombiko throws the money into the cash drawer and asks the girl to go tell the father to come. Pointing to a big empty box he claims that someone had left it for her father. “I can never sell medicines to under age customers, even if it’s the greed for money”, Tombiko tells the patients in the queue as he continues to serve them, explaining that he had to trick the little girl such that the father would come to the pharmacy, so that he could explain to him why it’s risky to send under age children to pharmacies. Tombiko is among new staff brought in under the recruitment arrangement that sieves recruits by attitude. He is happy at his job. He says that he has turned down overtures to go work for nonprofits as a social worker.
“Many people around here, even including some of our patients who work for NGO’s, keep telling us that they can connect us to better paying jobs than here, but in a medical school we are taught that practice makes better, and why will I think of quitting a place that has given me the chance to do just that as well as to earn a salary.” Tombiko says.
“I am now confident in my line of duty than those colleagues in the NGO world who think that life is a race. No. It’s a marathon and by the time we reach the crossing line, we are better off.” The proprietor of the clinic benefits from such attitude among staff. “They have also exceeded my expectations in performing their duties. They are not money hungry and they are willing to grow with me, unlike in the past when I could hardly leave the clinic because some of the staffs are either late or so temperamental that they can sometimes quarrel with customers- not just ordinary customers, but patients who deserve care,” says Patrick. “These days, I have the freedom to run other errands and even some times travel to visit my kids who are studying in Northern Uganda because I am confident of the people behind”, Patrick laments.”
The same positive mood prevails at Radisson Blu. A security guard directs all visitors through the rigorous security checks, regardless of the guests’ status – the often discriminatory practice at some offices. At the reception, the attendant leans and smiles at every guest who walks in and offers a thank you nod to departing guests. On the ground floor lounge, a waiter, his name John scripted on his breast pocket, walks steadily to a table, bends low, and says, Hi. “Two tots of Tequila”, responds the occupants of the table. In many countries, this is ordinary service. For juba, it is a giant step forward. Nyawut moved her positive attitude from Promise Hospital – where she led new patients to medical officials’ desks- to Radisson Blu at a time many still look down on the hospitality industry.
“Most of my neighbors bother – asking my sister guardian why she allowed me to work in a hotel – ‘It will ruin her future’. But my sister always rubbishes them off, saying ‘I’m big enough to know what is good and bad for me. The perception among many is that working in a hotel is related to immorality, but I think many people will change that mindset when those who take up hotel jobs start having a positive impact economically on their families.”
In fact, the widespread look-down upon hospitality work and those who work in it has forced some hotels to seek permission to recruit some of their staff from the region, hoping that the skills and attitude to work would rub off on the natives. In other sectors, such as banking, the trend has been to move South Sudan staff to regional capitals and groom a new work culture, while bringing some regional staff to South Sudan – although the latter has been behind some of the strikes at the banking institutions. There have been improvements – as economic hardships eventually make people come to terms with reality. “I believe that with the current economic situation, many people are picking interest. Unfortunately, the skills are lacking and that is why I always feel blessed to be part of this Radisson initiative to train and employ us,” says Nyawut.
For small firms, unlike big firms, such as Radisson Blu, that have the resources and manpower to ensure seamless training, the resources required in terms of time can be draining. “It is time consuming and expensive. I have to always be there with them throughout the learning and practice process, make them understand that they are part of the business, and that the success depends on them,” says Patrick. “Only if one is willing to sacrifice his resources and time, it’s a costly investment in the short run, but a very profitable one in the future.”
I am so pleased seeing the motives of people who are so desperate, hard working and chasing their dreams in one way or another.
I am one of the people who moved from private security to hotel security, which bases on hospitality and guest relations. I never knew I would find myself here.
But at the end of the day it’s only descipline and good attitude which makes one achieve all things in life.
Gratitude to all of you and to my work mate nyawut for her achievement