Comprehensive job evaluation exercise needed to unravel public service classification

Dear Editor,

 

It is indeed difficult at this juncture of uncertainty across ranks, generations and other divisions, not to share their expressed perplexity about job values, more particularly in what is described as the Guyana Public Sector. Rest assured, however, that irrationalities similar to those observed in that Sector abound in the Private Sector as well, one reason being the miniaturisation of the role of Human Resources Management; and as a consequence the increasing over-riding decision-making that denies the latter the authority to exercise any competence to design rational compensation structures.

As far as the Guyana Public Service is concerned the last formal attempt at an objective evaluation of jobs, based on the relevant descriptors was some three decades ago. Since then, moreso in this century, the well funded consultancies aimed at modernising the Public Service, rather than their recommendations being implemented, the implementation capacity obtaining in the central Ministry, i.e. Public Service Management, was emaciated, with the persistent reduction of its qualified staff.

This misconduct was compounded by replacing the Public Service Commission’s authority to recruit and discharge related human resources functions, with the institutionalising of employment on contract, by individual Ministries.

In the process the once standard job evaluation exercise was exorcised. It became habitual to merely negotiate a price with the prospective employee, irrespective of an existing salary structure, which increasingly lost relevance in a progressively technological age. So that the position like Typist/Clerk still abounds, along with those of the very people who are responsible for recruiting them; i.e.

Chief Personnel Officer Gd 12

Principal Personnel Officer          Gd11

Senior Personnel Officer              Gd09

Personnel Officer II                    Gd06

Personnel Officer I                     Gd05

A careful examination of this ladder of promotion must raise the question of the respective job descriptions, and the requisite qualifications and experience criteria therefor. Incidentally it is absolutely not accurate to suggest that there is no substantive differential in the respective responsibilities of Personnel Officer and Human Resources Practitioner. Those who believe so have to be grossly under-informed employers.

But what for the time being may be a more fundamental confusion is the basic classification of jobs in the Public Service. As all should know the categories are:

Administrative

Senior Technical

Other Technical & Craft Skilled

Clerical and Office Support

Semi-skilled Operatives and Unskilled; and ludicrously

Contracted Employees

This last suggesting that they are not graded and therefore pay could be irrelevant of any structure.

But perhaps even more puzzling is a perversion inherited from the approved Estimates of 2014, and nonchalantly repeated in the staff structure of Parliament Office of 2015. It is the actual grading of the following positions as GS00:

Head of Committees Division

Asst. Head of Committees Division

Documentation & Preparation Officer

Asst. Clerk of the National Assembly

By whom and how could such an aberration be allowed?

The confusion persists in an examination of a comparison of what are described as ‘Administrative’ jobs. Note the following samples based on the mix of job titles only, and what some would normally expect them to connote, and compare with the category of ‘Senior Technical’: in the same agency

 

Ministry of the Presidency Administrative  Senior Technical       

Gd 14 – Permanent Secty

13 – Head, Presidential Guard

12 – Science & Technology Officer

11 – Divisional Head

– Principal Personnel Officer

09 – Chief Accountant

– Legal Officer

– Senior Personnel Officer

08 – Community Development Officer

– Accountant

07 – Chief Registry Officer

06 – Administrative Asst.              Gd          11 –        Systems Development Coordinator

10 – Expenditure Planning & Management Analyst II

–             Special Projects Officers

08 – Curator, Fine Arts

– Training Officer

06 – Superintendent

–            Student Affairs Officer

 

 

From examination it could neither be argued that ‘Administrative’ is restricted to the ‘management’ function; nor that the Chief Registry Officer does not provide a support service?

Then arises the question of seniority. Where down in the structure does it stop? Does a Superintendent at Gd 06 rate being a ‘senior technical’ officer?

The foregoing must provide pause for reflection, if only on the factors on which classification is based.

When one further examines the job structure in the Ministry of Finance there is a strong implication that the ‘Administrative’ classification relates essentially to highly graded jobs, as the samples below show. Yet note the inclusion of jobs at Grades 06 and 05 respectively.

 

Ministry of Finance Administrative

Gs           14 –        Finance Secretary

13 –        Chief Evaluation Officer

–             Deputy Finance Secretary

–             Accountant General

–             Director, Office of the Budget

12 –        Deputy Chief Evaluation Officer

–             Chief Planning Officer

–             Technical Officer

–             Head each of:

Information Systems

Bilateral Division

Debt Management Unit

Fiscal Monetary Policy

Multilateral Institutional Section

Cycle Management

Note: The interesting interplay between Division, Unit, Sector, and between Policy and Management at the bottom of Gs 12

Gd          11 –        Systems Development Coordinator

–             International Audit Manager

–             Specialist Engineer

10 –        Systems Administrator

09 –        Junior Financial Analyst

–             Manager, Data Processing Unit

06 –        Administrative Assistant

–             Personnel Officer II

–             Senior Registry Supervisor

–             Senior Data Entry Clerk

05 –       Systems Support Officer

–             Senior Research Assistant

 

Note: i) the different grades applied to the prescriptor Senior

  1. ii) the confusion between job titles of a) Officer, Supervisor and Clerk in Gd 06 and b) Officer and Assistant in Gd 05

At the same time however, jobs classified as ‘Senior Technical’ include the similar high and low levels, as shown below:

Gd 11    –             Senior Debt Management Officer

–             Senior Economic Financial Analyst

10           –             Assistant Chief Education Officer

09           –             Budget Officer II

–             Economic Financial Analyst I

–             Senior Planning Officer

–             Technical Assistant

07           –             Debt Management Officer

–             Desk Officer I

06           –             Budget Officer I

The foregoing constitute only one indicator of the need for unravelling the current classification system and consequently the job values – an exercise which can only be effected through a most comprehensive job evaluation exercise.

 

Yours faithfully,

E.B. John