ENDEAVOR
Sonny Coloma
When the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak triggered a prolonged Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine, employees of Pandayan Bookshop – on their own initiative – began making face shields from basic office supply materials and distributed these for free to customers in Metro Manila, Central Luzon, Southern Luzon and Cagayan Valley.
Pandayan Bookshop is a chain of stores that was established by Gerardo Cabochan, Jr. in 1993. It has a unique mission: Maging kabalikat ng kabataan tungo sa kabutihan at karunungan (To be the partner of the youth toward goodness and knowledge). Its vision: Maging pambansang tatak para sa kapwa (To be a national brand in caring for others).
Pandayan derives its its extraordinary vision and mission from the Kapwa Management Model anchored on the Filipino concept of shared identity, “wherein the primary processes are pakikipagkapwa-tao (dignifying relations with others) and pagkamakatao (having compassion towards fellowmen).”
Its founder explains: “Pandayan is designed to serve and help employees find meaning in life, mainly by living a virtuous life and making a difference in the lives of others. A meaningful life energizes employee creativity, a stimulus that leads to extraordinary customer service, innovation and greater profitability for the company.”
Its employees are encouraged to pursue their individual life dreams, Pangarap sa Buhay: “Every regular employee should be able to save enough to own a house, send their children to good schools, eat nutritious food, wear decent clothes, and enjoy leisure time.” Enablers are an incentive based compensation program; Sarilikha, an employee-owned credit cooperative; and 10 Daliri, another employee initiative that makes products sold in Pandayan stores.
Pandayan fosters a Kultura ng Tagumpay (culture of success) that permeates its management practices and leadership principles and driven by core values such as honesty, industry, courtesy, caring, focus, engagement, dedication, and accountability.
Reflecting on how the pandemic has drastically altered economic activity, Jun Cabochan offers a unique approach to change: Recognize the primacy of frontliners or customer-facing employees. Business owners and bosses depend on foot soldiers to carry out stratagems for thriving and surviving. The real heroes are those who directly deliver the valuable product or service to the customer’s doorstep. He explains his fresh insights through eight points or principles:
Point 1. Execution is the key management reality. Without execution nothing happens.
Point 2. Customer-facing employees complete the execution process. They determine if customers will be delighted, simply satisfied, or disappointed.
Point 3. The contribution to execution by customer-facing employees such as store clerks and waiters is often discounted because they are viewed as mere muscles expected to obey their superiors’ bidding. They are not expected to think or create at a high level.
Point 4. The low regard for customer-facing employees arises mainly because they are perceived as lacking in education, coming from the low-income group, and not talented enough to get a better job. The same low regard is extended to ambulant vendors, spa workers, traffic enforcers, and many others.
Point 5. Frequently, the only clear difference between customer-facing workers on one hand, and owners and managers on the other hand – whatever the size of the business: micro, small, medium, or large – is the quality of school education. In native creativity, intelligence, and talent everyone follows the bell curve. Everyone deserves equal respect.
Point 6. The empowerment of front-line workers and the emergence of their creativity can improve any business and lead to the success of the enterprise.
Point 7. We must get away from the myth that employees in the head office are more important than workers in the field and thus, should be paid more than people in the field. The salaries of head office people come from the revenue generated by field workers. Working together as equal partners, functional groups and operating groups can maximize productivity.
Point 8. By leaning on a bias for front-line workers, we incline the business toward optimum performance. Compensating the true worth of the customer-facing workers in terms of pay and humane treatment activates this leverage for radical change.
Cabochan points out: “Through a bias for front-line customer-facing workers, we address the needs of a large segment of the poor in the country. Their progress sparks a ripple effect in society as they acquire the ability to help others materially.
Honored recently by his classmates from Ateneo de Manila grade school class of 1970, he said: “The Pandays have gone beyond being retail workers to becoming community volunteers, and to being self-sacrificing frontliners during the pandemic. Imagine if hundreds of thousands of government employees performed to the best of their Kapwa values. If the intention of every government worker is to live a life that matters and the system is geared to enable them to achieve it, our country will be the envy of the world. There is much work to be done.”