HORADANDO LOS PLIEGUES DE NUESTRO PENSAMIENTO

This category comprises of staff turnover rate; student personnel; and staff development procedures. These are discussed below.

4.2.3.1 Staff turnover rate

CRS employ volunteers who sometimes do not have other jobs, thus leading to a high staff turnover rate. This is because stations are unable to pay volunteers a living wage and in that way compelling the volunteers to take 9 to 5 jobs. Anthony elaborates on his experience with personnel leaving his employ:

With most community stations, staff turnover is massive. We found that in the honeymoon period, first three months, the people are motivated and we usually lose about 10 to 20% in the first month. Then they drop off considerably, after three months we are left with about 30% of the original staff that would have agreed to join the station (Anthony (station manager), 29/08/2016).

The above statement reflects some of the struggles encountered by community stations. The stations are unable to pay volunteers stipends, which results in a high staff turnover. The turnover can have some dire consequences for the community stations, such as the need to train staff continually, failure to air programmes due to employee resignations, and failure to present the organisation as a distinct entity owing to the constant introduction of new on and off-air staff. Krüger et al. (2013) recommend the establishment of simple contracts that give the station enough notice about a staff member’s intention to move on as one of the effective ways of curbing sudden departures. The notice period would offer the station sufficient time to plan for the replacement of those leaving the station.

Station A’s station manager (Anthony) also observed that although a high staff turnover rate may create anxiety for other station managers, for him new staff members created opportunities for management to make abrupt staffing changes without the need to explain themselves. As Anthony suggested, he usually has new staff after a six-month period, which allows him to implement changes to the station. Even though Anthony is satisfied with the high staff turnover rate at his station, Fraser and Estrada (2011) state that staff sustainability is essential for community radio.

4.2.3.2 Student personnel

Student personnel stems from the reality that tertiary institution students service campus- based CRS. This means that such students have opportunities for social mobility and may end up assuming managerial positions over time. The participation of university students as amateur broadcasters also implies that there would be a need for sufficient management training to reduce the amount of supervision needed over time. Station B attests to this observation:

I have a young and inexperienced management team, which is one of the reasons why I was pushing for them to start going to the leadership classes so they can really understand leadership rules. A number of them do not understand and take them (management positions) for granted. Nevertheless, I have accepted the fact that I work with students and have moved on (Boitumelo (station manager), 26/10/2016).

Even though the employment of students at campus-based community stations is indicative of the realisation of the principle ‘CRS, for the community, by the community’, this comes with a number of challenges, which cannot be ignored. Students are costly in terms of money, time and training (Gerlich, 2002) and the situation is aggravated by the fact that as university creations, the community stations under study cannot escape hiring students. Although not established in our study, students tend to struggle to balance time between their studies and duties as radio employees (Mavhungu, 2009). Therefore, managerial training is also critical in order to equip students with time management and improve efficiency in task organisation. Such investment by the stations would then ensure that the novice managers are able to influence, motivate and guide other employees in their activities focused on achieving the stations’ goals (Ferreira et al., 2015).

4.2.3.3 Staff development procedures

Staff development procedures capture the induction process of novice broadcasters to the radio industry as well as the operations and procedures of these small stations. These

often manifest in the offering of intensive training to the new recruits. The observation was that some new employees do not have experience in the broadcasting industry. As a result, the initial training that they received is of outmost importance in ensuring that listeners receive a quality broadcasting service. Station A’s manager elaborated on the training process they embark on after recruiting employees:

So what we do is we select many people, they go through training, then we invest the time, we train those people, we send them into programmes, they do shadowing. We have a training manual, which explains exactly how everything works, our style of doing things, how the computer works, it is quite a thick thing. We start at 08h00 when we finish we finish. Therefore, I had to do from radio: what is presenting, what is radio right through to interviewing in one day. – (Anthony (station manager), 29/08/2016).

One of employees attests to the above statement:

Usually, they (management) instil more training before you are brought into the studio. Before you get a show, they will choose you to be in the station but before you get the actual show, they will make sure you go through training for about a month or two (Anda (presenter), 30/08/2016).

The above-discussed training enables these incubators of commercial radio station broadcasters to produce quality broadcasting to their communities. The provision of this training is in consonant with the popular claim that organisations that offer various learning opportunities assist the employees to perform better in their jobs (Jacobs & Washington, 2003) than those that do not do so. The manner in which Station A conducts its staff training indicates that they invest in the development of their employees. They ensure that they prepare them thoroughly in order for them to be prepared and competitive in the industry. This mirrors Jacobs and Washington’s (2003) observation that successful companies achieve their success due to their willingness to commit substantial amounts of their resources to employee development programs.