Both the business community and the labour force must become more
agile if they are to successfully operate in the new normal and the
future ahead.
That’s the view of management specialists – Sheena Mayers-Granville,
Executive Director of the Barbados Employers’ Confederation (BEC) and
Brittany Brathwaite, Management Consultant and former Labour
Management Advisor with the BEC. The duo made the comments while
participating yesterday morning during a webinar hosted by the Sagicor
Cave Hill School of Business on the theme ‘Labour Relations in the
Caribbean’.
Reflecting on the impact of COVID-19 on the business community,
Mayers-Granville said there is a great deal of uncertainty, as she
noted that we are operating in an environment that our legislation was
not designed to contemplate. She made the point while indicating that
most of the labour legislation in the region, make no mention
whatsoever of a pandemic or public health crisis.
“The truth is legislation will always be behind current events,
because what will happen is, the legislators will see what is
happening in the environment and seek to respond by writing
legislation. However, we know that our environment is changing so
rapidly and the truth is it will never contemplate all of the
eventualities. So what we need to do is ensure that our organisations
are in a position to respond,” she said.
The BEC head’s comments came as she said that recent surveys conducted
by the Confederation showed that a high percentage of businesses did
not have business continuity plans in place, not even in the context
of a natural disaster. This, she said, is particularly concerning
because businesses should constantly be doing “environmental scanning”
to see what could be coming down the pipeline that could potentially
impact their operations, so as not to be “caught with their pants
down”.
With that in mind, she cautioned employers that as we emerge from the
COVID-19 restrictions, it cannot be business as usual, and that
includes looking at new forms of labour.
“We know that those things were coming down the pipeline, and now it
is going to be accelerated because of business demands and the need to
be flexible. But don’t think about it as a bad thing, what we have to
do is to start thinking about how do we creatively respond to the
issues that we face and not just try to go back to the way things
were,” she said.
Adding to her comments, Brathwaite indicated that across the region
there must be a move towards research-driven agendas to ensure that
“we are actually creating labour that meets the labour demands versus
supplying labour that does not”.
“...What we have to discuss is the agility of our labour market and
how agile are our labourers based on the educational background that
they have had. I think that is very, very important for us to consider
across the region, because if we are creating an agile workforce, we
[must] have people who can be agile in the times of crisis.”
Referring to the tourism sector, which she said has been extremely
hard hit, Brathwaite said now is the time to retrain and retool
workers. Her comments came as she said the sector has a lot of
low-skilled workers who have not acquired skills that can be utilised
outside of the sphere of tourism.
“Information technology is a global transferrable skill and we are not
talking about coding, or being able to write code. We are talking
about providing a house attendant or room attendant with the
opportunity for a simple marketing course, so they can execute
services of marketing for small businesses or for Airbnb’s, because as
we see in the market, the hotels aren’t reopening as soon as the
villas and the Airbnb’s are reopening, and where there is a dearth of
labour across the Caribbean, is for persons who can actually manage
Airbnb and villa rentals and manage those properties. There is a
dearth of talent there; you don’t usually find a person who has the
knowledge of a room attendant, but can also market that product,” she
said.
While maintaining that it will not be an easy task, she said it is not
impossible, and will call for significant educational reforms and
labour policy reformations. (JRT)