Darren Jamieson:
On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I am speaking with Elda Bajraktari from Albania. Elda works in HR, and she works with businesses and employees to help them better understand their responsibilities and their rights when they are working in Albania.
I’m going to be speaking to Elda about how she got into that business, and also what it was like with the regime change in Albania back in around 1990.
Elda Bajraktari:
I have a cat and I love her so much.
Darren Jamieson:
So, I’m surrounded by cat people. I really am. Cat people everywhere.
Elda Bajraktari:
But apparently you are not a cat person.
Darren Jamieson:
I’m not. I’m not a cat person, no. There’s a cat person in the office today. He’s Hungarian. He’s got loads of cats, yeah.
Elda Bajraktari:
Are you a dog person?
Darren Jamieson:
I am a dog person, yes.
Elda Bajraktari:
I see. I see. I’m a cat person. Maybe this is connected to my inner character, because I feel I can manage a cat easier than a dog.
Darren Jamieson:
And they take less looking after. That’s true.
Elda Bajraktari:
Yes, less looking after. It’s smaller in size. Okay, you can have a small-sized dog, but still, it’s smaller in size. And I feel the connection better with cats, not with dogs. Sometimes I’m even scared.
Darren Jamieson:
No, no. I got into this discussion literally on a call yesterday. If you leave a dog at home and then you get home, your dog is going to be excited to see you. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve left it. You could have left it five minutes, five hours, five days. That dog is going to be excited to see you.
You leave a cat at home, and when you come back, the cat’s like, “What time do you call this? Where have you been? Where’s my food?”
Elda Bajraktari:
My cat at home, she’s waiting for us at the door.
Darren Jamieson:
Everyone says that. Everyone says, “Oh, my cat’s different. My cat loves me.”
Elda Bajraktari:
Yeah, every time. Well, my mum, for example, because I’m living with my mum, when she goes out and she comes back, there is a certain spot where she finds the cat waiting for her every time.
And I’ve also experienced the same. When we go out together and we get back home, she can hear us from very far. Once I park the car, she can hear us, and then she’s at the door waiting for food and giving me some love at the moments I never expect.
Darren Jamieson:
When I’m waiting for food. Come on.
Elda Bajraktari:
We also want food. We also want to be fed. We are also happy when somebody brings us a present or something unexpected.
However, it is true, I’m going home, but I’m not giving her food every time I’m going home. I’m giving her food only when I’m away for three or four hours.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah.
Elda Bajraktari:
But when I’m going in and out, no, I’m not giving her food every time I go in.
Darren Jamieson:
She’ll learn. She’ll learn the pattern.
Elda Bajraktari:
And she still loves me. You cannot imagine the pleasure you get when she hugs my hand in her own hands.
Darren Jamieson:
Looking for food.
Elda Bajraktari:
No, she wants me.
Darren Jamieson:
Of course she does. Of course she does. All cat owners think that. All cat owners think their cats love them. Reality is, if you had a heart attack, she’d eat you. That’s cats for you. They think, “Oh yeah, food.”
Elda Bajraktari:
Excuse me? If I had a heart attack?
Darren Jamieson:
If you had a heart attack, your cat would eat you. That’s cats for you. They think, “Oh yeah, food.”
Elda Bajraktari:
Okay.
Darren Jamieson:
It’s true. Well, I suppose we’d better crack on then, hadn’t we?
Elda Bajraktari:
Yes, go on. I haven’t prepared anything special for today.
Darren Jamieson:
It’s all right. Neither have I.
Elda Bajraktari:
Referring to the last conversation we had together, you said that we don’t go on a special script, but we will follow the conversation.
Darren Jamieson:
Follow the conversation, yeah. So you’re based in Albania, is that correct?
Elda Bajraktari:
I’m based in Tirana, Albania.
Darren Jamieson:
In Tirana, Albania. And you do public speaking?
Elda Bajraktari:
I do human resources, and I do trainings, sessions, workshops, seminars.
Darren Jamieson:
So what is it you like more? Because some people don’t like speaking in front of people. They don’t like people looking at them and having to talk. It’s a common fear that people have. So what made you want to do that?
Elda Bajraktari:
It is true. I also had this fear, actually, until I decided to face it very lately, in 2022. I was invited by my colleagues or by collaborators that knew my skills. I was invited to speak about career development, and this is how I cracked it somehow.
I had the first sessions online, and then I started teaching publicly, or face to face.
Indeed, I love teaching. Every time I had to explain something, either job-related or life-related, to a colleague, to a younger generation, or to explain something to an older generation, I was always labelled as very clear, crystal clear. I was always told, “Oh yes, now I understand it.”
So somehow I have always had the knack of teaching or of showing things, but I was hesitating for two main reasons.
The first reason was because of my career orientation. I was thinking that if I went into teaching, my career success would depend much more on the performance of others rather than on my own performance.
The second thing was a sort of inferiority, in the sense of, am I fully capable, or am I fully knowledgeable on this particular topic if I assume I can address this topic in front of an audience?
However, I have learned the lesson that you cannot be fully knowledgeable about everything and anything on this earth. What you have to do is prepare yourself, focus on the audience’s needs, understand what the audience is looking for, prepare the topics, and have some sources to refer to if you have questions that go beyond the planned conversation or beyond the planned session.
Darren Jamieson:
Because that is a common fear, I think, among people. I hear people that want to do podcasts, for example, but they think, “I can’t do a podcast because why would somebody listen to me? Why would somebody be interested in what I’ve got to say?” And it holds a lot of people back from doing it.
So you said you felt that worry before. You didn’t want to go on and teach, you didn’t want to go on and speak, because you were worried about why people would want to listen.
Elda Bajraktari:
Why would people listen to me? And what would happen if somebody asked me a question and I might not be able to answer that question? Pretending that I should know everything.
Darren Jamieson:
But of course, you don’t need to pretend you know everything. It’s okay not to know stuff.
Elda Bajraktari:
Definitely. But it took me a while to get to this stage. And it took my good friends and my good collaborators, who knew my skills, to really push me and encourage me to go on these sessions, because I would never have done this on my own initiative.
Darren Jamieson:
Because they say with teachers, for example, teachers in school, you as a teacher don’t need to know the whole book that the class is reading. You just need to be one chapter ahead of the students.
Elda Bajraktari:
Yes. In 1998, I graduated in English teaching, and that was quite an achievement for me, coming from the northeast part of the country of Albania, which was, let’s say, very undeveloped.
The regime changed in the 1990s, and in 1998, when I graduated in English teaching, this was quite an achievement for me. I was supposed to go and teach after my graduation.
But then it was a combination of factors. It happened that the Kosovo crisis broke out at that time. There were a lot of humanitarian agencies deploying in the country. They needed English-speaking people to assist with interpretation, translation and office work, and they were paying well.
So this was one reason that took me away from teaching.
But the second reason, which I actually mentioned, was that I was always fearing that my career in teaching would be much more dependent on the students rather than on my own efforts, because I really wanted to be successful.
Darren Jamieson:
Successful.
Elda Bajraktari:
Successful.
Darren Jamieson:
And of course, teachers are only as successful as their students are successful, because you need them to do well for you to do well.
Elda Bajraktari:
Exactly.
Darren Jamieson:
You need them to do well for you to do well. If they don’t do well, something must be wrong with your performance as a teacher as well.
You mentioned the regime change there. That’s quite a hot topic at the moment, particularly with what’s going on in Iran, in terms of possible regime change. What do you remember about that from that time, from 1990, was it?
Elda Bajraktari:
Yes. I was 14 years old at that time. I was very scared. I was afraid, because we were brought up with the ideology that the regime that was in place was the best one. And there was so much uncertainty about what would happen if the regime changed.
Of course, I was young, and I had no right to vote or anything, but the atmosphere was like that.
Later on, I understood that people living in the capital had much more information than us, who were living outside the capital. I come from a town called Kukës. It is in the northeast of Albania and it is bordered with Kosovo, or former Yugoslavia.
There were people who were somehow cheating the regime and were able to watch TV stations from abroad, and they could have some information. They could have more information than myself or my family on what life was like in Western and more developed countries.
But me, myself, and my family, we didn’t have that information. So I was personally scared by the change of the regime.
However, growing up, things changed, and we could see what the benefit really was of the regime changing.
Darren Jamieson:
So at the time, you had no idea what Western life, Western civilisation, was like. You were kept completely in the dark from it.
Elda Bajraktari:
We were kept completely in the dark
Albania suffered the harshest regime, at least if you compare it with former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet republics. We were extremely in the dark. We could not travel. We didn’t know what was going on abroad. We didn’t watch TV from abroad.
So everything was inside the country, apart from a very, very small group that belonged to the very top management of the country. I can say that there must have been only one plane per week departing from our airport, while today you have hundreds of flights per day.
Darren Jamieson:
So what’s your feeling about that time? Do you feel angry? Do you feel upset about what it was like before?
Elda Bajraktari:
I cannot say I feel upset or angry. I can’t say that I have developed real feelings about that time. But I can see the difference. I can see the change.
It is because of that past regime that we are suffering some difficult transitions even after 30 years now. Every change is a change, and people perceive change differently.
To some extent, you can hear people say, “Ah, I miss that time.” You can hear people say they miss something from that time.
What they miss is public order, for example. You can hear people of my age and even older saying, “Oh, we miss the time of public order.”
But one of the worst things of that regime was the discrimination among people because of propaganda issues, or the discrimination of people who were going against the regime. They were left behind in every aspect. They were forced to live in the most difficult conditions. They were forced to leave their areas. They were not given the right to study.
They were left behind in every aspect, and not only the small family where the problem occurred, but the whole larger family connected to them. So this has been the worst thing, I would say. People leaving people behind, discriminating, not respecting human rights, and even going to torture and extremely difficult prison conditions.
Darren Jamieson:
And even despite all of that, there are people that go, “Oh, I miss the public order.” I’m assuming you mean there wasn’t petty crime on the streets, there wasn’t littering, because people wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t dare do that.
Elda Bajraktari:
They wouldn’t dare. But you know, those people who are referring to missing the public order of those years are not the ones who suffered those discriminations that I mentioned before.
Darren Jamieson:
No, I suspect they weren’t.
Elda Bajraktari:
No. So that’s why you have these kinds of categories.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. I remember at the time when Yugoslavia split up. They were supposed to be in the football tournament, the European Championships in 1992. Yugoslavia qualified, but they couldn’t go into it for obvious reasons. Yugoslavia didn’t exist any more as a country. So Denmark went in instead and ended up winning it.
Right now, there’s a World Cup in America, which Iran has qualified for, and obviously there’s possible regime change going on in Iran. Iran is very unlikely to be at the World Cup because it’s in America and America is at war with Iran. It’s all a complete mess.
I’m seeing some parallels between the two situations. Have you got any insight from your perspective, because obviously you were there when it happened, into what’s going on right now with Iran, for example? They have a regime where obviously there’s public order on the streets because people wouldn’t dare, but things are changing. Can you see anything similar?
Elda Bajraktari:
There is a similarity when it comes to regime change. But in Albania’s case, there was no need for extra intervention, if I can call US intervention in Iran extra intervention.
In our country, we had violent turmoil, violent situations, demonstrations, protests on the streets, and people who got hurt. But the change of the regime went on much smoother and lighter than it is presumably going on in Iran.
So despite the fact that we were in such a harsh regime, the change was not that violent and that bloody as it is going now in Iran.
Darren Jamieson:
That’s good. How quickly did it happen?
Elda Bajraktari:
In Albania, in less than one year. I think it was a matter of months, if I can recall it correctly. It was a matter of months.
It started in December, or late November, then it went on December, January. In February, we had the demonstrative destruction of the monument of the former dictator. In March, we had the first opposition party established. And I think it was April or May when we had the elections.
Again, in the elections of 1991, the ruling party won the elections. But in one year, the regime collapsed completely. We had re-elections and then we had the opposition coming into power.
Darren Jamieson:
So it didn’t really last too long. What was the first big change that you noticed from your day-to-day life?
Elda Bajraktari:
From day-to-day life, the intangible thing was freedom of speech. This was very obvious.
People were free to speak. They could share their opinions
I remember my father, he used to be part of the former regime party. He was a member of the Communist Party at that time.
I can recall when I was little, he was always in fights with one of my uncles, saying, “Stop. Don’t speak, because you risk going to prison. You risk this, you risk that.”
But later on, with the regime change, I didn’t hear these conversations any more, which means that people really felt the freedom of speech. They could share their opinions. They could share their dissatisfaction.
Later on, we also had economic development because of private businesses, because of movement, free movement, products and goods. So we started to be more exposed to Western countries, and we have seen a lot of economic development also.
We have seen a lot of competition in parallel with this. There is a lot of competition, in the sense that you have to fight to be successful in your field of expertise, or in what you want to build. If you want to make money, or if you want to make a career, or if you want to make a good name or reputation, you have to put a lot of effort into it. It’s not that easy.
Darren Jamieson:
I always wonder what the changes are like on ground level. My girlfriend’s Ukrainian and she’s obviously in the UK because of things that are going on in Ukraine, but she mentioned how not that long ago they had very little money.
Well, sorry, they had money, but they couldn’t buy anything. There wasn’t stuff in the shops. There wasn’t bread, there wasn’t milk. You couldn’t spend money. Then suddenly Ukraine changed from being a country where you couldn’t buy anything to a country that had everything it needed.
It was a very, very rapid change where you could go into the shop and buy whatever you wanted. It always surprises me what it’s like on ground level. You see all the big things about statues being toppled and governments changing and leaders changing, but what are the little things that you don’t necessarily know? Does the price of bread change, for example? Are you able to buy milk? What are the very small things that you notice?
Elda Bajraktari:
It is true. We also experienced that. That’s why I said economic development, mentioning that from a country where you couldn’t buy anything, even food was in portions. So you could buy only, let’s say, one kilogram of meat per week, and you couldn’t buy more.
Darren Jamieson:
It was rationed.
Elda Bajraktari:
Exactly. Then you could buy everything. So you have everything in the market. You can go and look for all sorts of milks, meat, cheese, dairy, fruits, even fruits that are not produced in the country but imported.
So we also experienced this, even in the very early years after the regime changed. I’m not speaking about now, because now we are very Westernised. We are very equal. Every time we travel abroad, we do not feel any big change in the sense of access that we get to clothes, food, machines, cars, vehicles, transport. There isn’t much change.
But in the very early period after the regime change, yes, you could buy anything here.
Darren Jamieson:
And I’m guessing it’s something that you would never want to go back to.
Elda Bajraktari:
Definitely. No.
Darren Jamieson:
To the previous regime?
Elda Bajraktari:
To the past regime? No. No. Never. Ever.
Darren Jamieson:
It’s interesting because there are always some people that go, “Oh, it was better then.”
Elda Bajraktari:
Yeah. But it is very, very few of them. And this generation, I mean, I’m speaking about almost 30 years now. So those who were 50 at that time are 80 this year. The generations that were really experiencing, or really enjoying, if I can use this word, the time of the regime, they are passing away.
Darren Jamieson:
We had a problem here some years ago where we voted, obviously, to leave the European Union because there were a lot of old people who thought life was better back then, and they’re the ones that voted to leave primarily. It was the younger people that didn’t want to.
So the older ones voted to leave, then they died and left us with the problem, which was nice.
Elda Bajraktari:
And you are regretting now?
Darren Jamieson:
Well, I certainly am. The UK? That’s the thing, it depends who you ask. I think if they did a vote again, we’d vote to stay. Because a lot of the people who voted to leave are dead. They’re older. A lot of the younger people wanted to stay.
Nobody can point to a single benefit, a single advantage, to leaving. Not one.
Elda Bajraktari:
Interesting.
Darren Jamieson:
Not one. So yeah, it was a massive mistake. It should never have been proposed that we vote for it.
Elda Bajraktari:
Interesting. The European Union is our aspiration. Albanians want to be part of Europe.
Darren Jamieson:
Well, there’s a space. We’ve left you one. You can have it.
Elda Bajraktari:
Yes, we are aspiring to get into the European Union. Since 2009, we have had the visa-free regime, and we are travelling. For example, I have experienced myself what it was like to travel before that and after that.
It’s such a relief. Before that, you had to file an application to get a visa. You could get it, you could not get it. You had to arrange with the accepting party from the other side.
Nowadays, it’s very easy. You just buy a ticket, you go on a plane and off you go. You enjoy.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah.
Elda Bajraktari:
So we are aspiring to get into the EU in order to get the other freedoms that come from working, from living. Because you can travel, but you cannot live in another country. And we are also aspiring to get the regulatory environment and everything to be 100% European Union.
Darren Jamieson:
Right. So there are a lot of benefits to it. It’s just a shame this country didn’t realise that when we were asked to vote on it.
Elda Bajraktari:
It’s a pity. There are a lot of demands as well. Because of my experience, I am somehow aware of the chapters that you have to go through, what you have to prove and what the regulation is.
So there is a lot of legislation approximation, but this is the easiest part. Because after the approximation, you have to enforce that legislation. You will have to inspect if the legislation is there and is being properly implemented.
Because of that, people want to be part of the EU so that it is somehow a guarantee that everything will be according to the books and everything will be properly managed and ruled.
Darren Jamieson:
It’s definitely a good thing in my eyes anyway. It’s just not everybody in this country agrees.
Let’s talk about what you do. Let’s talk about HR. That’s exciting. That’s what people want to know. So, is it businesses you work with on an HR level? Do you work with business owners with HR, or is it just in a teaching capacity?
Elda Bajraktari:
I do both business owners and teaching capacity. It depends on the projects.
Darren Jamieson:
What sort of industries or businesses do you work with?
Elda Bajraktari:
I have done retail, so retail sales. I’ve done pharmaceuticals, both distribution and retail. I have done marketing, advertising, services, information, and again retail sales but industrial. It was do-it-yourself, basically.
Private-owned companies run by Albanian owners, and sometimes Albanians and other international shareholders.
For the teaching, or let’s say the training sessions, they have been either supported by national organisations operating in the country, or even international organisations operating in the country, that were targeting HR or audiences from different companies or different entities. It could be mixed: private, public, corporate.
Darren Jamieson:
What’s it like for employees in Albania? Because in the UK, employees have a lot of rights. You have rights as soon as you go for an interview, for example. So what’s it like in Albania compared to what it’s like in the UK?
Elda Bajraktari:
In Albania, employees have a lot of rights too. The rights do not start from the interviewing stage. The rights start from the employment stage.
However, these rights are somehow connected to longevity with the company. So the longer you are with a company or with an employer, the more rights you have, and the more difficult it becomes to terminate the contract.
Here, employment is regulated by a law, which is the labour law, and this labour law is used by the majority of private companies, the private sector, and a few entities of the public sector.
Meanwhile, we have another law, which is the law on civil servants, that is applicable for public administration. There are similarities between the two laws when it comes to the rights and employee rights. Again, employees have a lot of rights.
We also have some special laws regulating professions like police and military. So apart from the general employment law, they have particular laws developed for regulation. It is called special law for police or special law for military.
The employee rights here are from the working hours, how many hours they can work, when they should rest, how they should rest, the leave, paid leave that they have or unpaid leave that they can have, absences they can have, or absences which can be paid, especially in cases when you are sick.
There are absences that cannot be paid. Again, they are connected with sickness, but for a longer period they can be absent without pay and not lose the job. This is related to family members or to children, the right to look after children that are up to a certain age, whether they are born children or adopted children.
Then it will be performance management. Then it will be behaviour. Then it will be the job they have to do. What is the communication?
You have to be very, very careful in the whole employment relationship management in order to have, first, a fair environment, and then to avoid any potential litigation for the entity that you are responsible for.
Darren Jamieson:
The reason I asked about interviews, for example, is that in this country a lot of people don’t know it, but there are certain questions you can’t ask at a job interview as an employer.
So you can’t ask the interview candidate if they smoke. You can’t ask them if they have children. You can’t ask them if they’re planning to have children, because they’re deemed to be questions that would prejudice you against hiring that person.
So if you’re interviewing a woman who’s planning to have a family, you might not give her the job because you don’t want her to go on maternity leave. If you’re interviewing someone who smokes, you might not give them the job because you don’t want them taking cigarette breaks every hour and losing five minutes of the day.
So you’re not allowed to ask these questions, which most people don’t know in this country. Is there anything similar to that in Albania?
Elda Bajraktari:
There is. This situation is similar to Albania as well. You are not allowed to ask such questions, but this is not something that is sanctioned in the labour law or in such law. It is mainly sanctioned in the laws that avoid discrimination.
For smoking, I have never thought of asking someone if the person smokes or does not smoke. But for women, for example, yes, we are not allowed to ask them about family plans, children and whatsoever.
Honestly speaking, it also depends on the way you set up the conversation and how you start to understand things. The idea is that there is the book, but in the way you pose the conversation, you might be able to find out certain information that you cannot ask directly.
I can tell you that HR is a little bit different here when it comes to private, public sector or corporates. The private sector is a little bit more flexible. They may dare to ask such questions, maybe not directly.
Even in Albania, people are not very aware, or they haven’t been very aware, of their rights
But people are getting more and more aware of their rights as the days pass by.
Even if they don’t know the things themselves, they always have a reference where they can check, who they can consult, who they can ask. This is also subject to the will with which they are going into a relationship. If they are going in with good will into an employment relationship, nothing happens.
But when they join or when they go on with a bad intention, with bad will, in the employment relationship, they will always find ways where to ask, what to ask, how to create a problem, what to create, and this and that.
So getting back, it is true that some of those questions you cannot ask even here. But the fact is that in some ways, in some private sector companies, you manage to get this information through the way you pose the conversation.
Darren Jamieson:
Obviously, a lot of people in this country don’t know those things, and they make mistakes. Mistakes when you’re interviewing somebody or when you’re hiring an employee, and you don’t know the law yourself, can be very costly. You can end up getting sued.
You must have seen some mistakes employers have made in your role. What sort of mistakes have people made in terms of things that can be really costly for them?
Elda Bajraktari:
Are we referring to the interviewing stage?
Darren Jamieson:
Or anything to do with employment. It might be after the employment.
Elda Bajraktari:
Because for the interviewing stage, here there isn’t that much awareness that you can file a case of discrimination for interview questions. This is not the environment so far.
But when it comes to employment, the biggest mistake that is happening here is firing without grounds or unjustified dismissal. It is called termination of the employment contract without justified grounds. This is the most common mistake here, and this is something that costs a lot of litigation to the company.
According to Albanian legislation, employment goes through different stages. You have the first three months, which are the probationary period, and you can terminate the contract with five days’ notice very easily.
When you go to six months, it will be two weeks’ notice. When you go to two years, it will be one month’s notice.
But apart from the notice, you have to respect a so-called procedure on how you terminate. And apart from the procedure, you have to have the cause. So there are three elements you have to combine when you want to terminate.
Most employers are failing in combining the three of them. They might have the reason, but they neglect the procedure, and then you get fined, you get penalised for the procedure. They respect the period of notice, but they forget the procedure. They respect the period of notice, but they do not give you the real cause. They fail to ground the cause for termination.
According to reports, there is a high number of termination cases and termination lawsuits in our courts coming from both public and private sectors. There are also a lot of final court decisions for reinstatement or re-employment which are not implemented by the entities that were found in violation.
Darren Jamieson:
Do employees typically in Albania now know that they’ve got these rights?
Elda Bajraktari:
They do. They do. I have been doing HR since 2006, so it’s almost 20 years now. People’s awareness of their rights has changed extremely fast.
In the last seven or eight years, it hasn’t been that people were not aware of their rights. Now they are fully aware of their rights.
What is still happening is that they are reluctant to go to court, especially the young generation. They are reluctant to go to court, fearing the presumable discrimination that they might have when looking for another job.
Because if the future potential employer finds out that I am in a court case with my previous employer, this future potential employer will fear that our relationship will end up in court as well.
I don’t know how clear I am.
Darren Jamieson:
No, I see what you mean.
Elda Bajraktari:
They are aware of the right, but they are not exercising the right, especially younger generations, because they say, “Oh, I have to go to court. The court takes time. You have the first instance court; it will take you one year or something until you get a decision. Then one of the parties will appeal. Then the appeal will take three years. Then again, the unsatisfied party will go to the Supreme Court. It will take another five years.”
So it will last a lot. Younger generations will say, “Oh, I’m not going to spend 10 years in court now. I want to get another job. I want to go on, and I don’t want my future potential employer to think badly of me and to think that I take cases to court.”
Darren Jamieson:
No, I can see that. I can see how people would think that. They don’t want to scupper their chances of getting another good job by people thinking that they’re the problem employee. It’s a shame really, isn’t it? People are missing out on what they’re owed, on what they should be getting, because they’re afraid it’s going to affect their future chances.
Elda Bajraktari:
I’ll tell you a personal experience.
Darren Jamieson:
Okay.
Elda Bajraktari:
I had an employment relationship, and it went on that badly. I am personally in court with my previous employer.
I went on a competition for another role. This is again somehow related to the previous conversation we had together on the kind of questions you can pose during the interview.
I went through all the interview stages. It was an international company established in Albania, but they were legally supported by a local company here in the country.
When I reached the very final stage, I was not asked directly, “Do you have a court case ongoing with your previous employer?” But I was told, “Listen, if you are finally selected, you will be required to provide papers related to court situation and this and that, because this company will not be very fond of people who are in court cases with their previous employers.”
I got the message. I stayed silent because I didn’t want to reveal my own information. But I’m 100% sure that they already knew that I was there, because there are public registers and they should have verified that. I didn’t get the job, even though I went through all the stages of the interview and met the top managers residing abroad. Just because of this, I was cut off.
Darren Jamieson:
That’s a shame, isn’t it?
Elda Bajraktari:
It is a shame. It’s not fair. This is not good, because I have 25 years’ working experience. I’m in HR. I know my rights. I know what’s right and what’s wrong.
And still, after that moment, I felt a little bit shaken in myself, saying, “Okay, was I wrong doing that, or was I right?”
So if this situation put me in doubt of my own actions, imagine what this could do to other people with fewer years of experience, with less knowledge of their rights, and with less awareness of what’s right or wrong.
Darren Jamieson:
Is this something that you look to address when you do your trainings? Are you looking to educate people on their rights as well, so they know and so they don’t make these mistakes themselves?
Elda Bajraktari:
I do. Normally when I do training sessions, I refer to the rights. I refer to dignity. I refer to fair treatment. And I refer to fair treatment in the sense that…
Fair does not really mean to be nice or kind. It means to be fair
What’s right, what’s wrong, what you are entitled to or not entitled to.
One big mistake that is made here in the employment relationship is bad communication. This can be seen both in the private sector, in the public sector, and maybe even in corporates to some extent, because you have personal feelings and personal affiliations interfering and somehow preventing cold, professional communication.
So I’m really pushing hard and saying, “Listen, we are talking about fair. We’re not talking about being lovely or unlovely, or being likeable or unlikeable. We have to be right.”
Darren Jamieson:
And what’s right for somebody is not right for someone else.
Elda Bajraktari:
Of course, because rights start and end. They have a limit. Where my right is over, it is because someone else’s right has its starting point.
So yes, I try to do that. I even have a current engagement now with a public company, and I’m advising on HR issues. I am really careful about what I am advising and really putting a lot of stress on dignity, fair treatment, fair communication, and of course basing everything on the legislation.
Darren Jamieson:
Do you find that most companies, on the whole, want to do the right thing by their employees? They want to be fair?
Elda Bajraktari:
They all say they want to be fair. Who am I to say that they are not doing fair?
But the problem that I personally see is not really with the company as such, but with the people in certain management roles.
I personally believe in management, and I believe that management is a spirit which is somehow transmitted into lower levels.
Things are changing. Companies are somehow obliged to do better things and proper things because of the lack of the workforce. We are facing a lot of immigration, a lot of brain drain, and companies have somehow changed their attention and their attitude towards employees, being more open, more communicative, and sticking to the entitlements.
So they are respecting the entitlements granted by labour legislation, which is good. But the hurting feeling is that this is not coming naturally as a desire, but it is an obligation based on the conditions and based on the market in general.
Darren Jamieson:
That’s an interesting point you just made there. You said you’re experiencing brain drain and immigration. So, correct me if I’m wrong, but is Albania losing potential workforce because they’re leaving Albania?
Elda Bajraktari:
Yes, they are leaving. We are losing a lot of medical staff: nurses, doctors. We are losing a lot of engineers: construction, electrical, mechanical, everything. We are also losing a lot of unskilled workers.
Darren Jamieson:
Is that because they can earn more money elsewhere?
Elda Bajraktari:
Sure. They can earn more money elsewhere. They can build their lives elsewhere, and they can get the basics of living easier elsewhere.
Darren Jamieson:
And that elsewhere, are we talking Germany?
Elda Bajraktari:
Western countries. Germany a lot, UK a lot, Italy, Greece, even Greece. Yes, we have a lot of people living in Greece.
In recent years, Germany has got a lot of medical staff from us, especially nurses. There was a massive outgoing of nurses, doctors as well. We are not producing nurses and doctors to the extent of covering the needs.
There is a gap. You cannot see a proper demand and supply analysis, for example. When I worked for the pharmaceutical sector, we were suffering to get qualified pharmacists because the speed of the business rolling out was so high. You couldn’t get people.
There were only 100 pharmacists being graduated every year from the university. They had to go through the test for licensing. Not all of them were successful, and you cannot hire people who are not licensed.
So let’s say out of 100, you could hire 70. But we were not the only pharma industry. There were many other pharma companies, and there is no change.
So the government, when they are deciding on the quotas for the students, they are not changing, they are not expanding. They’re not saying, “Okay, why 100? Why not 200 or 300?” If you see that the market is expanding this way, you know?
Darren Jamieson:
They’re not changing with the needs.
Elda Bajraktari:
They are not changing with the needs. So this is why we are suffering, and there is no proper supply and demand analysis.
Darren Jamieson:
So that could be a real problem for Albania then.
Elda Bajraktari:
It is a real problem.
Okay, we also have the other side of the coin. There are some predictive analyses. I cannot really base them exactly, but there are some predictive analyses that people will return.
So we had this massive outgoing of nurses, and the expectation is that they will return because they were leaving the country with the expectation that they would go and do their nursing according to our nursing definition, which is only needles, blood pressure, this thing and that thing.
The nurse in our perception does not contain sanitation, cleaning the patient. When our people faced this reality, they got somehow disappointed. They said, “Okay, I’m making money, but this is not the nursing I know. This is sanitation. This is cleaning.” And this went against their expectations, against their aspiration somehow.
But still, there is a real gap in years from the time that they left the country until they will come back. Even when they come back, their reintegration will be difficult, because they will be used to another environment.
No matter how much we are progressing in all the regulations and everything, still, the whole society is different. Their children will not want to come back because they are used to the schools there. So there is an ongoing onion-shaped, or onion-layers, problem in that.
Darren Jamieson:
Wow. Okay. Well, we’re out of time. We could talk about that all day because we’ve got problems here. We’ve got a lot of people coming in to do work, but since Brexit, we’ve lost a lot of people that were skilled workers. We’ve lost a lot of people that do the work that, quite frankly, we’re not very good at.
So we’ve lost a lot of the Polish, for example, and they’re very good at a lot of things, and we’re crap at those things. So it’s really difficult in this country now to find a joiner, a woodworker, because no one’s teaching those skills. No one is learning those skills. The quality craftsmen have gone back to Europe, and we’re really, really struggling to find people who can do that here.
So it’s a similar problem, but from a slightly different angle. But yeah, problems are all over the place. It just needs sorting out somehow, doesn’t it? Somebody needs to get a grip on it.
So Elda, for anyone listening to this who thinks, “I want to talk to you more. I want to reach out to you. I want to work with you. I want you to come in and do talks for me,” what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Elda Bajraktari:
They can reach me on LinkedIn because I’m active there. They can reach me on my Gmail account, which is name and surname at gmail.com. I can share a telephone number, but LinkedIn and Gmail, I think, is enough.
Darren Jamieson:
Perfect. I will put the link for your LinkedIn and the email address in the podcast description. So if you’re watching on YouTube, it’s going to be below in the description. If you’re listening on iTunes, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music, whatever, it’ll be in the show notes below the podcast.
Elda, thank you very much for joining me on The Engaging Marketeer.
About the guest:
Elda Bajraktari is an HR consultant, trainer and public speaker based in Tirana, Albania. Having worked in human resources since 2006, Elda supports businesses, public organisations and employees with employment rights, fair treatment, workplace communication and labour law compliance. Her experience spans sectors including retail, pharmaceuticals, marketing, advertising and public sector advisory work.
Originally graduating in English teaching, Elda began her career working with international humanitarian organisations during the Kosovo crisis, before moving into HR. Today, she delivers training sessions, workshops and seminars designed to help organisations create fairer, more legally compliant workplaces while helping employees better understand their rights. You can connect with Elda here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eldabajraktari/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elda.bajraktari.1/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eldabajraktari/
Email address: EldaBajraktari@gmail.com
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
