Focus: January: challenging month for both employers and employees

There’s always a feeling of a new beginning and reminiscence of the past year in periods like this. December festivities are out, but January becomes more challenging to both employers and employees. It is a dragging and whining month especially for people in more glamorous careers and offices. Mondays are often busy and boring because people will have been storing up their problems over the weekend, says Betty Mutesi, a senior human resource officer with a private bank in Kigali. Like a Monday morning after a heavy weekend filled with orgies (good or bad), the month of January makes many a working class person want to extend the fun of the weekend or December festivities. As a result many employees are most likely to ask for a day off on a Monday or request to have their annual leave in January. For a lot of people the holiday period in December turns into a series of major celebrations with the best, the one on New Years Eve, saved for last. Yet the hangover is carried forward to January. Christmas and New Year cheering does not go too far in professional journalism-especially working for a daily newspaper; the same can be said of other less glamorous but essential careers to society. These forgotten careers include traffic policemen, waiters/waitresses, housemaids and security operatives. Apart from the usual evening drinks at the local bars coupled with old tired jokes, plus a few hours spent acting cupid, Christmas doesnt really happen for many in the aforesaid careers. People in such careers can be excused for being slightly less full of festive season mood. Journalists like soldiers are used to working away from their families; Christmas or weekend does not seem to be such a big deal to them. Medical workers may not be spared of the profession either. Looking around my house there is no tree, decorations, or any other sign of what time of year it is. I can appreciate that it may be a lot harder for my colleagues with children not to be caught up in the celebrations. To such professions, as the December and January holidays approach, we (and my colleagues in less colourful careers) are bound to be more pre-occupied with the Christmas and New Year massages from this religious or political leader, plus why the major wholesale shops increase or reduce prices. Others are checking out why petrol filling stations have increased their prices. Security personnel will spend their nights out keeping watch of the less virtuous members of society from encroaching on other people’s hard earned belongings. While our colleagues in the hospitality industry are kept busy taking care of needs of many clients who will be trying to change their multiple personality syndromes around the end and beginning of years. Many of such people’s nights and ours too, end before midnight as we try to catch up with the election results and violence in Kenya or floods in some remote place. For most of the working executives, the office Christmas party signifies the beginning of the festive celebrations. For others it means the end of any ideas of revelry that we may have had. If they are lucky enough to have an end of year party, they have it way before December or early in the New Year not to get in the way of the busy schedule. Kate Rutaremara, a senior administrator with a European embassy in Kacyiru, says that after the festivities her organisation receives several requests from staff members who want to extend holidays. “We get calls from people about absolutely everything – bereavement, relationship breakdowns, exams, financial pressures. What we see in the New Year is so many people still trying to recover from the excess. It can be a massive anti-climax after the last week and so many people who have been with family and friends now find themselves back on their own. For journalists, this is the busiest timing of the year especially those involved in print media; “This is when the readers have enough time to be home; swing in their hammocks and read all the pages of the newspaper plus the crossword puzzles,” said Felly Kimenyi a senior print journalist in Kigali. Jimmy Muganga, a security guard with Intersec watching a construction facility in Kimiruhura says that in his profession there is no such period as Christmas or weekend. “What happens when we all go for celebrations? Are we not making our jobs irrelevant and leaving them at stake for other people? We even do not have the money to indulge ourselves in holiday celebrations even if we were to go. I have not heard a holiday since I began working 6 year ago,” Muganga says. For others holidays are just part of the bargains of the job, At this time of the year people realise how much time, money and effort they have put into the festive season, and a feeling of disillusionment sets in. We get many people telling us that they cannot face having to organise another Christmas and that they want is to go on a retreat next year. Ruraremara adds. Ends