Office of the Prime Minister

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Chief Executive Officer of Dehring, Bunting and Golding Ltd., Peter Bunting (left), having a light conversation with Chief Executive Officer of the Management Institute for National Development (MIND) Ruby Brown, and MIND's Director of Human Resources and Communication, Norman Hall.

The Chief Executive Officer of Dehring, Bunting and Golding (DB&G), Peter Bunting, has put forward a three-pronged approach, to improve employee participation and productivity, which he has urged employers to adopt.

Mr. Bunting, who was speaking on the topic: 'Employee Participation and Productivity' at a recent Friday Policy Forum at the Management Institute for National Development (MIND), said that firstly, employees needed to be involved and be given some responsibility for their daily work.

Secondly, he noted, employees must be motivated to make improvements through linking pay and rewards to performance. Thirdly, "employees must be capable of making improvements through training/continuous learning but also making sure that they have the productivity tools".

Using DB&G as the prototype for his presentation, Mr. Bunting informed that the organization had employed a number of strategies to promote employee participation and to achieve and maintain high productivity levels.
Among the strategies, was the sharing of information among employees. "The foundation for employee participation is information sharing in all areas of the organisation," he pointed out, adding that, "the more information that you give employees, the more you empower them to make better decisions and to feel more involved with the decisions that are being made".

According to Mr. Bunting, having a motivated staff was critical to the effective functioning of any organisation, and so it was important to put in place appropriate reward programmes, which were "meaningful, predictable and prompt".

He cited programmes such as DB&G's Employee Share Ownership Programme (ESOP), as helping to bring "the long-term interest of the employee into alignment with those of the firm, thereby improving employee performance, productivity and also fostering a long-term commitment".

Emphasising the value of continuous learning to the achievement of greater productivity among employees, Mr. Bunting pointed out that "companies that invest more in their employees from a training and lifelong learning perspective get better productivity than those with low levels of investment in this area".

The CEO said that his organisation spent $10 million to $12 million each year in the training of employees. While a significant amount of this sum is spent on in-house training, he indicated, that most of the sum went to grants for employees to acquire university degrees or professional certification such as Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA).

He noted that the company was accustomed to giving grants to cover 60 per cent of the cost of their employees' studies. "We have such an amazingly well-qualified cadre of staff, most of whom achieved their first certification or a subsequent one while at DB&G," the CEO said.

The CEO reported that the employees had contributed to the company's success, which, over the last three years, had seen annual growth of 54 per cent of shareholders equity, 54 per cent in net profit after tax and 12 per cent growth in funds under management.

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