Employee confidence in Zim very low

Harare - Employee confidence is very low in Zimbabwe with 51.5% of Zimbabweans believing that if they lose their jobs right now, they will not be able to get another similar or better job in the next six months.  

According to a survey conducted by the Industrial Psychology Consultants, the majority of the participants, representing 84.6% are not confident that they will get a cost of living adjustment this year, looking at their organisation’s current circumstances and outlook for the next six months.

It found that 55.5% of the participants do not expect things to be better in the next six months and 44.5% said they expect things to be much better in the next six months.

In the next six months, 77.9% of the participants do not expect the economy to improve, while 22.1% are expecting the economy to improve.
 
The data revealed that, regardless of job category, both managerial and non-managerial employees are not expecting the economy to improve in the next six months.

A large proportion of the participants (70.6%) are however confident that they will not be retrenched in the next six months.  

Commenting on the survey, Memory Nguwi, managing consultant at the Industrial Psychology Consultants said the low confidence is a result of an macro-economic outlook that does not inspire a lot of hope for the ordinary employee.

“There are so many negative changes taking place in organisations and whenever an organisation faces hard times, the first port of call is workforce reduction,” Nguwi said.

He said the government needed to be consistent in policy application, adding that there are lot of things going wrong where no action is being taken.
 
“What is even more worrying is that the people who are supposed to do something about our situation seem to blame others other than themselves.

“There are so many abnormal things that are now being taken as normal: cash shortages, unemployment, business closure etc,” said Nguwi.

Nguwi said constant communication on how a business is doing can increase employee confidence.

The labour consultant firm polled 528 workers across the country to find out how confident they are on the going concerns of their companies of employment. Average age of the participants is 39 years.