If you can’t pay interns as an SME help them build social capital

Each day I open my email I usually receive a couple dozen of messages from young graduates or even industry veterans who are looking for internship and or work opportunities at Viffa Consult.

Over the years we have made attempts to establish an internship program that takes in at least 3 interns under management training for a period of 6 months to immerse them to the world of entrepreneurship support through research, consultancy and training as we shape them for future leadership roles.

A major pain point for us and I’m sure for many small medium businesses is the lack of resources to keep business afloat leave alone support fully paid interns.

Kenya has a poverty rate of over 30 percent with a majority of employment coming from micro, small to medium sized businesses roughly coming to 16 million people. Further of all new jobs in 2021 over 80 percent were created by small businesses with the balance being formal corporate and public sector.

To show the magnitude, teachers in Kenya take the lion’s share of public sector wage bill and are less than 1 million in total with public primary schools having 218,077 in 2020 and public secondary schools and teacher training to 113,200  in 2020 according to 2021 economic survey by Kenya national bureau of statistics.

This means that as much as small businesses are hard pressed to offer decent wages they are still the best hope for employment and must find creative ways of attracting, motivating and retaining fresh talent.

It is given that SMEs cant afford to pay top dollar or shilling to employees and interns compared to larger corporates, NGOs and the likes but on the other hand as much as junior employees and interns need the money they most importantly need experience as well as networks or social capital which has proven can sustain one’s career or business.

I personally have deployed these innovative ways to motivate my team and occasional interns that we have  had the opportunity to pass through our hands.

I will share some they may not be exhaustive nor work for all small businesses  but you can give them a try;

First from a salary point of view we try to ensure that the intern is able to live off the little we give by being flexible with number of hours they come to work since transport is a major expense sometimes taking over 50 percent off their wages. Over time we have developed a way to ensure work is delivered to standard in terms of quality and on time.

Second is we try to ensure that at the very least there is tea in the office available to all to keep one going even in situations where one doesn’t have money to buy lunch.

Third is we try to get a sense of personal goals of incoming interns and in most cases has nothing to do with the job at hand. Some say they want to be content creators, make up artist and many others stuff. Based on this we try to support these dreams sometimes by giving them a day off , sharing business knowledge on how to scale these ideas, connections as the case may be all to ensure they feel appreciated and that we care.

To help interns build social capital, we as much as possible allow them to;  join client inception, delivery and close out meeting, attend industry networking sessions, attend free and affordable trainings and even attend informal coffee meetings with industry colleagues and potential clients and even attend coaching sessions that we offer young and upcoming entrepreneurs running other SMEs  and start-ups.

I can attest that based on these sessions several interns who have passed through Viffa have landed new job opportunities and continue to scale their careers and businesses based on our continued support as well as through the network they got working for us.