Think long-term
POLITICIANS are being urged to think outside of the five-year election cycle when it comes to making decisions about the country.
This is the view former Chairman of the Productivity Council, Dr. Akhentoolove Corbin who weighed in on the BERT Programme, making reference to the retrenchment exercise, as he participated in a SALISES policy forum at the University of the West Indies recently.
“What we want is sustainable growth of these small islands. And right now we need not a transformation, we really need some revolutionary change.”
“Politicians make decisions that are politically wise based on the five-year cycle, but I think Barbados is at a stage where now we love Barbados so much, even as politicians, and be prepared to make decisions that are in the interest of the people of Barbados in terms of the long-term and that is what should be driving our strategic decisions and policy.”
Saying that the restructuring process should be strategic, he queried whether all public sector workers at the different levels were engaged so that they understand what this recovery programme was intended to accomplish.
“Have we engaged them to hear their views and opinions, because you might be amazed, junior workers within the public sector might have such brilliant ideas that they can contribute to the first phase of the programme. But if we have the traditional top-down hierarchy, which I think still exists, my concern is that we go through the same cycle [and] that the first phase, second, third phase, fourth phase and we are basically a spinning tot in mud.”
He stressed that eliminating certain jobs is more than just retrenching staff, but is essentially restructuring the entire organisation.
Dr. Corbin says he has been conversing with people from institutions that have lost staff from the front line during the retrenchment exercise and say “look what they have done to us”.
“People see it as additional work. The point I am making here is that the process of restructuring should be strategic in that once you have removed certain positions, there needs to be a human resource strategy that says this is how work will be reallocated so that the perception of workers who remain is one that they see as being fair and not you are putting additional work on me without discussing with me and engaging,” he opined.
Dr. Corbin says that he believes in the concept of “shared leadership”. “That this concept of a leader in charge and giving instructions or pronouncing policy is outdated. We know in the literature that shared leadership is better where anybody within the organisation develops to perform leadership roles. So that the person who is the de-facto leader in terms of nomenclature actually facilitates developing people who become part of the decision making process,” he explained. (JH)