Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy holds the record of being the country with maximum unemployment. According to the United Nations in the Human Development Index (HDI) 2017 report, the rate of unemployment in Kenya is the highest in the East African region hitting a new high at 39.1 percent. This makes it the highest than its neighboring Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda. This dubious distinction also pops up as a reason of slow economic growth.

On the other hand, President Uhuru Kenyatta had made an announcement stating an increase in the minimum wage rate. Minimum Wage rate refers to the lowest amount to be legally paid to an employee for his work. As per the declaration there would be an increase of 18% to the minimum wage paid to employees in Kenya. This move came up in the midst of high cost of living in the country. Another notable point is that this wage rate has been intended after two consecutive years of no increase in salary.

Kenya’s minimum wage was last changed on 1st May 2015. There are 106 countries with a higher Minimum Wage than Kenya, and Kenya is in the bottom percent of all countries based on the yearly minimum wage rate. Following this announcement, the lowest paid employee will now earn KES 14,868 up from the current salary of 12,600. This move has been planned to help people match the high cost of living in Kenya.

Improve Manpower Productivity by 18%

Considering this move, it seems the employers and company owners are not very pleased. This is obvious as they need to pay more to their workforce. This would have an adverse effect as the employers and organizational leaders would turn to reduce the number of employees, would increase the price of goods and services, etc. This would further lead to poverty, inflation and unemployment. Well, there should be a solution that can help solve all these problems.

The solution would be improving the manpower productivity to overcome the impact of increased wage rate and build in competitiveness to stand in the global markets. Faber Infinite can help to tackle the problem effectively by improving manpower productivity by 15 to 20% with its established approaches and unique delivery methodology. Faber has proven records showing its successful delivery and the results achieved due to its efforts. Team Faber deploys fundamental tools like Time and motion study, Muda elimination and other efficiency improvement concepts to improve manpower productivity. The improvement in manpower productivity can be brought in by following key four drivers:

• Identify and eliminate all non-value adding steps:

The first and foremost task would be to identify the non-value adding efforts. Half of the task gets done, if we successfully identify the non-value adding steps in the organization, on time. But this is usually a difficult task and identifying it consumes majority of the efforts. After identifying the wastes or non-value adding activities, work on eliminating them. Not necessarily, all wastes can be eliminated and such inefficiencies (necessary evils) can be reduced, if not eliminated, via appropriate tools.

• Providing systematic review aimed towards work balancing:

The next step would be to review the work balancing. Maintaining proper work balance and load levelling is of utmost importance, in absence of which some resources among manpower and equipment goes unutilized. There also exists a possibility of Muda of overproduction which creates many problems such as overstocking, wastage of space and resources, inefficiencies, etc. Thus the key would be to improve material velocity.

• Creating and implementing standards:

It’s easy to improve but it’s difficult to sustain that improvement. That is where we need to pitch in and implement standardized practices which could be brought by visual SOPs, daily work management and alike measures. These would help to improve as well as sustain the improvements, enhancing quality and efficiency.

• Inculcating Right First Time, Every time:

The last key is to inculcate right first time, every time which refers to maintaining and developing the quality each time you produce. Quality should be at source and inbuilt. Quality at source refers to having proper, robust processes so that there won’t be any rework, reject or inspection needed. Inbuilt quality refers to maintaining the quality since the first step, a standard, accepted quality enabling to increase the delivery.

Execution of these approaches successfully has led to addition of clients in the list for Faber Infinite. For Instance: Team Faber has helped the likes of Atlas Copco, one of the leading engineering companies to improve manpower productivity by 33%. There are numerous happy clients from varied sectors who have received the best results when partnered with Faber Infinite.

For further details, get in touch with our team at consulting@faberinfinite.com