Relapse in duty and virtue among public service has contributed to lack of efficiency and effectiveness.
In the last four Talking Point articles, discussions were centred on what contributed to the relapse in duty in the public sector.
Here, we shall deal with the relapse in virtue.
Though less attention is given to this aspect by public sector employers, personality differences and conflicts are the latent executioners of workplace performance.
For people to be efficient and effective in any tasks, not only professional conduct is required but importantly personal virtues.
Thus, when people work, they not only bring along their knowledge and skills required to perform a specified task, but they bring with them who they are – their personality.
Any workplace that neglects personality predicament of employees naturally encourages workplace inefficiency and ineffectiveness.
An analogy is required here.
A photocopy machines is meant to reproduce copies of documents, and there are operational instructions for people to follow.
However, if only operation instructions are followed, the machine will eventually give up.
The people using it only regard the functional aspects of the machine, regardless of its inner coherent structure that enable such quality performance.
Regular servicing and maintenance of the machine is equally important as the operational functions.
Likewise, human beings have a coherent psychosomatic structure and network that is complex as well as intriguing.
This personality dynamics needs to be attended to as well as the mere job description required by the workplace.
For instance in a workplace, two people possessing the same knowledge and skills are tasked to do a job.
One person has a personality characterised by vices, while the other has cultivated personal virtues. Common knowledge says that the virtuous person will out perform the person with personality conflicts, thus no experiment is required to verify this contention.
Illicit personal conduct in workplace does affect low outputs and outcomes.
People with difficult personality are not suited for any public office and will bring ruin to the workplace and lower the morale of co-workers.
People with personality conflicts are not meant to be team players.
A person who is not a team player is a selfish person, and is naturally a hindrance to performance outputs and outcomes required by job standards.
Common vices possessed by selfish people in workplace are insobriety, lust, insensitivity, dictatorial, self-importance, imprudence, avarice, withdrawal syndromes, and a host of other improper personal habits. However, often these personality difficulties are bracketed and consigned to the realm of the private, and may not be a factor for consideration in work appointments.
This has been the mistaken taken by the Department of Personnel Management, and the human resource division in the public sector.
In the public workforce, the criteria for selection of employees only revolve around educational qualifications and work experiences.
In such screening, personality discernment is foreign and never considered.
In dealing with efficiency and effectiveness of any engagement, institutions and companies only deal with the functional aspect of this human machine, and very less to do with the psychological composition of the employees.
Thus, in workplace reappraisal, the emphasis is given to assessing activity while less attention to personality conflicts.
Even if there is any training, it has to do with professional aspects and rarely on the formation of human person.
Hence, the problem dealing with human personality is so great.
Despite that, the human resources division has been sleeping on it.
In the public sector, there seem to be a strict dichotomy between what is personal to what is professional.
However, that separation is only superficial, and those who exonerate this dichotomy are the very one who encourages lack of productivity in the public sector.
I had a 20-day contract with Porgera Joint Venture, translating literature on fatigue management into Tok Pisin.
In the programme, lack of sleep and impact of alcohol were the two significant aspects that contributed to fatigue.
Thus, the remedies to fatigue or managing fatigue were more sleep and no consumption of alcohol.
Though only asked to do translation work, I did question those who devised the programme on fatigue management.
First, the solution to the fatigue only dealt with the effect and not the cause of fatigue.
Furthermore, fatigue management only dealt with the somatic (body) exhaustion, but nothing on psychic (mind/spirit) blocks.
I felt that the mine management, in regards to fatigue management, did not deal with the issue of fatigue comprehensively.
The Porgera experience gave me the inkling that when employers deal with faults affecting employees, they attend to the effect and not the cause of the problem.
Indeed, the human being is the problem, and not the job description
and participation.
It is a strong conviction that dealing with the effects of an issue is only a band aid solution, while true solution come when employers deal with the causes.
There are many illicit conducts found in workplace because of personality reasons.
Some of them have become habits that may take a while before change is envisaged (old habits die hard).
Discovering personality deficiency to see if they are hindrance to efficiency and effectiveness is an urgent business for the public sector.
The government has been talking about honesty, transparency and accountability in the public workforce.
The amount of talking will not make a slightest impact, if public servants are not put through the rigorous process of personality discovery.
In interpersonal relationship and collaboration, knowing the strength and weakness of our character is of utmost importance to workplace performance.
There have been attempts by some human resource division of corporate business dealing with employees character.
The famous one that I know of deals with the personality type that exponent of the Jungian psychology prefer.
However, many do criticise this analysis, because it predetermines the personality type of participants and does not deal with the uniqueness of each individual.
Finally, a true process of self-discovery will remedy personality conflicts and differences among employees of the public sector.