Waking up to election results

A major election looms. In fact, its less than 30 days away. The software developers haven't released the results system yet. No one knows what it looks like and it has not been tested yet. Computers that were bought for capturing have not yet been deployed. Returning officers and their staff were never employed with computer literacy in mind. In the days ahead what's to be done? Sound familiar? Come join the confusion.

There appears to be a general misconception that preparations for credible results processing can be done 2 to 3 weeks before a general election. What emerges is the bare minimum is done to get the process over as quickly and painfully as ever. Once the mistakes are realised, they are easily forgotten after an election when everyone seems to go dormant till the next time. If the same people are still around the next time, they realise too late the bad memories from the previous event. They just end up coping. Again!

Meanwhile the results system has not been audited by anyone. Whether it is tested in time is not our problem. We will deploy the laptops and hope for the best. But we don't have faith in this technology anyway. We will rely only on the paper trail and actual paper results from the returning officers. We will keep our voters and politicians in the dark, while we fumble around waiting for people to drive election results to the capital. We won't release the results in a slow steady stream, neither will we monitor any problems around results from the field. Petitions or complaints will be dealt with by the courts and we will say we ran a credible election. We just hope no one burns the country down in the meantime. Its not our fault!

As election practitioners we often sit back idly and watch while Rome burns. We craft a strategic plan once every 5 years after election, fail to review it regularly and wonder why we are battling so hard to get the work done. Election results processes are a case in point. From election to election we pay scant attention to this process until the last moment. And yet everything will revolve around this pivotal time. The election will be made or broken based on how this process is managed. Some suggestions that should be considered:

• do the planning for results immediately after registration is concluded, well before nomination
• test and re-test the systems in simulated environments AND in the field
• recruit the right people with the right skills
  
• conduct results validation as low down in the hierarchy as possible
• tally results at a high enough level to protect secrecy and polling stations
  
• manage the flow of results information so that stakeholders can stay updated
• put back-up systems in place for 90% of eventualities (you can't cover 100% anyway!)
• work out your monitoring/management/trouble-shooting processes well beforehand and don't be scared to be rigorous about it--results must be accurate and credible
  
• don't be scared of engaging politicians
• don't assume that everything is okay--check it yourself or ask for evidence of verification

Election results processes should not be left to chance. If you give it your last minute attention, you are asking for trouble. It could just mean the end of your credibility or your career in elections. All you hard work over many months of preparation can be undone in one swift action.

Engaging employees to do their best

Research shows that most people join organisations, but they leave managers. Managers play the single most important role in ensuring that employees stay involved at the workplace. Whilst financial incentives are critical, working under a right manager can make all the difference in employee engagement and performance improvement. Whilst everyone would like to change the culture of their workplace, the truth is that this change happens in pockets and the major influencer of this change is the manager or supervisor in that area.

Gallup recently published an interesting article on employee engagement which forces one to rethink management principles. In the article employee engagement is referred to as "the ability to capture the heads, hearts, and souls of your employees to instill an intrinsic desire and passion for excellence". Sounds great doesn't it? The engagement model seems quite simple:

• Do you know what is expected of you at work? Do you have the right materials/equipment to do your work right?
• Do you have the opportunity to do your best every day?
• Were your efforts at work recognised or praised in the last 7 days?
• Do your opinions count towards change (small and major) at work?
• Does your supervisor seem to care about you as a person?
• Have you given an opportunity to develop and grow in the last 6 months?

These basic questions are all controlled by your immediate supervisor or manager. Even if not spelled out in words, your boss displays the organisational values, purpose and mission through their actions. Your boss gives you sufficient freedom to innovate. Your boss sells your ideas (crediting you of course!) in forums where you cannot do so yourself. Your boss looks after your well-being in terms of your development. While executive management can try and regulate and control organisational culture, the impact at lower level is felt far greater by the average employee who has to engage directly with their manager/supervisor. Its is through this person that you feel engaged, energised and focussed on doing the best you can.

Within the elections environment, with the associated pressures, it can become easy to bully subordinates into following an instruction-based approach, where you "do as you are told and don't ask any questions". There are many experiences that can be recounted where the politics of the situation demands prudence of such a nature that employees should not be allowed to make decisions. This is the view of a manager who wishes to control the entire workplace, who acts out of insecurity rather than out of confidence in the collective value of his/her staff. This manager is focussed more on personal glory than lifting all employees to their best levels. Unfortunately this approach is all too common. Based on bad role models, it is an easy management style to adopt when things get tough. And it is precisely this autocratic management style that will hamper the development of the elections profession and institutions. Valuable experience and competence will be lost to the elections world due to poor managers.

When last did you receive a compliment from your manager or supervisor? Was it in the last 7 days? Did your receive positive feedback on how well you are doing? Have you received constructively feedback on your weak points? We are not talking here of lofty and grand visions and missions. These ideals are important (see my first blog article) to inspire and attract employees. But here we are talking about simple one-to-one engagements where managers can make a real difference. This the the coal-face where performance improvement finds real value.

And if you can achieve this with permanent staff in central and provincial offices, how can this be done with temporary staff working in polling stations? How are they inspired, motivated, engaged to deliver on the ideals of electoral democracies? How do you instill the core values and purpose in a presiding officer or precinct commissioner to do their best in a polling station miles away from your control and scrutiny? I'd like to hear your opinions. Add your comments by clicking the "comments" link below this article (unfortunately) on the website.

Capture the learning from older generations

Recently I wrote about baby boomers retiring and attracting new employees to EMBs. There is another dimension to this. How do we capture the relevant learning from older generations? In one EMB that I've worked with, the most experienced election administrator reaches retirement age at the same time as the next major election. What is being done to capture the wealth of knowledge that exists in his mind. Time has shown that his keen electoral instincts have been bred through years of experience and exposure. With the re-appointment of the Chairperson of the Kenyan Electoral Commission recently, there also came a shock announcement that he is retiring after the coming December elections. The same reality confronts many of the senior and executive management and commissioners in these EMBs across the globe. The older generation is retiring with all their knowledge, expertise and experience.

While one should not delay such inevitable change, there is a significant cost of such retirement in the elections context where the timelines are unforgiving and mistakes even less so. In the next six years, people between 41 and 59 will start leaving the elections profession, just they are doing in other industries. Despite the fact that people are now retiring at a later age than 60, the loss in their participation rates and declines in economic efficiency will mean a decrease in value to the organisation. Opportunities will naturally open up to correct areas such as gender and other imbalances in staffing levels. One could also see an increase in outsourcing of certain functions as the expertise around these functions retires and prove difficult to replace. One solution is to simply just employ the younger generation and have them make mistakes and learn. This philosophy has worked over the years, but really doesn't show that we've learnt much except to allow others to fail and repeat out mistakes. In this day and age such an approach needs the support of the older generation to lend a helping hand to decrease the impact of such mistakes. If this older generation doesn't exist, then what happens? Are such mistakes allowable in the elections context?

The use of specialist education and training programmes such as BRIDGE are critical in getting new people up to speed quickly but this also has its limitations without a broader strategic framework around these matters. Executive management in EMBs need to start asking critical and strategic questions of their workforce:

• What are your EMB’s demographics (age, gender, position, years in position and anniversary date)?
• What are your EMB’s retirement policies? Is early retirement encouraged or discouraged?
• What mechanisms and programs must be put in place now to capture key competencies and critical work knowledge of employees who will be retiring?
• Demographic trends show that you may be faced with large groups of both very young workers and very old workers. Will these two groups have different learning needs? Are you prepared to customize your current programs?
• What is the gender breakdown by position? Do specific positions have gender imbalance? Are there programs to correct these imbalances?
• Is your organization positioned to meet the need of the over-60 voter segment? How will this change your organisation? What new skills and competencies will this change require?

Source

Ultimately the question that must be addressed is how does one go about capturing the learning of the older generation in a meaningful way that respects their dignity and at the same time does not patronise the younger generation.

Self-importance in elections

Election management bodies (EMBs) wield a lot of power. As the referee and key player in the elections game, they often call the shots. From deciding the location of voting stations, to staffing and training, to counting procedures and results processing. In most countries they possess a powerful mandate awarded to them by law. Public scrutiny and accountability comes in the form of political party watchdogs, domestic and international observer groups, funding structures such as national treasuries or parliamentary committees and a handful of NGOs that understand the elections machinery.

The legal mandate creates an environment where there is limited competition in the area of elections management. EMBs therefore can choose to improve or not to improve the way they run elections. With public scrutiny only being focussed on the EMB when there is an election, it really becomes easy work between elections. Limited routine scrutiny and no competition can result in an over-inflated sense of self-importance. EMBs can easily slip into a mode of improving their internal workings and cultivating their own internal bureaucracies rather than focussing outward and attending to their major constituents, i.e. voters, potential voters and political parties. With a major dip in funding between elections, internal improvements become easier to tackle. A new bureaucracy is the thing which is chased in the face of less funding, rather than more innovative ways to involve and educate voters or political competitors. One only needs to take a look at the dominant activities within an EMB or the major discussions at management retreats. Is it on strategy or compliance-driven? A quick analysis of such events will indicate whether EMBs are inwardly focussed or outward. Ultimately actions speak louder than words.

How do we attract a new generation?

Many years ago I finished my training as an archaeologist. Fully qualified I was raring to take on the world. Realising that job opportunities were few and far between I joined a non-governmental organisation specialising in labour law matters in the agricultural sector. I cut my teeth developing training materials for farm workers and paralegals for many years before moving to another part of the country and new challenges. For 18 months I developed national training programmes for the community police sector and then also on small business development for local government. I joined the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa where I began an eight-year stint involved in various operations, including planning, voting and counting, results, registration, training and international liaison--a well-rounded education of experiences.

By the time I left I was seeing a new crop of people joining the organisation, all of them eager and raring to go, just as I was. Except... They are more ambitious, have very different experiences to mine (in a post-apartheid South Africa) and seem far less likely to do an eight-year stint in the Commission. Yet they are the axle around which elections will be run in the future. Their energy needs to be harnessed and encouraged in a way that ensures their growth and continued interest in doing elections work. As elections becomes a profession, we need to be focussing on this issue of the new generation of election administrators. They represent the youth, whom many EMB (election management bodies) are battling to involve and regenerate in their voters' rolls or registers. With time they become the new face of the organisation. How do we attract them and adapt our notions of management to retain them as the next generation of election workers?

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