Risk Watch with Alberta QUARCOOPOME: How do you love your job in a difficult environment?  (2)

The possibility thinkers creed

When faced with a mountain
I will not quit.
I will keep on striving
until I climb over,
find a pass through,
tunnel underneath,
or simply stay and
turn the mountain
into a gold mine!
With God’s help!
(Courtesy: Robert H. Schuller)

Hello dear Readers, last week I started a series on learning to love your job in a difficult environment. Having looked at the various reasons people give for working and wanting to work, coupled with so many stresses and challenges faced, there is a need to take a decision: QUIT or LEARN TO LIKE/LOVE your job.  How did you find the American debate on the issue? Very interesting. If even in such countries where there are more employment opportunities, people feel forced to stay on for the sake of their needs and wants. How much more in our part of the world where jobs are non-existent and counted as life boats to survival! Even the economy and the increasing unemployment figures are so scary that many employees have little say to voice their concerns.

“Going Through the Motions”

In the absence of liking or loving our jobs, we find ourselves just going through the motions. This sentence is an idiom meaning, do something in a mechanical manner indicative of a lack of

interest or involvement. Here are some examples:

• A feeble effort to attempt to do something.

• Do something insincerely, or in a cursory fashion.

• Pretend to do something because you are expected to do so.

• Do something without believing in its intentions.

In summary, we can say that people going through the motions show the following characteristics: no feeling for the job, not responsive, not proactive, non-complaining, irritable, and resigned to their fate. Anybody in this state is likely to fall into trouble without knowing. In a financial institution, this causes laxity in controls, increase in errors and frauds, as well as bad customer service and loss of business.

How can we make an attempt to like or love our jobs? Let me attempt to make some humble submissions on this highly controversial situation. By looking at various situations and levels in a financial institution, one can see some insights.

THE STRESSES ON THE JOB

Some of the stresses on the job associated with working in financial institutions, which not managed well, can cause risks, fraud and even job losses. Many bankers find themselves going through the motions just to get by. I find this a very disturbing trend.  Having looked at some difficulties of young entrants into banking performing the role of tellers, sales and marketing, and loan officers, I will look at a few others and then set the ball rolling on ways one can learn to love one’s job.

The Young Entrant: Having secured employment in the bank, what perceptions did you have about bankers? Is it all about putting on nice clothes, trendy suits, sitting in air conditioned offices the whole day drinking tea? Is it just about smiling to customers? Riding nice cars, eating from posh restaurants at lunch time? Taking loans to purchase nice personal effects and a dream house? Ooh, now that you have entered the real life banking situation, are you disappointed? If you are a Sales Executive, do you find yourself walking the length and breadth of the city in the scorching sun, scouting for customers to products you yourself do not really appreciate or understand how they work? Are you meeting your targets? Are you a Teller hemmed in a cubicle the whole day paying and receiving cash and having to smile at customers even when you don’t feel like it? Are you feeling the effects of late closing, long working hours, sometimes on an empty stomach? If you are a vault custodian, do you feel like a prison warden holding a key around you the whole day, taking it home and rushing through traffic early morning to open the “Jerusalem gate” before customers arrive? Is the vault key becoming your twin sister, following you around?

The Loan Officer: Are you a Loan Officer, assigned to hundreds of customers whose businesses you don’t understand. Don’t you have any training in credit appraisal? Are you not comfortable with numbers? Are you not comfortable with the interpretation of balance sheets and all the ratios that go with it? Are your customers’ default rate so high that it is now giving you the shivers anytime you study the statistics? Have some of them vanished into thin air and cannot be located? Is your management blaming you for wrong appraisals and asking for your neck?

Teller: are you a teller? Do you know the advantages and skills that you take away from your experience that will be useful in future? Don’t under-rate the skills and benefits attached that come into play as you work – communication skills, inter-personal relationship, organizational skills, tolerance for demanding customers, problem-solving skills, genuine  friendship with some customers, networking and even referrals for better jobs elsewhere!

Secretary: Your role is becoming less visible in the branch banking set up. However, the following skills come into play- organizationsal skills, time management, management of the boss, communication skills, telephone skills, office practice and administrative skills.

National Service Person:  Don’t over-hype yourself. You are straight from school with a lot of vim and vigour and plenty of theoretical knowledge. Come down and learn the basics of the job. Your communication and interpersonal skills are the “litmus test” of your attitude. Don’t look down on photocopying and filing of documents. Read the correspondence and documents being filed, and learn how reports are written. After all you need to communicate your reports in the Queen’s language and not your “pidgin English”.

Client Service/Personal Banker:

You are the face of the bank. Your countenance can make a customer come into your bank and decide to stay, or go back and never return.  Despite the sedentary nature of the job and the long hours with customers, do you enjoy meeting new people? Are you pleasant? What is your human relations like? Are you customer-oriented? Don’t forget the customers can be your referrals. It is a small world. You will meet them one day in unimaginable places. When the scales turn, how will you feel? Embarrassed or proud?

The Supervisor and Branch Manager

Are you a leader or a boss? Do you have the requisite people skills? Learn the art of combining all the HR skills of a leader. Being a leader involves time management, counselling, coaching, mentoring, prayer leader, listening and communication skills.

I believe there is a global misconception about being a bank manager, or rather a branch manager. I may be wrong but until one actually works in a bank, there is a tendency to believe that every bank or branch manager is rich. Why do I say so? The old time banking systems were manually operated and therefore becoming a manager obviously required long years and experience on the job, so usually middle aged persons were branch managers. They were usually arm-chair managers, waiting for customers to bring in their deposits, request for loans, and queue at the secretary’s waiting room to have a chance of meeting him or her. In fact they really played the role of the managing directors in their branches.   Looking after all the cash in the vault creates an impression among the general public that the manager is rich. What stress is there about this perception?   It seems you are expected to give more donations during fund raising at church, attend all society functions and again give generously. Relatives make frequent visits to the office and homes to discuss their financial problems expecting that you would dip your hands into the coffers of the bank! There is pressure from members of the opposite sex for friendship and its attendant expectations. Although recently branch managers are found between the ages of late twenties and thirties, these misconceptions are still prevalent among some people. Many young managers feel stressed when they also believe that they should also match these expectations, and when they do so, they eventually find themselves in trouble.

Let me end here and continue next week.

To be continued 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alberta Quarcoopome, (FCIB) is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, Ghana, and CEO of ALKAN Business Consult Ltd. She is the Author of Three books: “The 21^st Century Bank Teller: A Strategic Partner” and “My Front Desk Experience: A Young Banker’s Story” and “The Modern Branch Manager’s Companion”. She uses her experience and practical case studies, training young bankers in operational risk management,relationship management, customer experience excellence, banking operations, ethics and fraud.

CONTACT

Telephone:0244333051

Website www.alkanbiz.com

Email:alberta@alkanbiz.com  or [email protected]