Second Seychelles Human Resource Development (SHRD) award |23 March 2015

Human resource practices recognised and rewarded

Five human resource departments are the overall winners of the second Seychelles Human Resource Development award, while three were rewarded as runners-up and eight were presented with individual awards of excellence.

The Seychelles Human Resource Development (SHRD) award, an initiative of the Agency for National Human Resource Development (ANHRD) was launched in 2011. The aim of the award is to promote human resource development and to recognise human resource departments for their hard work, dedication and effort towards the development of employees, attention given to their welfare, wellbeing and support they receive in the workplace so they continue to benefit from training and experience to stay in the organisations.

Altogether 14 organisations registered their human resource departments for the award this year.

The five winners are the Seychelles Revenue Commission (SRC) in the large public organisation category, Four Seasons Resort in the large private organisation category, Agency for Social Protection in the medium public organisation category, Seychelles Breweries in the medium private organisation category and Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) in the large parastatal organisation category.

The three runners-up in the different categories are the department of social affairs in the medium public organisation, Cable & Wireless in the large private organisation and Seychelles Ports Authority (SPA) in the large parastatal organisation.

The eight organisations which received individual awards of excellence are the Islands Development Company (IDC) for employee development, Seychelles Ports Authority for employee engagement, Seychelles Breweries for graduate development, SCAA in human resource technologies, Cable & Wireless in leadership development, Seychelles Petroleum Company in recruitment and retention strategies, Seychelles Public Transport Corporation in performance management and Kempinski Seychelles Resort in workplace wellbeing.

The winners, runners-up and third prize winners received a shield, certificates, scholarships to the amount of R200,000, R50,000 and R10,000 respectively for their human resource departments.

The award ceremony was held at the Savoy Resort on Friday evening and it was attended by the Minister for Labour and Human Resource Development Idith Alexander, Minister for Fisheries and Agriculture among other distinguished guests.

“In spite of certain good practices, assessment results have revealed certain key challenges still permeating the human resource development landscape and it is good to note that many organisations have taken steps to remedy some of the challenges they were facing,” Minister Alexander told everyone present.

She noted that the human resource sector is a dynamic and fast evolving one which calls for good innovative human resource development practices that are important for employees’ productivity and retention.

“When people are motivated and inspired, they are more creative and productive and less likely to leave their organisations,” Minister Alexander stressed.

ANHRD’s chief executive Margaret Pillay echoed Minister Alexander’s comments and noted that equipping employees with the appropriate tools for their jobs appears to be one of the safest and easiest tasks for human resource departments. But organising people, equipping them with competences, attitude, and morale to deliver on their targets have proved to be the most challenging tasks of all though these are of critical importance for organisations’ success.

In a vote of thanks Lorella Uranie from the SCAA human resource department noted that “employees are often regarded as an organisation’s most important asset for without them a company can have the financial resources, the relevant technologies, and still be doomed for failure.”

She therefore stressed on the need for employees to be nurtured and supported by their organisations in all possible ways.

“This can be done through having in place good and effective human resource development policies and practices in place,” Ms Uranie said.