Are we on the right path with human as a resource?

By Athula Jayasekera

I recall an incident that happened some time ago. To my surprise I was moved by the courtesy and the genuineness shown by each and every one of the staff members of a star-class hotel in Sri Lanka. From the Managers downwards, every staff member had a genuine smile to greet the local tourists (who have been sometimes treated as 2nd class by some hoteliers during times of heavy foreign tourist inflows). The genuine smile could open many gates to them. I was so happy and felt that I was among friends and relatives in the hotel; actually they were staff who were doing a job of work. One thing I noticed was that they were not affected by the spoils of so-called sophisticated city executives. 

In our country people who show off get recognised than the genuine effective employee. My experience working in almost a dozen of Sri Lankan mercantile sector firms and the involvement with various volunteer organisations shows that we have seriously neglected the real, talented genuine human resource by recognising the showmen. They bulldoze others with their technical vocabularies (which they use very often to impress others) and their network. This was evident in many of the voluntary associations I was involved with. When positions were offered they grabbed them but became complete failures when discharging the duties expected of them due to their lack of leadership qualities.

No wonder why our country is retarding in every aspect, as we have not been promoting meritocracy. This is something that we neglect even at home. We have not understood the competition in the correct manner.

We need a completely new thinking and change of attitudes. Even now, when our country is going through difficult times, due to poor economic management and mixing of our investment priorities, a number of discussions are happening and a lot of ideas are thrown. During the worst of times we experienced two years ago, I saw many showmen who appeared on stage to educate us on how to overcome these.

Many trainings have been conducted to improve customer service; if you genuinely check how much of those investments have benefited the organisations per se or the individual, I am sure it is a very meagre percentage of the investment. Serving has more to do with the attitude than the skill. A person who serves must first respect the humans. There are people in the human resources department who cannot tolerate a fellow human being offered higher positions. That is how we pay attention to placements.

We have no role models, and the so-called celebrities have taken the position of role models. Sri Lankans lack entrepreneurial role models like Andrew Carnegie Ford, Iacocca, Honda, but we too had people in the calibre of Jinasena, Samsons, Hinniappuhamy. In today’s context that kind of hardworking, enthusiastic brilliant personalities are hard to find. Sri Lanka has been an innovative nation, we can boast of having an ancient unique irrigation system, having kings with entrepreneurial spirit who engaged in entrepôt trade. It is true we have a great past, but instead of riding on the past glory, Sri Lankan youth must develop entrepreneurial spirit.

Our education produces men who cannot think and act, as the education is now outsourced to the private individuals who appear to be pouring the subject matter on young heads, and has built thriving businesses. They can always say that there is a need and they are catering to it. The need is to get good marks to enter the Sri Lankan higher education system. The selection criteria to the higher education lacks depth, as it has been sidelining the urban youth from entering the hallowed institutions, since the late 70s. Many who received high marks have been overlooked due to this bias selection criteria. This is an ideal example of regulations paying disregard to meritocracy. Many urban youths had to sacrifice their places for youth from under developed areas to enter the university system for no fault of neither of them.

A very progressive step of expanding education opportunities was introduced by the father of free education C.W.W. Kannangara with his concept of opening Madhya Maha Vidyalayas in every district. Rather than building on this great concept what subsequent Governments had done was to fix the inequalities of distribution of educational facilities by introducing a system where the disadvantaged youth were allowed to enter higher education institutions with lower marks by imposing a negative selection criterion for the youth in developed areas even if they score higher marks. A classic case of discarding the concept of meritocracy.

Can a country progress when meritocracy is not considered as important? Instead of coming out with temporary solutions or fixing issues, the authorities must introduce policies to give equal opportunities to every citizen. What type of a person should the education system produce? A robot or a person who can think and act, and has the critical thinking ability to apply what he learnt practically and apply them to other subject areas too?

Can Sri Lanka develop the right human resources base for the 21st century (already 1/5th of the 21st century had passed). As we see no planning is undertaken and no one seems to be interested, the individual has to select his/her own course. Rather than looking at the immediate benefits one must plan his field of education where he has the passion to be and where he can contribute most, without joining the bandwagon.

Sri Lanka needs a dynamic, agile, enthusiastic, knowledgeable youth base. As the authorities do not seem to be interested in developing that kind of youth base for the 21st century, it is the individual’s responsibility to find avenues and develop themselves. It is up to the youth in general to decide whether they want to be showmen projecting themselves out of proportion or real citizens who contribute to the growth of Sri Lankan society whatever way they could.

(The writer is a founder member, past President of Board of Management of TMC and first Chairman of TMC Colombo.)