eBusiness Weekly
Most businesses would have seen the major challenge to the new year being the return to Level Four national lockdown and all that entailed, but they would be wrong.
The major challenge was the sudden spike in Covid-19 infections, which triggered the return to far higher level of lockdown, and the failure of many in business to have taken adequate preventative steps while Zimbabwe was in a lower level of national lockdown.
There are, of course, many exceptions, and a fair swathe of business did enforce rules and regulations but, if we are to be honest, there were staff who were not very particular and there was little effort to make them conform. The laxity of us all, to varying degrees, led to the spike.
One problem is the general ineffectiveness of business organisations, ineffective in the sense that they include only a modest minority of those they represent as full and active members.
And yet the circumstances of the present, plus the challenges and opportunities of the future as Zimbabwe presses ahead with growing the economy, do require far more efficient representation of the needs of all businesses, especially as the Government is now eager to meet the needs of business. Rather than seeing the private sector as something that must be tolerated, the Second Republic sees it as the engine of economic growth.
So this requires far more involvement in the formulation of policy, and some serious and deep involvement in the implementation of national development strategies that few will disagree with, but which need a lot of hard work to turn a paper plan into a flourishing and growing economy.
In theory, there are large organisations that can represent each business sector, or even sub-sector, and who are consulted and can get a hearing in the relevant policy making or implementation ministry. But with the bulk of business outside active participation, it is difficult for the representative organisations to know precisely just what all members might require.
To take a major example, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry, the CZI. This is active with full time staff, although not as many as it had in its heyday. But it tends to represent and gain its support from the older and larger manufacturing businesses.
Yet industry in Zimbabwe has undergone a major revolution over the past few decades. It has expanded, as a walk around industrial sites will show, and there are far more companies now operating in this sector. But there has been a trend for the growth of industry to be led by the small and medium industrial concerns, while the large companies remain stable or even contract.
The old system inherited from 20th century Britain saw industry concentrated in the larger concerns, and quite frequently run by professional managers from non-engineering or operational backgrounds. Accountants, human resources and marketing specialists and others from a non-manufacturing environment can still dominate top management in many concerns.
This is not to decry such specialists, and fairly obviously many who have reached the top do know a great deal about operations and can find their way round a factory floor without any problem.
But the newer industries tend to be owned and run by technical or production specialists, and at least in the early stages the principle shareholder, the manager and the factory foreperson are all the same individual. You can walk into some manufacturing or engineering enterprises and find the boss wearing overalls.
The challenge for CZI is how to bring these sort of businesses into its ambit. What can they be offered to make it worthwhile for them, to add membership fees to their budgets and to find time to attend meetings and become involved?
One good start would be a decent database of industrial and manufacturing concerns.
Many in industry know there is someone out there who can make certain parts or who can offer critical services, but they have no idea where to find them.
One major reason when business associations were originally set up was to provide the networking that makes business prosper, and that networking entails making it easy to find the sort of business you need to talk to.
And once in the organisation, there has to be a special effort to look at specific requirements, which might not strike representatives of major companies.
Some, finding it difficult to use an industry-wide organisation, have set up smaller organisations that can meet policy makers or make special representation. The millers, the bakers and others have all done this. Although again there have been complaints that the big companies, who obviously need more say, totally dominate the sector organisation to the detriment of the rest.
This can be sorted out, given a willingness by all and, most importantly, showing how everyone can benefit. Germany and Italy, for example, have industrial bases largely built on tens of thousands of small and medium specialist concerns, often family owned, along with their globally-known giants. But somehow they operate together in detailed labour negotiations with major unions, the detailed systems of how to train up exceptionally skilled workforces, with both countries using apprenticeships far more than say the USA, and how to advance staff from within the company.
That different culture has seen quite different types of organisation growing to represent them, with networking brought to the fore and common problems covering the full range.
Retail in Zimbabwe is even more fragmented. Although there are five supermarket chains that dominate that sector, and the recent consolidation through acquisition and chain-store style marketing in the furniture and appliance sector, it is the small shops that dominate in numbers and in many areas. That has even seen property companies and building owners redesigning their retail space. A glance at the work now in progress at the old Barbours building in central Harare shows the trend, along with the exceptionally innovative rethink down at Old Mutual, the biggest property owner.
There have been some changes already in business organisations, the Retail Association of Zimbabwe for example largely taking over many representative functions that used to be monopolised by the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce. But even here, far more is needed to be done to create the modern databases that can take over and drive to new levels the now defunct yellow pages. Just for an example, try and buy a bicycle. There are at least five specialist shops in central Harare, but it is not easy to track them down unless you are already in the know.
Chain stores and small family concerns can operate together, and combined can drive business forward for the benefit of all, but keeping them all in one organisation will require a lot of creative thought.
With Covid-19, the national lockdown responses by the health authorities, and no doubt future such emergencies, the need for having quality interaction
with health authorities has never been greater.
Regulations can be modified and adjusted, if there is good quality input on how to achieve the same goals in a slightly different way, but that requires both rational input and a way of ensuring universal compliance.
It must be extraordinarily difficult for a public health expert, or a Health Minister, to look at more flexible arrangements if no one can guarantee universal compliance and if no one has been giving serious thought on the problem of how to reduce infection rates within particular environments. So one-size-fits-all is the only solution.
Yet it could be different. Perhaps this latest need for a tighter lockdown could be used constructively to start looking at alternative solutions and especially at solutions that can allow a more open business environment with universal compliance and infection rates brought under control.
The present level four is supposed to be lifted in around four weeks. But that lifting probably requires phases, and certainly requires commitment and ideas from the business sectors on how to maintain high levels of public health without major shutdowns. We now need ideas, voices, and a way of satisfying all needs.
What works for a giant isolated factory might not work for a little workshop or a small store.
But a solution that works for all these needs can probably be tailored, if only everyone was involved.
