Working in SA

In building off a previous post about the talent drain in South Africa, and looking back on my year, I wanted to write about my personal experience working in the South African market.

When I first moved here, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. I knew coming in that part of my responsibility would be to bring best practices to this young office, but the team had kicked off over a year before my arrival, so I figured some basic systems would be in place.

Pretty quickly I came to realize, it wasn't just best practices that were needed, this department was lacking any form of structure and organization. While at the same time, the growth targets were aggressive, so new initiatives were being proposed left, right and centre.

Almost as soon as I started, things began being added to my job description; campus portfolios, external program management, cleaning up legacy issues...in short, I was drowning.

But what I found most troubling in all of this, is that my local colleague's workload was being significantly decreased, not to the point that we were equals, but to the point where she had few major responsibilities.

I started seeing the inefficiencies of our local team as a whole. There is a noticeable difference in performance levels between here and our Toronto staff, which is concerning when Johannesburg has 1.5 million people more than Toronto and should have an eligible workforce from which to fill these roles. Yet, with the talent drain, it's just not the case.

Certainly, there are a few fantastic staff, who would be top performers in any market, but as a whole the group is under-performing and there is this lack of willingness to go above and beyond their job description (which as you can see, in a developing market especially, is often necessary).

This is of grave concern for any growing business in South Africa, because in order to maintain sustainable growth, there needs to be a base of South African employees who want to grow their career with the firm, but at the same time, an international standard of business needs to be met.

We're walking a fine and often frustrating line...