Africa-Press – Seychelles. The 3rd phase of the nationwide ‘Results-based Management’ training was launched yesterday at The Guy Morel Institute.
Some 30 participants are taking part in the three-day training which aims to improve productivity and performance in the public sector.
Those taking part include accounting officers, heads of departments/organisations, deputy chief executives, directors, heads of programmes, heads of human resources (HR) and financial controllers.
Launching the training, Shella Mohideen, the chief secretary of the Public Service Bureau (PSB), stressed that this does not mean that the public service was not productive although it is not as efficient as it can be.
Ms Mohideen expressed the hope that the heads of human resources and financial controllers are well integrated in their planning as they need to be present for the planning process for them to understand it for better human resource planning.
He reminded the group that the three pillars targeted for the Results-based Management training are: Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Budgeting – the latter a product labelled as the m-test. The m-test is a medium term budget.
Ms Mohideen stated that the majority of organisations have submitted their m-tests to the Ministry of Finance, National Planning and Trade and highlighted that they have seen great improvement after the review.
She said she is satisfied with the way the budget has been done this year noting that the budget is not just for one year but for three years (a three-year cycle 2023-2025).
The chief secretary further added that for some organisations their m-tests are still operational in terms of overseeing the day to day activities rather than strategically on how to enhance or further develop their organisations.
Ms Mohideen noted that all workers should be aware of their organisation’s strategic plan as currently it is not the case.
She further stated that in some cases the strategic plans were not implemented or were just shelved.
The Public Service Bureau’s chief secretary emphasised that what will change is how to evaluate performance. For the three-day training the participants will be introduced to how to train the trainers, performance management planning, managing performance and performance assessment.
Ms Mohideen stressed that “performance management system (PMS) is to evaluate all workers’ performance. Once the training session is complete, all workers will be put on a performance-based contract.”
“The performance-based management contract is not an employment contract and it is different from an employment contract. The performance contract is a new way in which appraisal will be conducted. This means that at the start of the year employees and employers must discuss what the priorities of the organisation are and what role they have to play, their plans, actions and what will be evaluated upon,” she said.
She went on to highlight that if employees have been doing what they are supposed to, employers cannot give them a bad appraisal and the workers who know they are not performing their tasks, should not expect to be given a good appraisal. Discussions on the performance-based contract have already started within some organisations to inform their workers and it will be implemented in January 2023.
Since the PMS will have an effect on bonuses or the 13-month salary, workers who have grievances with the appraisals they’ve received and can defend them, a grievance system has been included in the PMS.
Ms Mohideen noted that if an organisation is having many grievances it means that its system is not being implemented well and the organisations need to investigate why their systems are not being implemented successfully.
The training will end tomorrow.
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