Splitting hairsEntrepreneurial yearning on the wind |
South Africans on average are earning less requiring drastic changes to their spending.
CAPE TOWN - A friend of mine told me last week: "I work for a wanker. The only problem is that I am the wanker."
It was frippery, of course, but it captures our times as we've hit the depths of the worst recession in living memory. In the good times companies can afford to be benevolent to their staff; in the bad times they can get downright evil.
Even my friend, who has prided himself on evading the corporate world to create a sustainable small business is having to make hard decisions but because his staff are a small, close-knit team, he also wants to treat them fairly even if it means countless sleepless nights for him and taking a hit in revenue.
Most of us, unfortunately, find ourselves in the same position as our parents' generation, working for big companies that we know will put us out to pasture at 50 because it's cheaper to retrench us than keep us on at the salaries we've worked so hard over decades to increase. We've seen it happen to many of our parents and, over the past year, to our older colleagues.
At the end of last year I was working for a big firm that cut a large number of staff in a voluntary retrenchment programme and witnessed the enormous damage to morale as people had to say goodbye to favourite colleagues and then take on extra responsibility for no extra pay and little prospect of bonuses or increases - all the while wondering if they were next, should the company move to involuntary retrenchments.
But I have also detected something else on the wind: an upsurge in entrepreneurial yearning where many are plotting how to break free from the corporate world and strike out on their own so that they can control their own destinies.
Right now might not be the time to do it but I don't think we can underestimate the change in people's attitudes to the corporate world and to money that this recession has brought.
In August an international research firm, Synovate, polled more than 11 000 people in 16 countries worldwide (including in South Africa) and it released its finding two weeks ago. It found that one in four people worldwide felt the recession had helped them to rearrange their priorities and most (55%) had permanently changed their attitudes to the importance of saving money though 47% were looking forward to being able to spend freely again.
South Africa features in the research as the leading nation (52%) in having written or revised household and personal budgets. South Africans were also the second highest nation for job losses (21%), topped only by Brazilians (23%) and followed by New Zealanders (15%). And more South Africans (17%) than any other nation polled said that they had taken on an additional job to the one they already have.
Half of all South Africans, the survey said, are using more cash as a way to curb frittering away money with credit cards - and this from a nation that has never been debt averse.
Six hundreds of our fellow countrymen took part in the survey, which is a fairly decent sample, and these dire figures are borne out by other research. The latest AMPS figures, for instance, found that the average South African income had declined to R6 928 in the first six months of this year compared with R7 135 in the last six months of 2008. And last month Statistics SA said that there were 770 000 fewer people in employment in the third quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2008.
It's tough out there for South Africans and in the media industry, which is the one I know best, there's much grumbling from the salary slaves - not because their incomes have fallen but because most believe they are not being treated fairly by their companies, stricken as they are with panic by the fall in advertising revenue. And they can't go to the press because they are the press.
Journalists, of course, can be a high-minded lot because they chose their trade - much like doctors - because it is a vocation. They wanted to do some good.
Though the companies that own the media in this country must serve shareholders, I don't think journalists are asking too much by expecting their owners to have a special sense of responsibility beyond the bottom line - and that starts with how you treat your employee. The media must serve the greater good of society or there's no point - and readers, I believe, demand that too.
If this sounds like a fairy tale, we have in our midst a sustainable media organisation that still takes these high-minded ideals to heart: the Mail & Guardian.
More than 51 000 people cough up R19.50 every week for the M&G because it is a quality newspaper that has carried the ethos through many owners and editors of serving its society with fearless reporting and in-depth investigations started all in 1985 by Anton Harber and Irwin Manoim.
It is a sustainable little operation and the high cover price, I suspect, goes quite a long way to freeing the M&G from the tyranny of advertising revenue. It has grown in recent years through innovation in the online world and it treats its staff well, which is why you'll find it very difficult to poach any of its reporters and why you never hear gossip about the company.
It also pays its staff well too. A survey released in August into how women are faring in the media revealed that the annual salaries of M&G staff were not far off one of the country's largest and most profitable papers in the country, the Sunday Times. At the M&G, the average annual salary was R344 080 for women and R357 159 for men (incidentally the lowest gender gap in Southern Africa); at the Sunday Times it was R309 949 for women and R373 419 for men (the biggest gender gap in earnings).
So well done to M&G owner Trevor Ncube for showing us you can make money and even survive a recession, serve the greater good and still keep your staff happy.
As for the put-upon worker bees at the big media firms, dreaming of running their own shows one day, let's wish them well. May they fly the coop and follow the M&G's example.
*Media columnist Gill Moodie spent 14 years as a salaried hack in print media in South Africa and the UK before escaping to the blogosphere and freelance journalism. She is the publisher of Grubstreet http://grubstreet.co.za/ in between unpacking and packing the infernal dishwasher and bringing up a four-year-old with attitude.
ADD YOUR COMMENT
 |
Price and trade data source: JSE Ltd. All other statistics calculated by Profile Data. |
 |