Nepotism in companies must stop

The results show that there is high prevalence of nepotism in Zimbabwean organisations.

When asked to indicate the prevalence of nepotism in their current organisation, of 718 employees who answered this question, 31.3% said there is high prevalence of nepotism in their organisation, 30.1% indicated moderate prevalence, 24.9% indicated low prevalence and 13.6% indicated no prevalence of nepotism.

When asked the question “Have you ever benefited from nepotism in your life?” out of the 702 employees who answered this question only 12.4% said yes, 87.6 % indicated that they have never benefitted from nepotism in their work life so far.

Our findings suggested that nepotism was most prevalent in recruitment and promotions.

Nepotism deprives the organisation of an opportunity to get the right talent thereby affecting the performance of organisation. In many cases, none performing people are hire or promoted with no merit. This is ill-advised and very short sighted. A number of local organisations have collapsed as a result of malpractices such as nepotism and lack of governance structures.

This survey was a confirmation what probably many have already observed in local organisations where cliques and groups of friends, family members and close associates find jobs not because they are better (both qualification and experience) but they get the jobs by virtue of association with those with power in organisations.

Organisations can address the prevalence of nepotism by crafting transparent policies that prevents nepotism in the main areas cited above; recruitment, promotions and procurement.  There should be heavy penalties for any manager practicing nepotism.

When asked the question “Does your organisation have an anti- nepotism policy?” out of the 716 employees who answered this question  56% said their employer does not have such a policy, 18.6% said they do have and 25.4% said they are not sure if the policy exit. It is shocking that only 18.6 % of the participating employees indicated that their employers have an anti-nepotism policy.

Another way to deal with the nepotism problem is to have an ethics policy that deals with all areas where potential risk of unethical behaviour exists.

Our survey did have its limitations. The study used a convenient sample of people already in the IPC database. The database consists of over 40 000 employees of which 1 173 responded. The study used the email function embedded in the Survey Monkey platform to reach out to participants. This excludes employee, especially low level employees who have no access to email.  Despite this shortcoming, data confidence level was 95%.

For the full Nepotism in the workplace survey report, contact Memory Nguwi.

Memory Nguwi is an Occupational Psychologist, Data Scientist, Speaker, & Managing Consultant- Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm. https://www.linkedin.com/in/memorynguwi/ Phone +263 4 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or email: mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com  or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com