RAF Christmas parties 
Just when you think the Road Accident Fund can no longer surprise you, somehow it finds a way.
Fresh from all of the suspensions, revelations and lamentations about the fund’s financial plight, News24 is now reporting that it spent nearly R4-million on a staff party.
In one of those wonderful details that really explains what is going on here, it seems the RAF spent R40,000 on what was labelled “executive drinks”.
What were they given? Was it a bottle of French champagne each? Perhaps a bottle of Irish whiskey per person?
This is the kind of thing that only a government entity would do.
No client-facing company would dare be in such a bad financial situation, such a publicly bad position, and be spending money as if it were single malt.
The sad thing about the RAF is the human toll, because the human story is really quite something.
The Standing Committee on Public Accounts inquiry into the RAF has heard all about how its former CEO, Collins Letsaolo, bullied people and strong-armed them into doing the wrong thing.
Read more: Scopa hears how RAF accounting sleight of hand buried billions in debt and claims
This person, so big and brash and a bully, a person who drove employees to tears, is now too scared to answer questions under oath.
He has gone to ground. Despite being on the receiving end of a subpoena, he cannot be found.
This is despite all of his posturing and lies about how he had done nothing wrong.
I have only contempt for someone who does this; who bullies people and then runs away like a small child when the time for accounting comes.
While Parliament continues its search for him, I do think many firms are pondering the wisdom of having an annual Christmas party.
Obviously, lawyers will always advise you not to do it. Telling you can’t do something is what lawyers do. But they’ll point to the idea of employees being offered alcohol and the possible consequences of that.
I have to say, though, being fully human, and thus not a lawyer, I’m all for staff parties.
First, they’re fun. It’s important to be able to have fun with people you work with. It makes you work with them differently, and more productively, afterwards.
It also helps to let off steam. If you’ve all been working tightly together, when you can finally relax, and do what a friend refers to as “getting your kakkie-peopies out and your sonstreelitjies in”, you’ll all be more productive afterwards.
But more than that, you can also end up talking about things in the company with people from other departments. With your guard down.
The value of this is huge. Often people in different sections of a company won’t know each other well, and won’t know the finer details of what they’re dealing with. And chance meetings and discussions can lead to huge insights into problems.
Sometimes potential solutions to problems bedevilling one department will be fixed just because someone discussed it with someone in another department over an executive drink.
Or, more importantly, potentially disastrous decisions can be avoided because someone was honest enough to spell out what would happen if management went down a particular road.
However, I do have huge caveats.
I wouldn’t go too extravagant. All that does is make workers wonder if they would prefer to be given the money in cash, rather than having it spent on them at a party.
And once you go down that road it’s hard to come back.
I would also caution against having different sections or budgets or drinks for different categories of worker. If I were a CEO or a senior manager, I would make a point of being seen queuing for drinks with everyone else.
But if you drink only sparkling water, don’t think adding a slice of lemon makes you look human. A beer in hand, even a non-alcoholic one, or a glass of wine that you nurse all night, or even something colourful (a rock shandy for instance), sends a completely different message.
But I get really worried when companies have “sections” that give the impression of being exclusive. If you do that you’re just saying some people are better than others, and always will be all the time.
Clearly this is what the RAF did at its party. And that must tell us something about its culture. About how a CEO was able to bully people and get away with it.
And is now too scared to answer questions about it. DM