Dear Editor,
The concept and conduct of the once fundamental component of management called ‘Performance Appraisal/Evaluation’ has long been extinct as far as the Guyana’s Public Service is concerned. The formal exercise of studious review of the behaviour and productivity of individual staff, supervisors and executives within and across Ministries, has been unknown to the imperious decision-makers of recent decades. Nor do the professional appointees, qualified as they would have been, seem to have been specifically informed of, or interested in, such an exercise. The lapse in the monitoring of individual, group and organisational productivity fundamentally contradicts the achievement of targets espoused by the political decision-makers at budget time. Perhaps, more importantly, it undermines ambition to achieve what is (euphemistically) called ‘human development’. No one can be applauded (or blamed) for contributing to the employee’s career growth (despite deficiencies). Promotion is quite perfunctory an event, often extraneously decided on, from distanced non-managerial levels.
But there are in fact two critical disarrangements that facilitate the subversion of the once motivational activity of performance evaluation. One is the (political) preference for recruiting employees almost compulsively on contract. The other disincentive must be, of the imposition (called award) of across-the-board increases – an act that makes salary scales but an ongoing (dis)illusion. As other Public (and Private) Sector organisations could authoritatively advise, salary scales are intended to accommodate awards of increases – increments – based on regular well organised performance evaluation. But very contradictorily the Public Service compensation structure, and its management, constitute a myth of historical proportions, with the personnel most affected being Teachers, Doctors, and their medical colleagues, the results of whose performances are sufficiently visible as to make the appraisal exercise virtually superfluous. But even they seem to be disallowed the formal opportunity to remonstrate, advocate, rehabilitate, motivate, importantly themselves, their colleagues and subordinates.
The question arises as to who in these days can boast of being congratulated and specially rewarded for their work? Meanwhile even those who are remunerated with gratuity every six months, are not subject to the evaluation process that should prove that they are more valuable than their pensionable colleagues doing exactly the same jobs. From this milieu emerges the issue of self-respect, one’s value as a human being, whose work experiences inform, enhance, (de)value relationships whether professionally or socially. All the foregoing cumulate into an establishment of mediocrity as an acceptable level of organisational delivery, moreso for future employees, however bright and ambitious, but who in some cases may well succumb to the lure of convenient employment offers. It is in the light of all the foregoing deficits one must ponder the almost jocular insistence on ‘human development’. For nowhere is accommodation made for the sensitive, humane discussion about anxieties, aspirations; frustrations, ambitions; discipline, counselling; in sum weaknesses and strengths – cumulating in the human being.
Sincerely,
E.B. John
