Public Sector HR Officers Updated on Practices and Policies

Over 100 public sector human resource directors, managers and officers participated in a workforce adjustment and human resource process standardisation conference on Tuesday, September 17, at the Institute of Jamaica (IoJ).

The event, organised by the Finance and Planning Ministry’s Strategic Human Resource Management Division (SHRMD), featured presentations on a range of human resource procedures to be incorporated in the civil service, and strategic policies being developed within the context of a programme of workforce adjustment and development.

Focus areas in the presentations included: redeployment and selection; grievance, and leave entitlements and management; voluntary separation (encompassing training/re-training and early retirement); performance management; succession planning; recruitment and selection, promotions, and transfers; pensions management; and the motor vehicle duty concession process.

Deputy Financial Secretary in charge of the SHRMD, Wayne Jones, said Tuesday’s conference was one of several activities in which the Ministry has been engaged, in an effort to review and improve the quality of public sector human resource service delivery.

He said based on feedback, the mandate of the SHRMD, established 2011, is, to some extent, not well known within the sector, hence “we are doing all that is necessary to ensure that our colleagues across the public sector understand what it is that we are attempting.”

“Over the past year, and more, we have been…discussing (and) reviewing our human resource practices and policies, trying to ensure that we deliver a better service to the labour force of the Jamaican public sector and, obviously, by extension, the national labour force. I think many of us recognise that we do, in many instances, set the pace and set the trend for human resource management across the national labour force,” Mr. Jones said.

He pointed out that much of what is undertaken and implemented in the civil service is emulated in the private sector, adding that “from time to time” they “rely on (and) consult with us in matters of human capital management, to ensure that they do what they are supposed do, better than they presently do.”