Latest update April 5th, 2025 5:50 AM
Jul 22, 2022 Letters
Dear Editor
Kaieteur News – One continues to be concerned about the mediocrity displayed by the Human Resources Management Function of the organisation as reflected in the texts of its Vacancy Notices.
The most recent evidence can be seen in SN of July 20, regarding the position: Manager, Training and Development – expected to be responsible for:
i. The continuous identification of ‘employees’ training needs
ii. The development, implementation and evaluation of training/development programme (should be programmes) – to enhance competencies of the ‘workforce’
Those who know the Corporation better, including current senior estate management, must be puzzled at the ingenuousness of the concocted job requirements, since they do not relate to the components of the Corporation’s long established developmental system of Succession Planning; which briefly includes:
a) Annual Performance Appraisals by:
i. Estate Management
ii. Heads of Head Office Departments
b) Review of the results of the foregoing exercises by a corporate team of the highest relevantly qualified executives, including the Head of the Human Resources Department, and a Training Officer, who would normally report to better qualified and experienced ‘Head’ of Human Resources Division/Department, who in turn would evaluate the performance of the former.
An issue implicated in the current Vacancy Notice that would be questioned by the Corporation’s senior executives is the impoverished recruitment eligibility of a Diploma (hardly acceptable for a management position in any organisation).
That even the qualification of a First Degree is in a vague ‘Social Science Field’ indicates the lack of research needed to be applied more relevantly by the Human Resources Head to assign specificity to the job requirements.
Additionally, it would be an illogical arrangement for the proposed incumbent to ‘continuously identify training needs’ of his/her ‘seniors’.
It has to be understood that ‘human development’ in such a large multicultural organisation must be led by example. However qualified, its leadership must be respected for both intellectual and moral authority – so well known in the history of the sugar industry, and indeed in the conduct of the Human Resources Function.
As it turns out therefore, GuySuCo in its current deficit of institutional memory, must invest more substantively in its future, by being more creative, and seeking to attract highly qualified and experienced personnel, if necessary from overseas.
In the same breadth it must identify candidates from amongst current staff for relevant tertiary education and training.
It is critical that its management understands how in an increasingly competitive job market, GuySuCo is not the employer of choice it used to be.
The Human Resources Department is hardly a model that can stand up to scrutiny.
It is particularly embarrassing when the organisation that operates the oldest established Apprentice Training Centre in this country (1957) cannot identify a single Carpenter for employment for its Head Office; where the Head, Human Resources is unaware that Masonry and Plumbing have always been certifiably separate trades in the sugar industry, and indeed elsewhere.
Indeed it would not be a surprise if the Union (GAWU) did not intervene in this palpable of obfuscation of the recruitment process.
E.B. John
Retired Human Resources Director
BSE/GuySuCo
Apr 05, 2025
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