How proper career path can boost labour in the retail space

There is a certain saying among Nairobi residents that if you have never sold GNLD products, then you haven’t seen the hard part of this city.

Selling GNLD products, at least according to a majority of Nairobi residents, is an initiation into what the city has to offer in terms of eking a living and finding a footing. GNLD products are comprised of nutrition supplements and personal care items.

The saying is an inside joke of how a section of job seekers, fresh from high school or college, were lured to join the business by cunning insiders, with the promise of making good money and opening their own distribution stores.

The proposition, for many, turned out to be an empty promise.

Besides the GNLD rhetoric, sales, as indicated by Doris Muigei, chief executive of Qazi Works, is most likely the first job one gets once they graduate from an institution of higher learning. Yet this is not taught in schools.

“I don’t know whether you are aware that sales is the largest funnel of employment. Are you also aware that sales is not taught in universities? I gave up trying to understand why,” she said during a recent meeting with human resources professionals hosted by BrighterMonday, a recruitment agency..

While her current organisation is a recruitment agency, in her previous work in Yusudi Africa, she dealt with training individuals in sales.

And just like the recruits to GNLD, Muigei admits that teaching sales is not straightforward.

“It’s just because it is not easy to teach it,” she said. “How then do you get someone who did a degree in engineering or a diploma in automechanics to sell?”

She noted that the mistake she has seen business leaders make is to leave their salespeople to find their own footing. That is because selling was not taught to them; their staff will also have to learn it the hard way.

“For example, I am a Gen X, we usually say we trekked 15 kilometres to school, so our children should do the same. That is the same mindset we bring into this thing (sales),” she said.

“If I learnt it on my own, I don’t know why you are stressing – figure it out.”  

Muigei, who was part of a panel session, added that most individuals who end up in sales are first not enthusiastic about the role – they have no choice.

“I wish we spent more time understanding that because this is not a skill set that was given to them. We need to take time to train them,” she said. “It may not come naturally to everybody, but it is a learnt skill.”

But due to this cold reception for new staff in sales, Alvin Mukabwa, chief operating officer of Generation Kenya, an organisation that does skilling and reskilling, says there is a high level of attrition in the services, retail, and sales labour space.

“There are many dynamics to this, for example, how do we ensure young people who are coming into these industries perceive this as a career? It has to start with employers. We have to have a clear career path within our organisations,” he says.

He agrees that most youth today just want a job – and not necessarily a better job or what they trained for.

“We have to understand, when someone comes into our organisation, where do they start from and where do they go,” he adds.

It is something Naivas, the country’s largest retailer with 110 stores, is doing.

The retailer’s chief human resources, Tim Kajume, said the retailer has a fully-fledged learning and development programme domiciled in the departments he heads.

“What we do is run programmes from the first day someone joins Naivas based on the role they take, they almost know what career path is going to be,” he says. “We do a lot of in-house training and external training.”

Kajume noted that a bulk of Naivas employees, especially those in senior management positions, have grown with the business.

His view demystifies the analogy that jobs in such a sector are just a stepping stone as one waits for the right opportunity or what they trained for.

Kajume pointed out that today, retail requires educated and sophisticated graduates with skills such as IT, owing to how technology has revolutionised the business.

It is no longer a “dukawala” type of business. There is a social science that goes into setting up a whole store.

“People underestimate the look and feel of the shop. From the way the shop is designed, there is a science that goes into it,” he said.

Kajume added that it is not just about having shelves and putting things, because there is something in retail called customer journey when one walks into a shop.

“Is the entrance in the right place? What is it that is supposed to be at the front aisles, and what should be at the back – there is a science to that. You need people who have that kind of experience and education, and that high level of specialisation to be able to do all that mapping for you,” he said.

The same high expertise is required for those doing inventory, managing supply chain and finance, where technology plays a key role due to new payment systems such as Visa and mobile money.

“Even the people we have as supervisors, team leads, and branch managers, we now require graduates.  You can imagine the amount of money it holds as stock, and they should be able to collect data,” he said.