Sadly the truth is the majority of workers in SA are unemployable due to a lack of education. Those that are educated expect a much higher salary ad yet have zero experience. The migrants from neighboring countries are educated but are a poison to a business due to them representing a high percentage of theft. You are better off doing all the work yourself and if I could in this situation I would, but it is impossible.
Yesterday and today we have gone back to basics at work because unfortunately the part I hate is you can only rely on yourself to make things right. This is why I was happy to partner up with my business partner and work on my own without having the hassle of any staff. That was our packaging business and this is a different animal entirely as I now require staff.
Up till now everything has been running so smoothly and I was away for half the day ferrying people to and from the Amazon conference. We had an order of 100 punch bags going out which was a 60/40 split between two sizes. This does not require much brain matter and yet you would think you need a degree to get things right.
For some reason I just grabbed a couple of bags and took them to the electronic scale to check their weights. The first one was slightly under and the second one was slightly over. Whilst I had been away for a few hours somehow this double checking had been skipped. The obvious thig to do which I did was to weigh them all and found 41 were perfect and 59 were not which is a hopeless result.
We worked until 6.30 pm to put things right and told every single one of the crew their jobs are most certainly on the line. If this had gone out and had been spotted by our client the trust would have been broke as we were short changing them. Maybe an honest mistake, but the crew needs to be held accountable. You unfortunately have to be honest and open and cannot hold back as being nice and understanding will only get them all fired.
South Africa has roughly an unofficial 50% unemployment rate or officially 34% which are not the real figures. My crew knows if they are fired the chances of finding employment doing easy work like this is non existent. South Africans unfortunately are not as well educated as their neighboring country migrants who have flooded the country. This does not bother me as those migrants are unemployable due to having fired more than 200 in the past all for theft. The smarter they think they are is dangerous as they will try and rob you blind. I would much rather train an uneducated person than have someone who thinks they are smart.
My foreman who I have know for years and who was with me running a bicycle plant was highly embarrassed with what went down. This was a god lesson to learn for everyone including myself as the fool proof system in place had been bypassed. I know things are different elsewhere in Europe and the States, but Africa is a different ball game on another level that will test you at every step.
There is a risk so the only solution is to add even more steps weighing every bag 3 times before it s finally packaged and ready for delivery. They have been told if more staff are required then they either will earn less or be replaced so the choices are very clear. A few home truths is the wake up they need because any more stupid mistakes could lose this part of the business and they would all be out of work. It is at times like this you wish you had robots, because labor is not cheap and generally the masses are that unemployable.