I have been looking at the carnage that this lock down is having on the bigger companies and I am not surprised.In theory you would think the smaller companies would disappear first, but that is not the case right now. looking around and what i have heard there are some household names in South Africa that won't reopen if this goes on much longer.
A smaller company has less overheads and can afford to pay their staff over the three months or however how long this will last. I know some that are happy to be closed as opening now will just lose you money. Staying closed has actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise for some as their market rivals are slowly disappearing.
I have seen it first hand when visiting clients and it is their own fault. The managers that are in charge know very little what their workers are doing and have no idea how long the jobs they do actually take. These guys have never done that type of work and most likely never sweated doing physical work in their lives. I blame their managers for even hiring them in the first place.
When I ran two production lines employing over 100 staff members I knew exactly how long each job took as I had done that work myself at some stage. This put me in a strong position which the staff soon understood I knew their games they were trying to play. Unfortunately there were more games than work sometimes and those members were all shown the door.
They had no clue that sometimes I would be at work on a Saturday morning off loading containers with two other guys taking 45 minutes and then having a 15 minute break before we hit the next one. They were shocked when I fired 6 of them for spending 2 hours doing the same job and were only half way. The one company I work with I have said nothing, but they allow 3 hours per container with 5 staff members and they receive on average 50 containers per day. The monetary wastage on this warehouse alone runs into millions just with staff and nothing else. Who can afford such waste and they are just like all the others throwing money away.
If you are managing staff in a large company the chances are your boss has no idea or very little of what actually happens and becomes part of the problem as well. Knowledge is power and a great asset to a large company when there is little knowledge floating around.This is not the case at a smaller company as luxuries of extra staff is non existent and if work needs to happen everyone gets their hands dirty.
It sometimes amazes me at how some of these big corporate companies even make money as the wastage I have seen is criminal. The amount of profit tossed away by employees whether it be time or product itself is all down to poor management. unfortunately most of these positions are filled with people who have degrees and haven't done the work themselves so their knowledge is textbook only. The text books are not the real world and is only half the job as understanding each and every part should be the other half.
I do foresee many smaller companies rising taking over what was the domain of one or two bigger companies as they fall away. The overheads and financial burdens placed on them right now have them tottering on the brink. I think what has shocked me is how quickly it has bought some to their knees and how close they were running into trouble anyway. These companies will most likely follow the same path as they expand forgetting their routes and being as fragile as the bigger companies over time. It is a sense that no one seems to learn from ones mistakes and they will be repeated over and over again.
I am happy I have no employees to run around after anymore as they can be you greatest strength or your biggest weakness.
