I was very pleased to learn that our Deputy Governor, Franz Manderson, who is the commander in chief of the civil service has sent out a three page memo warning everyone he will not allow ‘poor performers’ to remain employed although he called it ‘separation’.

In the memo dated Friday Feb 13th Manderson said that, in the area of customer service, civil servants were not doing enough and he used a poll that was executed by the Cayman Compass to illustrate his point.

The Cayman Compass poll published on Jan 30th 2015 showed a staggering 2/3rds of the 417 persons who had responded giving grades ranging from ‘poor’ to ‘terrible’ for customer service.

The one complaint I can identify with personally was the comment of, “answer your phones”. I can go one further. When the phone that doesn’t get answered goes to voice mail the mailbox is FULL!!! Even worse, the full mailbox was from one of the Chief Officers.

The Deputy Governor’s solution is to execute another collaboration with the Ritz-Carlton management for a “gold standard” level of customer service employee training programme.

I am not sure this will make much difference as the last one carried out in 2012 did not result in any noticeable improvement in customer service as is evident by the Cayman Compass poll.

I would like to know the numbers of attendees, their employment categories, and whether it is voluntary or mandatory.

If it is not mandatory, usually the ones who attend are better at the job in the first place. Answering a telephone and emptying your mailbox does not require training.

Manderson in his memo said:

“Civil servants who consistently provide poor customer service will be required to separate from the civil service.”
“Such persons, by association, harm the reputation of the majority of staff who do exceptional work and they harm the public’s confidence in the civil service overall.”
“If we fail in this area, we harm our reputation with the public and our elected leaders.”

Manderson also said those who execute exceptional job performance will be rewarded and in previous years this was done by bonuses.

I would like to know how this reward scheme would be implemented. Who notes what is good performance from what is bad? Who actually documents it?

The only real criteria for this is us the public. How that can be used though is another debate. Even that can be abused by how many friends the public servant has.

Very difficult. I wouldn’t have the Deputy Governor’s job no matter how much it pays.

By the way… Who rates him?