I welcome HM's titah on the re-evaluation of the public sector's staff. It is high time that a PROPER human resource auditing is made on each department. I must say it is not easy and it needs expertise. From my too little experience, a long time ago I was involved in the development of a long-term planning of an institution. One of the exercises was to make a long-term projection of the number of staff needed in each department. So out we went asking each department to give us the details of their staff projection. And you just couldn't believe the ridiculous numbers some departments put on their projection! For example, the ratio of clerks to an officer was like 2:1 or sometimes 3:1!
I honestly believe that the work force in the public sector is unbalanced. Take my current workplace for example (the situation is improving I must say), I can put the human resources into 3 categories with the relevant percentage:
1. Admin staff including clerks- 50%
2. Officers with their own specific portfolio (but who end up doing admin stuff either voluntarily or involuntarily)- 40%
3. Thinkers or policy-makers- 10% or less!
And you would have thought that by having a 90% admin, anything admin would run out smoothly..He** NO! And you would also have thought that since there are so many clerical staff, all the nitty-gritty of work such as photo-copying, faxing, data-inputting etc will be done quickly... haha DREAM ON!. I personally blame the HODs. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Forget 'jaga hati'. How many times have u seen the staff in the government departments having leisure - reading the magazine, chatting, eating and drinking in groups? 90% of the time in my case. And yet you can almost hear the same lament of each HOD, "we don't have enough staff".
Often, it actually makes me wonder, do we need MORE staff? I do however think that we need more THINKERS, policy-makers, researchers who are expert and/or at least have relevant qualifications to do their work. Enough admin. And enough job-qualification mis-match! After 10 years you only end-up of having dead wood who constantly think that 'life is not fair'.
I would be very interested to know the outcome of the reports. I would like to see that the numbers of policy-makers in each department go up. And at the same time, find a mechanism to ensure that the current staff is optimally utilized.
But then who am I to say? I'm just a mom and still at school..hehe
Salaam.
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2 comments:
Generally agree with your thoughts.
I guess the challenge is to do a "proper" audit. Change management is hard by itself (i.e. trying to make people & habits change) but trying to measure & benchmark roles and functions is no easy task. I just hope it is done comprehensively with proper and clear benchmarks, as well as within a realistic time line.
Agreed with your comment, in fact that is what I am doing at the moment, requesting all HODs to give me their staff projection and professional developments required to upgrade the present staff so that they can do their job professionally. BUT I did emphasised that we do NOT need more division IV (support staff! IF possible we can retrench them, especially those "deadwood" (including some B@ officers)! Retrench???? it is NOT in our public service vocaubulary! I wish this will change and make the public service MORE professional rather than welfare services! Then again working in public sevices is "WHO" you know and not "WHAT" you know!!! sad! but never mind I am near my retirement! ... Regards rom your colleague
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