The emotional disengagement of bankers in Nigeria

Employers in Nigerian banks emotionally disengage their employees in order to confine them to absolute submission and subservience. This is the threatening impact that is felt by existing employees whose colleagues were laid off in a manner that is devoid of criteria and cogent reasons. It leaves employees to wonder who will be affected in the next exercise hence the strategy terrifies both the best performer and the newly promoted. Developments that continue to unfold confirm the seriousness with which this exercise is executed and the effect on existing employees with bleak view of what the future holds. Every bank's employee has either been terrified or shaken with a flurry of warning mails from designated authorities who have continued to heat up the system at a time employees need unbridled encouragement, inspirational behaviors and motivational talks to scale through this defining moment in the history of banking in Nigeria. The failure of the system to successfully manage employees' grievances and the insistence of the Executives to hit with the height, with which the hammer is raised, inspired the need to impugn the absence of positive conscience and the emergence of corporate terrorism.

Banking consolidation under the former CBN governor prof. Chukwuma Soludo led to the purchase of shares by some business minded bank employees and ended sole ownership of banks by individual investors. The business of share purchases not only makes one an investor, but also a part owner of the bank that its shares were bought. This is the message that is usually released to the public in a bid to woo them into huge investments and become part owners of these banks. Therefore, most bank employees are part owners of the organization they work for, unless another definition of investment proves otherwise. It is on the basis of this fact that the present CBN governor Mr. Lamido Sanusi sacked some bank MDs and accused them of financial impropriety. The expulsion of these bank MDs was hinged on a highly mismanaged public funds that have been discovered as investments in Europe, America, Dubai and Nigeria. Some employees' investments were part of these funds but most of them that neither knew when these non-performing loans were applied for, nor approved have become victims of this failure and have continued to suffer with cataclysmic consequences.

Few weeks ago, one of the rescued banks sacked its employees in defiance of the Federal government directives and warning from labor Union to discontinue this exercise. Whilst some banks are very open with employee disengagements, others have continued with clandestine approach to avoid creating hostile impressions and protect corporate image. In defense of this development, banks have hinged this exercise on poor performance and therefore pass the buck on the affected employees for being responsible for their own fate. But a closer look at recent investigations and revelations impugns the credibility of this argument and wonders why any bank would keep these numbers of non-performers until they were reminded by the present circumstances to sack them en-masse. This goes to show that most of the affected employees are pure victims of fate, who despite meeting or surpassing their targets were laid off and made to pay for the inefficiencies of top authorities.

The survival of Sanusi's policy of reformation and recapitalization and the need for banks to re-strategize and reposition in line with current realities have continued to retard the nation and rid banks of excellent brains. A situation where morality is replaced by nepotism and excellence subdued by bullying, disengages more employees than sack letters. Employees are emotionally disengaged through several severe measures that are better applied in non-professional environments. In the western world, bullying is treated as an abuse of office with serious consequences but our choice of language in speech and written communications, confirm the ease with which we disregard policies and professional conducts in inter-personal relationships. Banking has been completely militarized, both levels of employees exhibit military tendencies that clearly depict the periods of our upbringing and engagements. Every query from a supervisor to a subordinate must end with: '' You have between now and end of business tomorrow to reply this query and state why disciplinary action should not be taken against you''. Every boss is a disciplinarian and writes mails to colleagues with absolute authority and threat of sanctions even when the offense is as simple as not going to the main gate to buy groundnuts and recharge cards from roadside hawkers. Some employees have been sacked for just not being liked because of where they come from and the languages they speak. In some banks, bullying is called 'Shredding', which, in its application, depicts a derogatory scheme and a decapitation of employees' integrity by verbal condemnation and emotional subjugation.

The story of most contemporary bankers is unequivocally pathetic; the cars they drive, the smartness of their attire and their captivating gaits usually get them cross with their bosses whose dress senses are nothing short of colonial head teachers in village bamboo tree primary schools, whilst the female folks suffer gossips and contemptuous statements that are associated with elegance. There are bosses who have completely refused to change and align themselves with the trends of modern splendor and developments. These groups of conservative diehards have a history of not saving employees at the brink of dismissal. However, working with these groups of individuals usually gets employees absolutely crestfallen on Monday mornings or disengaged emotionally from being part of the system where they, rather their contributions, are usually the subject of focus. Their views seriously conflict with every new thing and are constantly at war with modernity. Their wrist watches are always older than their subordinates in the same unit, whilst their world view is not dissimilar to those of pre-independence bankers, but they rose through the ranks in old generation banks and with consolidation, found themselves heavily engulfed in a world that has left them behind.

Emotional disengagement is not unconnected to frequent threats of sack and sanctions. By constantly emphasizing on dismissal for every little offense that is committed by an employee or desperately highlighting the implications of targets not met and following up with harsh reports, poor appraisals and discourteous responses, employees are compelled to effect untimely resignation. The sack gales in banks have continued to be a reference point to every employee by the custodians of the system. Employees have continued to be inundated with internal mails that are coined with strong languages and threatening enough to be read twice. Orders are given like military decrees and made to be followed without question. In most banks, MDs words are pure dogma and any deviation is treated as heresy and on resumption of work, employees do check for MDs mails to confirm the tone and direction of thoughts before heaving a sigh of relief which the last line usually ends with. Employees are directed here and there like hordes of helpless savages, made to cry in offices during serious altercations and confined to hopelessness if the same scenario plays out constantly, yet banking is all about customer service of which employees are the internal ones. To end mails with these expressions: ''failure to abide by these rules will have his or her appointment terminated or give me the names of those, whose accounts are in debit'' disengages employees emotionally.

It is simply natural not to be impervious to all these threats and assume no serious implications if conditions are breached. Human beings have a tendency to fear or be threatened and a response to withstand this challenge by way of keeping quiet and being prayerful is certainly not an act of cowardice but recognition of bravery. The reasons are obvious and because of our cultural affiliations and backgrounds, the disengagement of the services of one bank employee imposes great hardship on many dependants. For every bank employee that is paid salaries, many are fed and trained, parents are cared for, communities are developed and hopes are strengthened even when nothing is available. The glamour of being a banker and the unbridled joy of poor parents to have children in Tiger and Zebra banks quickly attract fear and apprehension when threat is found in the way of success. Most parents went through the most inhuman ordeal to train their children and left nothing to depend on except placing hopes on them. In Britain for instance, there is the National Health Service that grants all legal residents access to high quality medical care, irrespective of one's contributions to the Health scheme. British children are unfamiliar with settling medical bills for their parents except those that use private hospitals but in Nigeria, many parents have died as a result of inadequate number of hospitals and good quality health care system. Being one of the institutions with reasonable pay package, the attraction is therefore not questionable when compared to ministries that hardly grant their employees access to quick funds and that is why it is emotionally disengaging to dangle threats and sack motives to employees.

The fear is real for bankers from poor homes and with hordes of dependants, whilst some employees are privileged enough to discard banking threats as worrisome. For those whose parents trained by setting bush traps to catch rodents for sale, borrowing money from age grade meetings and selling yam and cassava to raise funds understand why emotional disengagement kills. The quest to raise family standards and pull everyone out of poverty explains the rationale for fear when threat sets in. This is the true Nigerian situation that thickens one's skin and strengthens the bones of one's conscience but what keeps most bankers mealy mouthed is the current payment of salaries as stipends. The offer letters state entirely different things from what comes into one's account and if one's salary per-anum is paid as stated in the offer letter, there is absolutely no reason to augment with credit cards and personal loans. One's inability to live up to documented standards and the fear to ask questions when rights are infringed, disengage employees emotionally.

Banking ethics and professionalism opine and enjoin employees to address one another as colleagues or by their first names. It strongly discourages the use of these titles: 'Sirs' 'Ma' and 'Oga'. I have never read any paper that addresses the founder of Microsoft as 'Sir Bill Gate' or the US secretary of State as 'Ma Clinton'. This is primarily because of the need to ensure the triumph of professionalism against age and ego and still maintain the sacred norms of human respect but in Nigeria, the spread of these titles in Banks and other financial institutions confirm the threat associated with their non applications when addressing senior colleagues. This phenomenon has often been blamed on our culture of respect but it's obfuscatory for me to fathom the cultural roots of 'Sir and Ma' in Africa and why they should qualify as titles for senior bankers. These titles have overriding influences on transactions, negotiations and approvals and therefore appear as a classificatory schema that distinguishes a major banker from a minor one, whilst in actual sense, everyone is a colleague. A clear offshoot of this trend is inferiority complex, which disengages more employees and creates a vacuum between their internal mind office and their official desks.

A detailed look at banking operations and corporate governance confirm that bankers are firmly in the grip of, and more often than not haunted and tyrannized by the fear of the '3Rs' namely: Retrenchment, Resignation and Retirement. The fear of being retrenched or asked to resign as it is in most banks have completely cut all major roads, tracks and subways to retirement. An unaudited survey conducted in October 2009 suggests that from inception, more than 80% of bankers in Nigeria have either been retrenched or asked to resign, 17% resigned voluntarily, whilst the remaining 3% are the privileged elderly few that eventually made it to retirement. Efforts that emphasize employee retention often receive disproportionate negative responses because the major aim is certainly not to keep employees until they attain retirement age but to manage them for a while. This can be deduced from the fact that not all trainee bankers will climb the corporate ladder to executive management because of the pyramid structure that banks operate. This implies that employees must definitely fall by the wayside as the pyramid shrinks to a tiny endpoint and that's why bankers need to depend on one another to set up businesses, inter-depend to ensure their business successes and then be independent to establish other empires of business. This is one of the keys of freedom from emotional disengagement.

For the Executives, success can be achieved by addressing emotional disengagements and creating conditions for employees' protection in a system riddled with thorough hard work and dedication. Now can be the time to win the soul and mind of employees who are neither protected by law nor saved by policy. Human respect and dignity are not acts of mercy but inescapable requirements of natural law and justice and as educated Nigerians, we should learn to strengthen hopes and set a platform that harmonizes work with employees' rights and privileges. The thought of this vacuum in administration and lack of courage to raise these issues within the system by employees, obscure efforts to first create a bank in the mind, and have employees of good hope and conscience to drive the system to success. By dealing with emotional disengagements, a handshake between the employer and the employee can be done with well stretched arms and fingers.