HOWTO
HOWTO: Manage Like a Dictator
Don’t look at me like that! One of my biggest motivations to open shop was to handle employer/employee relationships differently from the way I have seen. I had ideals! I wanted to create a nirvana of a workplace. Then I learned to lower my expectations. I continued to lower my expectations that it has hit rock bottom. The problem is this: work ethics are terrible in the Middle East. It is rare to find those who take pride in their work.
I have tried incentives, but they were only abused. So, it is time to do it the way all my former employers have done. Ruling by fear. This is what we did:
Every employee has been given a specific set of tasks to complete within the day. We then attempted to perform those tasks within the allotted time (and done so with ease). Continued to do so for a few days to see if it’s fair to demand they are completed by the end of the working day.
Then the rules came! Tasks must be completed by a pre-defined time period. Failure to complete tasks as designed will result in a combination of warnings and a pay dock. Repeated offenders will be terminated. End of story.
What happens next is the rebellion. You will have the group of people who will challenge you and refuse to perform. Most of the employees will do so until they get their first warning in writing. You may have a minority who completely refuse to comply. Well, let them go! They are obviously not doing what you hired them to do.
While docking an employee’s pay’s ethics could be debated in Western societies, it is a completely legitimate form of punishment here. The Labor Law of the UAE even has a systematic way of docking pay for ‘talking during work’ if it affects performance. I always thought it was a counter-productive way of doing things, but employees seem to respond better to punishment than they were to reward.
Please note that this works for mundane type of work (e.g. call centers, survey takers, etc.). In other words, if your company does creative work, you probably don’t want to do this. However, if you have an army of employees whose tasks are mundane and routine (think: factory), then this is a recipe I would recommend.
When in the Middle East, manage like a dictator.
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Isnt is surprising that the best performing firms in the UAE dont have dictatorial rules like you do ?
And isnt it ironic that the places with the most dictatorial employee rules are not market leaders?
Coincidence? ….I think not!
That said, people who have been abused sometimes turn out abusers themselves, if that is the case I feel sorry for your employees who are feeling the brunt of your past frustrations….
You mean Emaar doesn’t abuse its workers? And what makes you think that placing repercussions for not performing constitutes as abuse?
For the record, I have not been ‘abused’ as an employee. If you read the blog carefully, you will see my many attempts to create a good working environment. This worked well with high-level positions. The problem is with the low-level jobs. What you get is that they don’t perform and expect to be paid overtime. The tasks assigned take 7 hours to perform in full (we have performed it ourselves before putting these rules down). So, hardly abuse. The only thing dictatorial is that such rules are now spelled out, as opposed to not needing to go there in the first place.