There was a time when getting a corporate job in Kenya meant you had arrived. Permanent and pensionable. Those two words were magic.
They meant security, respect, a payslip that a bank manager would recognise, a plot somewhere in Nairobi or another significant town paid for in instalments, and a retirement where you would not be a beggar.
Your mother would slaughter a chicken. Your village would treat you like an honourable somebody. You had entered the middle class and closed the doors of poverty behind you.
You would be tasting the finer things in life. Your family was expected to grow wealthy over time, with your children attending the finest schools. Many of my schoolmates and I longed for this.
Today, those words sound like a fairy tale we tell our children. What happened?
I have worked in the corporate world for a while, and I have watched how we slowly killed permanent jobs and replaced them with anxiety.
Go to any big company today, a bank, a telecommunications firm, a manufacturer or even a government parastatal. Some of the people you see in branded shirts are not permanent employees.
They are contract staff, interns, outsourced workers, agency hires, fixed-term employees or people doing what we now politely call gig work.
They do the same jobs, sometimes better, but may go home with half the pay, no medical cover and contracts that end in three months.
They are workers without a workplace identity.
Those with permanent jobs, especially in the private sector, are no longer assured of remaining employed until the commonly stipulated retirement age of 60.
A lot has changed locally, particularly with significant deindustrialisation and global economic shifts that have left much of our manufacturing taking place elsewhere.
We have become a heavily importing nation, even for products we previously manufactured locally.
Some industries collapsed because we could no longer manufacture competitively, and corruption made matters worse.
The cost of electricity alone made manufacturing difficult, yet we had to operate within the demands of globalisation and free trade.
How cost-cutting changed corporate employment
We also had to contend with changing management trends. We adopted some Western efficiency models, placing greater emphasis on profitability and sustainability.
Efficiency, lean organisational structures and cost-cutting became central to corporate management.
In the early 2000s, management consultants arrived in Nairobi with PowerPoint presentations about lean structures, cost optimisation and shareholder value.
Boards loved it.
Consider the thinking behind some of these decisions: Why retain a driver on permanent terms, complete with pension and medical benefits, when you can outsource the same work through a company paying him Sh30,000 instead of Sh80,000?
Why retain a permanent human resource officer when you can hire a 25-year-old on a one-year contract who will work tirelessly to secure its renewal?
Why continue paying an experienced cashier or accountant a substantial salary when two new graduates could potentially perform similar duties at a fraction of the cost?
We called it outsourcing and cost rationalisation.
It helped protect profits and sustain corporations operating in an increasingly hostile economic and unpredictable political environment.
However, it also destroyed the corporate dreams of many workers. Retrenchments became increasingly common.
Technology then became another justification for reducing employment.
When banks introduced automated teller machines and mobile banking, many tellers faced retrenchment rather than retraining.
When supermarkets introduced self-checkout systems, opportunities emerged to reduce staffing requirements.
When artificial intelligence (AI) arrived, we marvelled at its possibilities without sufficiently asking how we could equip employees with the skills needed to adapt.
What appears likely to happen, silently and progressively, is that boardrooms will increasingly ask how many employees can be retrenched to reduce costs.
Those discussions may already be taking place.
AI is advancing rapidly, with growing debate about the possibility of artificial superintelligence and its implications for organisations and employment.
In the past, software upgrades sometimes became the basis for retrenchment notices. Yet we celebrated the changes as innovation.
Important as technological progress was, it carried consequences for corporate careers in an increasingly competitive world.
AI will teach us more lessons. It will increase efficiency and productivity, create new categories of employment and potentially eliminate many existing roles.
The weakening of collective bargaining and job security
The third major change has been the weakening of unions and collective bargaining.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) commanded considerable influence. A collective bargaining agreement (CBA) meant something.
Today, attempts to organise workers in some private companies can expose employees to the risk of victimisation.
Many young Kenyans working in the private sector have never benefited from a CBA.
They negotiate individually, often with little bargaining power, against human resource departments supported by legal professionals.
Permanent employment terms have consequently become increasingly unfamiliar.
Fourth, we created a culture of short-term corporate leadership.
A chief executive officer arrives with a three-year contract and demanding key performance indicators.
Some executives may have little incentive to build lasting institutions when their immediate priority is surviving the contract.
Their bonuses may depend partly on cutting costs.
One of the quickest ways to achieve savings is to reduce staffing expenses, eliminate permanent benefits and replace permanent employees with contract workers.
The executive reports improved profits, receives a bonus and eventually moves to another organisation.
Behind may remain a workforce of anxious contract employees who cannot confidently plan for the following month, let alone the next year.
We are increasingly running corporations like short-distance races.
Of course, the world has changed. Competition is real, and organisational survival has become a major concern.
But the consequences for employees cannot be ignored.
A generation employed but unable to build wealth
The result is a national crisis we are pretending not to see.
Consider a 28-year-old graduate in Nairobi earning Sh70,000 a month on a six-month contract, without a pension or employer-provided medical cover beyond the Social Health Authority arrangements.
The worker may struggle to qualify for a long-term bank loan because lenders are uncertain about the continuity of that income.
How will such a person buy a house? How will they start a family? How will they save?
We have created a generation that works hard but struggles to build wealth.
They move from contract to contract, M-Pesa loan to M-Pesa loan and interview to interview.
They are employed but remain financially insecure.
That insecurity can be almost as damaging as unemployment because it quietly destroys hope.
And the irony?
Some companies that have reduced permanent employment now complain that workers are not loyal, that employees frequently change jobs and that institutional memory is disappearing.
Why would a contract worker feel lasting loyalty to an employer who offers no long-term commitment?
Such employees are constantly reminded that they can easily be replaced.
You cannot outsource loyalty. You cannot casualise commitment.
We must acknowledge that if Kenya wants a strong middle class, we must restore dignity and security to employment.
Not every job can be permanent. That is understandable.
However, a significant number of core organisational roles could offer permanent terms.
If someone has performed the same essential job for two years under successive short-term contracts, employers should seriously consider whether that position deserves permanent employment terms.
And if such an employee must eventually be retrenched to protect a company from financial distress, adequate safeguards should exist.
These could include reasonable severance arrangements, retirement savings and other measures to cushion workers against sudden income loss.
Continuous employee education, upskilling and multiskilling are equally important in preparing workers for an unpredictable future.
Economic realities have also pushed much of Kenya's employment into the jua kali, or informal, sector, which is itself fluid and unpredictable.
For others, the alternative has been to go majuu—seeking employment or business opportunities abroad—as a way of escaping unemployment and underemployment.
Rebuilding Kenya's employment dream
The dream of permanent and pensionable corporate employment has therefore declined dramatically, although the change has unfolded gradually over time.
Local and global economic realities have reshaped employment in Kenya.
Today, relatively few people can confidently expect to secure permanent and pensionable corporate jobs.
Across villages and shopping centres, one encounters middle-aged former corporate employees who were retrenched or whose employers closed down.
In the process, we have weakened the Kenyan dream and diminished the appeal of the once-prestigious corporate career.
Can we reverse this trend while acknowledging technological progress and changing local and global economic realities?
Yes, we can.
We must address domestic challenges, particularly corruption, which has made many economic ambitions difficult to achieve.
Consider how corruption, alongside other structural factors, has contributed to high business costs, including electricity expenses, undermining manufacturing competitiveness and contributing to industrial decline.
We now import manufactured goods from countries such as Egypt, within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), and China, even where opportunities for local production may exist.
Corruption destroys opportunities and has damaged institutions across many sectors.
We must also improve our politics and become more ambitious about economic development.
There is much to learn from countries such as South Korea and Germany, which have developed strong industrial sectors and invested heavily in skills, technology and productivity.
The challenge is not simply to recreate the employment arrangements of the past.
It is to build a modern economy in which technological innovation, corporate competitiveness and decent employment can coexist.
There is much to do.
Nevertheless, Kenya still has hope, provided we dare to dream and pursue the right economic priorities with determination.
That is how future generations can regain access to rewarding jobs, build stable careers and create better lives for themselves and their families.
The writer is a trained journalist, political, economic and social analyst and commentator. He holds leadership roles in associations involved in the automotive industry, renewable energy and beekeeping. He also participates in climate change initiatives, chairs a charitable organisation and serves in strategy, fundraising and consultancy roles covering finance, accounting and investment.
Email: hm.ikunda@gmail.com
Reader Discussion (0)
Sign in to comment