The pending retrenchment of thousands of temporary workers has revealed the need for performance appraisal systems to be actively used and maintained across the civil service.
This sentiment was shared by Minister of Labour, Senator Dr. Esther Byer Suckoo, following a Workshop on Performance-Based Systems, held yesterday at the Island Inn Hotel, Aquatic Gap, St. Michael.
Addressing current concerns that many valuable workers would be lost because of the imminent cuts, Dr. Byer Suckoo observed that the situation ???emphasises what we were talking about here this morning. We have to set clear tasks, monitor the implementation of those tasks, monitor how people are working and then write it down. Bajan managers don???t want to write down things because they don???t want to be responsible for taking bread out of your mouth???.
While she acknowledged that the Government service did possess its own Performance Review Development System (PRDS), she stressed that it needed to be used efficiently in all departments.
??????the PRDS system has to now be implemented [across the board]; we have to be dedicated to going through it, because this crisis isn???t going to last forever; but to get a performance system and to get productivity levels up to par, we???re going to have to keep at this for the next decade or more???We have to be focused, [because] even after the recession, we [will] still need productivity and we still need performance measurement,??? she said.
nekaelia.hutchinson@barbados.gov.bb