Eskom has severe employee problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Shaun Jacobs
  • Start date Start date
Fuzzbox said:
for R800k a year can I also have an unmotivated job.
FFS.
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Financial incentives make sense, tell me you wouldn’t work harder for a nice bonus and I’ll call you a liar.

The problem is that there is no reliable way to track performance at Eskom or attribute it to the correct individuals, I am sure ADR mentioned this in his book.

Likewise, financial pain should be inflicted on under-achievers.
 
We repeatedly noticed that there is a high degree of theoretical knowledge.
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I’m sure there is, theoretical knowledge does not equal experience in the real world though. It takes years of mentorship and experience to grow someone with a strong foundation into a battle-hardened senior engineer (roughly 10 years), especially in a company as complex as Eskom.

Taking away the senior mentors these people need, has set them up for failure.

However, its application is made very difficult by the complex management system.
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The ideal management strategy for engineers is to hire and keep the best people you can, then get the hell out of their way so they can do their job and do your best to predict and remove things that will stall progress.

However, now that Eskom is in a position where they have no idea who is competent and who is not, and there are little to no actual seniors who can advise them, it makes this strategy very hard to employ. The only way forward I can see is if they hire back old staff, or hire international seniors, however international seniors will lack Eskom internal knowledge which will take many months to acquire.
 
NikeXT said:
Financial incentives make sense, tell me you wouldn’t work harder for a nice bonus and I’ll call you a liar.

The problem is that there is no reliable way to track performance at Eskom or attribute it to the correct individuals, I am sure ADR mentioned this in his book.

Likewise, financial pain should be inflicted on under-achievers.
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I think the opposite is true - and the problem.

They have strict KPI/KPA's that affect their bonuses etc...the problem with KPI's is you only get assessed and rewarded on your OWN KPI performance.

So when someone from another department - or even different position in the same project group - needs help, you won't prioritize them at the expense of your own KPIs...even if its more beneficial for the project as a whole.



As for the theoretical knowledge part - that rings true. Staff would undergo a ridiculous amount of courses on the company time and dime ... which is fine if it's beneficial, but most of these courses are fairly "pie-in-the-sky" nonsense.

A prime example is during a 3-day "team building & whatnot" seminar, whenever its lunch time, the same people who you're supposed to teambuild with, fill their plates to the brim with food (catering paid for by the taxpayer), leaving nothing left for the last 10 or so people in line. When you address this, it's laughed at - and when you complain, the race card is thrown in your face.

I have stories...
 
Shaun Jacobs said:
Eskom has severe employee problems

A German consultancy group found that Eskom's staff are frustrated and unmotivated due to a poor work environment and lack of performance incentives.
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No they are "frustrated and unmotivated" because of the fact that when they leave the job with perfectly working units, in the early hours with skeleton staff, someone makes the illogical decision to take working units offline to create LS, put them into "planned maintenance" where they sit offline for a week or 2, then gets released back online, with nothing that was done to them.

And then this process get rinsed and repeated every week. They see this illogical decision to increase LS at night, or to even have LS at night...but everywhere in the world, power companies give you encourage you to use it at night, and even give you nightly discounts for electricity because it is literally wasted at night.
 
NikeXT said:
I don’t know. I’m asking. I think it’s better to discuss solutions rather than problems.
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Whaat! On mybb you give 'em a solution, then they go on a 20 page jerk session looking for problems.
 
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BBSA said:
I reckon you can replace 50% of the Eskom's workers with a screwdriver and the output will be the same.
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Last time they striked, ADR plead them to come back...blame that LS session on them not working, and thanked them when they came back.

So i reckon, you shouldn't do any reckoning...
 
Really shows yet again that all this re-engineering, rebranding, etc only has the opposite effect. It generally also messes with processes as positions and roles are changed. In most cases the outcome is a changed hierarchy or new uniforms/car paint, etc. But very rarely is the outcome ever better motivated workers, better performance (unless you lower the pass rate) or better customer service - yet millions of Rands get squandered on a "hope".

Money can be better spent on timing processes and measuring quality of output, and the demonstrating how both of those can be objectively improved. Workers just want to get their work done as easily as possible. It's not rocket science.
 
gotaway said:
Replace exec and senior management with machines?
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I doubt the machines will do a worse job than the current lot.

But seriously, AI-driven automation and optimisation could streamline numerous operational and administrative tasks within Eskom, potentially reducing the need for their bloated management structure.
 
BBSA said:
I doubt the machines will do a worse job than the current lot.

But seriously, AI-driven automation and optimisation could streamline numerous operational and administrative tasks within Eskom, potentially reducing the need for their bloated management structure.
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The real question is, whose family member gets the tender to be the middle man. And by how much do they need to increase the head count to "monitor" the AI. You should know by now, it's never so simple with government...
 
Mike Hoxbig said:
The real question is, whose family member gets the tender to be the middle man. And by how much do they need to increase the head count to "monitor" the AI. You should know by now, it's never so simple with government...
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middle man = people tasked to poison the AI ao it makes ‘enrichment’ decisions.

Reminds of of when Kwazulu Government Services (Before KZN was a thing) moved over to the central Persal system (Personnel and Salary System), there was fraud on the system before the go-live date.

NOTHING is incorruptable
 
The electronic auditing systems are there and available. I think of warehouses which have SAP integration on their electronic handheld scanners for keeping track of what is coming and going. Many still rely on paper/spreadsheets though sadly. Easier to fiddle with the numbers and simply write perfectly good stock off and load it into a cadres bakkie. Eskom has no excuse. But as @gotaway said if there is even a tiny loophole in the system these okes will find it.
 
Shaun Jacobs said:
Eskom has severe employee problems

A German consultancy group found that Eskom's staff are frustrated and unmotivated due to a poor work environment and lack of performance incentives.
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Can confirm. Still have plenty connections from my consulting to the company in the late 2000's/early 2010's.

Without fail they all complain that whether you do or do not do your job you are treated the same.

Hell, most of those I've spoken don't want to be paid more. They simply want consequences for those not pulling their weight.
 
Iwojima said:
Can confirm. Still have plenty connections from my consulting to the company in the late 2000's/early 2010's.

Without fail they all complain that whether you do or do not do your job you are treated the same.

Hell, most of those I've spoken don't want to be paid more. They simply want consequences for those not pulling their weight.
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Yep. I cannot imagine a worse place to work than an SOE.
 
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