Well-Informed Employees

One of the big mistakes of management is not to make your employee aware of exactly how he/she will be evaluated, what is expected from him/her, what is his/her duties and responsibilities, and how he/she might get rewarded or punished. Despite the fact that this might sound natural and logical, yet unfortunately many managers and companies fall into this very trap.

Managing the expectations of an employee would make him/her less resentful when he/she is evaluated and rewarded or punished. A workpace where an employee does not know exactly what his responsibilities are might foster friction between employees due to taking decisions instead of others and some not doing their duties and blaming this on others.

The best thing to do is to take each new candidate through a brief orientation in which he/she gets to know the policies and procedures of the company, a clear written statement of his/her job description including clearly stated duties and responsibilities and finally the method by which the employee will be evaluated. Investing in such an orientation would save companies a lot of headaches caused by employee friction, a lot of frustration on the sides of employees due to unmet expectations and a lot of waisted energy on the side of employees who might be waisting a lot of their energy on low priority activities that do not really add to the bottom line of the company.

Branding Workshop at Zedny

I just came back from a session about branding as part of the Zedny marketing workshop. The session was really great, mainly due to the presentation skills a hand-on real-life experience of the presenter. The session was delivered by Basem Abdel Ghani, currently Category Marketing Manager - Dairy at Juhayna Food Industries.

Secretaries No More?

The role of a secretary is changing with time. The more technology evolves and spreads at our workplace, the more our work style changes and the role of the secretary in particular changes.

The role of a secretary was traditionally to do typing of correspondence or typing of reports for the manager on a manual typewriter, to sort out mail coming to the office, to answer and make phone calls and arrange appointments for the manager. Things are changing now, specially at companies that use technology more. At a software company now for instance, a manger has a computer and probably can type by himself. Most communication and correspondence takes place via email, so snail mail is limited. Appointments can also easily be scheduled via software. The only secretarial task remaining might probably be answering and making phone calls. Even this one might have been reduced due to the increased reliance on email which is by definition fast.

When I worked at Sakhr 8 years ago, they did not have any secretaries (although they had hundreds of employees). Well, actually they had a position for secretaries, but they did not call them secretaries, they called them Assistants instead. Perhaps naming is not a big deal, yet I believe that software companies, which are big consumers of technology and are staffed by highly computer literate people, are usually less reliant on secretaries.

Sure we are a long way from not needing secretaries any more. After all, there are so many companies that are run by managers who are not technically savvy. They still need someone to type their messages and will rarely use email, or even my ask their secretaries to type it for them!

Google for Education in Egypt

I am excessively excited about Google's deal with the Egyptian Ministry of Education to provide Egyptian students with Google applications as part of Google's Google Apps for Education program.

Microsoft has long known the treasure hidden in the large population of Egypt and the will of the Egyptian government since 2000 to transform Egypt into the digital economy stage. Now Google is doing the right move. Google will spread into the Arab world through Egypt. After all, Egypt is a big exporter of ideas and has tremendous cultural influence in the region.