HR chief: Manage remote work

President of the Human Resource Management Association of Barbados (HRMAB), Nicholas Roberts, is suggesting businesses should embrace the idea of working remotely more.

The HR consultant noted while some businesses were embracing hybrid work models employed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of businesses were still fighting that and still want their staff in sight within the office because managers can see them.

“There is this archaic mindset that if I can see you present, you are working,” Roberts said.

He pointed out while Government had created a work-from-home policy during the pandemic, both the public and private sectors had been asking staff to return to office full time.

This, he contended, was “taking two giant steps forward and five huge ones backward”.

“If you have the technology in place and your people can work from home, I can’t see why you cannot employ the hybrid model,” Roberts told the media recently in response to a question on the issue.

Pressed on employers’ complaints about low productivity from people who choose to work from home, Roberts described that as “a performance management issue”.

“I think with HR we need to look at the type of people we have within our work spaces,” he said. “If you have people within your office who are not working, I think that is a performance management issue and that is where a lot of businesses fall down in terms of people not being performance-managed.”

He suggested there was a need for “proper assessment to measure and manage performance”, as well as a need for “efficiencies within the public sector and businesses in general.”

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