Raphael John-Lall

While the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er se­nior of­fi­cials in the pub­lic sec­tor are en­ti­tled to in­creased re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages, their per­for­mance should be mea­sured against sim­i­lar met­rics used for their coun­ter­parts in the pri­vate sec­tor.

This is the view of an ex­pert in the field of com­pen­sa­tion man­age­ment and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions who spoke to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian on the is­sue.

The Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) pro­posed sig­nif­i­cant salary in­creas­es for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and oth­er top state of­fi­cials. Row­ley’s ba­sic pay will go up by $28,167 to $87,847.

The 120th re­port laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives two Fri­days ago, al­so rec­om­mend­ed in­creas­es for the Pres­i­dent, the Chief Jus­tice, the Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, the Op­po­si­tion Leader, MPs, mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, and oth­er se­nior pub­lic ser­vants.

These pro­posed in­creas­es come eight months af­ter a pre­vi­ous SRC pro­pos­al for wage in­creas­es for the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er of­fi­cials was sent back for re­vi­sion.

Past pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion (HRMATT) Max­ine At­tong said it may be a mis­con­cep­tion that man­agers in the state sec­tor are un­de­serv­ing of salary in­creas­es when com­pared to CEO’s in the pri­vate sec­tor.

“In T&T, is it true that pri­vate sec­tor CEOs lose their bonus­es or po­si­tions if they fail to meet tar­gets? Is there true ac­count­abil­i­ty at the top un­less a whistle­blow­er or pub­lic scan­dal brings is­sues to light? I think these as­sump­tions need to be ex­plored and val­i­dat­ed be­fore be­ing ac­cept­ed as facts. In both sec­tors, ac­count­abil­i­ty is crit­i­cal and even more so in the pub­lic sec­tor since they han­dle tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and im­ple­ment poli­cies and pro­grammes that im­pact cit­i­zens’ lives,” she said.

At­tong said that the T&T Gov­ern­ment has recog­nised this and has made at­tempts at putting sys­tems in place at the min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el.

She re­ferred to a 2013 UNDP re­port which states that “since 2005, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T has been in­volved in cre­at­ing the in­fra­struc­ture for a re­sults-based per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem in the pub­lic sec­tor.”

The re­port al­so states “the Cab­i­net agreed to es­tab­lish Mea­sur­ing and Eval­u­a­tion (M&E) units in all gov­ern­ment min­istries and rel­e­vant de­part­ments in or­der to pro­vide sup­port for ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sion and pol­i­cy­mak­ing.”

She not­ed that sev­er­al state en­ter­pris­es have al­ready im­ple­ment­ed these per­for­mance-based sys­tems.

“Sev­er­al state en­ter­pris­es have long had ro­bust in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance sys­tems in place. As well, it is an in­cor­rect as­sump­tion to make that every pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­ny has an ef­fec­tive per­for­mance eval­u­a­tion sys­tem in place. While there is no ar­gu­ment that clear mea­sur­able met­rics tied to ef­fi­cien­cy, ef­fec­tive­ness, and out­comes should guide in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance eval­u­a­tion in the pub­lic sec­tor, the ques­tion is what makes it dif­fi­cult to do so?”

She added that oth­er than on­go­ing de­bates about job de­scrip­tions, au­thor­i­ties may need to con­sid­er what needs to be adapt­ed to re­flect the unique con­text and ob­jec­tives of pub­lic ser­vice.

• Pri­vate sec­tor met­rics are of­ten prof­it-dri­ven, the pub­lic sec­tor’s fo­cus on ser­vice de­liv­ery and so­ci­etal out­comes makes it hard­er to mea­sure quan­ti­ta­tive­ly at an in­di­vid­ual lev­el;

• Pub­lic sec­tor’s broad man­dates eg, im­prove pub­lic health, makes it dif­fi­cult to de­sign pre­cise, ac­tion­able key per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors at an in­di­vid­ual lev­el;

• While prof­its for the pri­vate sec­tor are mea­sur­able an­nu­al­ly, some pub­lic sec­tor out­comes take years to man­i­fest e.g. im­prov­ing lit­er­a­cy rates. This means that us­ing short term met­rics for pub­lic sec­tor will be mis­lead­ing;

• How will pub­lic sec­tor KPIs be ad­just­ed for ex­ter­nal vari­ables such as un­pre­dictable eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tions, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters or events like COVID;

• Even in the pri­vate sec­tor, met­rics can be ma­nip­u­lat­ed, and some lead­ers may pri­ori­tise short-term gains over long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty. How do we safe­guard against this in the pub­lic sec­tor, and what are the po­ten­tial long-term im­pacts of such prac­tices?

She said while she can see the ease with which met­rics can be im­ple­ment­ed for cer­tain con­tract work­ers, she won­ders how the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion would re­act to this be­ing ex­tend­ed to all pub­lic ser­vants and what kind of re­sis­tance will be of­fered.

To ad­dress these com­plex­i­ties, she said a hy­brid per­for­mance mea­sure­ment sys­tem is rec­om­mend­ed:

1. Com­bine quan­ti­ta­tive met­rics (bud­get ad­her­ence, project time­lines) with qual­i­ta­tive ones (eg, stake­hold­er sat­is­fac­tion, so­ci­etal im­pact).

2. Align in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance goals with na­tion­al or or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ob­jec­tives.

“It may be eas­i­er for the pub­lic ser­vice and its stake­hold­ers to ac­cept the de­vel­op­ment and in­tro­duc­tion of in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance met­rics if these are ex­tend­ed to the true de­ci­sion mak­ers.

“Maybe step one will be to de­sign and to adopt a po­lit­i­cal­ly neu­tral in­di­vid­ual eval­u­a­tion sys­tems for lead­ers like min­is­ters and per­ma­nent sec­re­taries that in­clude quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive met­rics to en­hance pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty. I am sure this will gen­er­ate much pub­lic de­bate.”