Competitive advantage

Poorly skilled worker will cost your company

No doubt every business in the world is trying to increase profit and cut costs. Cutting costs and improving productivity is what CEOs and managers get paid to do.

In my traveling and working with various businesses around the world, I have seen this killer mistake over and over again “Businesses hire low-skilled workers to save money.” In my current job, I am working in the country of Qatar, in the city of Doha; I am having some serious performance issues with some of my employees.

The policy of my company is to hire low skilled workers so the company doesn’t have to pay high salaries. This policy has no wisdom in it or any sign of long term planing. As a manager, I am trying to change this policy, which is not an easy task. My job is to work with more important issues than to tell my employees how to perform their day to day job, but some of my employees need constant supervision and I can not take the risk of them not doing their job well.

Living in this part of the world for almost a year now, I have noticed that it’s the general policy of most of the countries in this region to depend on low skilled workers for most of their labor needs. This policy led millions of talented workers to leave these countries and migrate looking for better wages which left these countries with a large pool of low skilled workers who actually don’t have the right skills and experience that these countries need for its ambitious development plans.

When you hire a new worker, look for quality of work first than look to save money, the quality work produced by competent worker will save you the money you will otherwise have to spend in training and supervising low skilled and low paid workers.

The fear of Technology

Have you ever faced with users or CEOs who are afraid of technology? What you do as an IT consultant when your plans for better systems for the company are faced by total resistance by the management?

In a real life example, I was updating all the systems for my company and we migrated from windows XP systems to Windows Vista, this migration caused few changes in how users would go by doing their daily tasks. The CEO of our company was in a business trip and when he got back and saw the new systems, he complained why his outlook express is not there anymore, he said he couldn’t use Microsoft outlook.

I tried to explain to him that outlook express is an old technology and Microsoft outlook is the closest e-mail client in features to his old outlook express. The CEO started to look for his Old IT guy who installed outlook express and wanted him to fix the problem he is having, this made me laugh.

Another example with my CEO, I wanted to have total online solutions for our banking needs where we can pay bills, issues checks and manage our accounts without going to the bank or using the phone and again he refused and said “ I don’t trust this online services, I want to write all my checks with my hands.”

The fear of change or the fear of the unknown is normal human behavior, but this can be a real problem when it stops you from completing your job or from giving the best consultations to your client.

How would you deal with clients who have fear of Technology? The best approach to use is to show them how much money they could save by having the latest technology and how employees’ productivity would improve.

Although I am facing resistance to change at my company, I managed to improve many business processes by using the right technology and the immediate reaction from the employees and clients was really encouraging

Change your old habits or lose your business

With all the rapid revolution in the Internet and in technology in general, there is no excuse for any business not to fully or partially utilize what the increasing cheap technology has to offer.

But many businesses are still using the old style of doing business, I have visited businesses in the US not too far ago who are still using Dial up connections to go online, who still don’t use online banking, and who still don’t have a website.

Many businesses are still using faxes as a means of business correspondence instead of using e-mails, many businesses owners are still going to the bank each day to do make transactions that could be easily done online, many businesses still don’t have direct bank deposits for their employees salaries and the list could include many other things that are still done using the old style of doing things.

Of course these persistence habits of doing business the old way is not only in the US, but I have seen it in other parts of the world.

The cost of broadband Internet service is about $25 in most places around the world, the cost of setting up a basic website is around $30-50/month, and online banking is available almost in every country around the world.

What give me the idea to write this article is what I am experiencing at my current position, the company I am working at not fully utilizing technology to improve business performance, at least not till I got here.
We are moving a head, we have website, we have online banking, and we have new file backing system for all our important computer files.

You will be amazed to find how many people and businesses are still behind in this technology game, you would be amazed to hear that a major credit card issuer insisted that I give them a fax number so they can send me the paper work for a claim that I needed to file and they said they can not e-mail it to me since they don’t have it on electronic format.

Few bad habits that kill small business

After graduation from college, most of the jobs that I worked at were with small businesses. I believe I have learned most of my skills in management and organization form working with small businesses.

Almost at every small business I worked at, I noticed the following few bad habits, that in some instances led to the closing of the business:

1- To save money, most small businesses start with not well trained staff
2- Working at small business, some staff members don’t understand that the benefit system at the small business is not like the one they can find at large corporations and many small business owners fail to explain this to the new hires
3- Many small business owners based their business plans on hope more than on facts
4- In order for the small business to survive, each employee will have to do more than his/her share of work, sometimes employees have to go out of their way to make things happen, but some employees don’t understand that and only want to do what they were hired to do
5- Many small businesses were started by successful engineers, IT professionals, investors, etc, but these individuals were not successful at running a business and eventually the business went down

These are the few bad habits or bad signs that I have seen at few small businesses that I worked at.

Will talent crunch create reverse immigration?

With all the problems with the global economy and the soaring prices of commodities, I haven’t seen so much demand for talent as I see it now. Even countries like India, which is historically an exporter of talents, it facing its own problems with shortage of skilled workers.

I have seen this on my visit to India, I have seen it in the Arab world, in Saudi Arabia and In Dubai, and I have seen it in the United States.

Why there is so much demand for skilled labor and why supply is short. Globalization brought many services and products to the masses that once were only available to certain segments of the society, this in return created the need for skilled labor to serve the growing needs for all type of services. When I was in India, I used airlines extensively for my local travel, many new airlines sprung up in India in a quite short time, this created a huge demand for labor in the airlines industry. You can use the airlines industry example and apply it to many other industries that require constant supplies of labor, and the trend is not only in India, but also in many developing countries around the world.

I think this demand for labor and skills will create a reverse immigration in few countries, companies started to have global pay-scale, the pay is the same, doesn’t matter where you work, so now many employees are choosing to work in their home countries or going back to their home countries where they almost get the same pay as working abroad.

Rising Oil prices and cost management

The continues hike in oil prices is not going to stop anytime soon, if your business is directly affected by oil price fluctuations, it would be a wise decision to plan your budget around higher oil prices.

Many businesses, especially small businesses, may psychologically, get affected by hearing the news of higher oil prices and start to worry about their bottom line.

But as a business you got to look at your numbers. As a consultant who uses the internet and the phones extensively in his work, I saw a sharp decline in my communications bill, from almost $1000 a month to below $100 a month, that’s 90% decrease in cost.

This is only one example of how costs are dropping for other services. Having your employees work remotely from home is another example of cost saving method you can utilize, by having your employees work from home, you can cut on many types of costs associated with the office environment such as (office rent, utilities bills, commuting time, etc.)

The costs of few commodities may be rising, but the overall cost of doing business is dropping.

Is America losing its competitive advantage?

Is America really losing its competitive advantage? What is the real advantage America has over other nations of the world? Many concerned politicians and business leaders worry about the possibility of America losing its competitive advantage in science and in technology to other nations, they talk about the need for the American educational system to lure more students into majoring in science and in technology.

Does America’s competitive advantage really stem from America’s mastery of science and technology?
As an individual who lived and experienced three different cultures (including the American culture), I can say that America’s competitive advantage stems from the ingenuity of the American people and the ability of the American people to invent and tackle challenges.

The spirit to innovate is what gives America its competitive advantage and as long as this spirit is well woven into the American culture, America will lead the world in innovations and in technology.