By Kemo Cham
A one day training on staff performance evaluation last week is set to reposition the Sierra Leone Standards Bureau (SLSB) as a major contributor to the country’s economic development, officials I have said.
The training in the form of a Performance Appraisal Session (PAS) was conducted at the agency’s headquarters in Freetown on Wednesday, Januuary 8, 2020.
The management of SLSB said it is part of moves to restructure its operational hierarchy to enable staffers contribute fully to the operations of the institution. They said it was designed to identify the qualification and competence of every member of staff to enable promotions based on merit.
Performance Appraisal Session expert and former staff of the SLSB, Abdul-Rahman Sowa, was hired as a consultant to conduct the training.
Professor Thomas Yormah, Executive Director of SLSB, said the session was aimed at managing and improving the performance of the Bureau by enabling a higher level of staff participation and involvement in planning, delivering and evaluation of work performance, which is inline with the New Direction Government of President Julius Maada Bio, according to a news dispatch from the Bureau copied to Politico.
Professor Yormah was appointed to head SLSB in September 2018. His tenure has been marred by reports of lack of resources for staff to do their work and corruption. In November last year Yormah faced a major protests by aggrieved junior staff who blamed the management for the state of affairs.
But Prof. Yormah said one of the manifestations of the challenges plaguing the institution was "a lopsided corporate infrastructure with staff placements and promotions not rigorously reflecting merit, based on qualifications and performance."
He also said that the lack of a systemic staff performance appraisal had meant that promotions and placements were generally out of sync with merit.
"A particularly disturbing feature of the staffing architecture is that there is no hierarchy and succession plan among Scientific/Administrative Officers within the various departments below the managers. Thus choosing an officer to act in the absence of the substantive manager is largely according to the whims of the manager,” he told the staff prior to commencement of the training session.
He added: “For good measure, there is no structured reward system for hard work."
Prof. Yormah went on to note that the lack of meritocracy at the Bureau meant that an officer can be employed at the level of scientific officer and remain at the same level until retirement.
This situation, he pointed out, had led to staff disgruntlement, low motivation and general work laissez-faire, thus contributed to the present sluggishness of operations at the Bureau.
"It is clear that no matter the level of increased resources the SLSB receives from Government and donor agencies, if the corporate infrastructure is not receptive to transforming that support into tangible positive impacts on our stakeholders, then the effort will be futile," he said.
According to the Bureau, the training will be followed by a merit based restructuring of the corporate architecture of the institution.
Amadu Jogor Bah, Deputy Director of the Bureau, hoped that the training would help develop the human resource of the institution, noting that the organization’s performance depended on the academic qualifications and competence of its workers.
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