Transformation to supreme law secretary |09 December 2017

A new broom in the Attorney General’s Office is sweeping clean the dust left behind by the last AG and the staff are noticing the benefits already and they are feeling good about it.

The transmogrification has started with some long awaited training which was always put on the back burner because of the pressure of work and certain priorities always took over the front burners because there is always something urgent in the AG’s working environment.

Investment into a crash course to transform the law secretaries into supreme law secretaries was achieved smoothly and efficiently over a short period of time using a modern teaching method that involves the use of the mind to analyse, assimilate and dissect information without the need to spend hours reading information from books and this method of teaching has been pioneered by The Academy of High Performance, a Tertiary College licensed by the Ministry of Education under the Tertiary Education Act 2012 of Seychelles.

The training was not intended to teach the ladies how to be good secretaries; the training assumed they were already good secretaries and took them one level up to become supreme secretaries thus moving them up closer towards the management arena.

A supreme secretary knows her manners, can read body language, can analyse handshakes in real time and see in the person’s eyes whether this is a friend or a foe and a supreme secretary can deal with stressful situations and can manage her time and sometimes the manager’s time efficiently and she works with her manager as a team.

She knows her table manners and her etiquette puts her one rung above the average and she is a sought after asset.

The old attitude in relation to the way a good secretary is utilised has changed recently. The old managers used to look upon his (mostly males) secretary as a dumping site for anything he did not want on his desk. This was dumped on the secretary’s desk or the secretary was used as the security guard to protect him and to stop anyone coming into his office.

Today a good manager works as a team with his/her secretary and they share responsibilities and decisions can be canvassed by the manager from the secretary because usually the secretary knows more about what is going on in the company than the manager.

Notwithstanding the line of responsibility and mutual respect must not be breached. Some secretaries are so good that whenever a manager moves to a new position or to a new employer, the secretary moves with him/her because they have harmonised their working pattern.

One important aspect we in Seychelles must address is the salary range for secretaries. A secretary’s salary range should be between R9,000.00 and R14,000.00. The problem is middle and senior management have continually given themselves a higher percentage of pay rise that the gap between a good secretary and a manager has widened and it needs to be addressed. The Government will be well advised to concentrate on raising the lower levels and capping the top grades. All this nonsense that they have to pay senior managers good money to keep them otherwise they will go to the private sector is not credible thinking. Some managers thrive in the government working environment and would fail miserably in private sector because we are not talking horses for courses.

Another consideration are perks. Some managers get to travel; for example right now there are so many government officials travelling because it is December and they can buy Christmas presents for their loved ones may be at Duty Free prices overseas while the secretary and other grades do not get any perks. This inequality creates resentment.  

Lately the government and indeed the private sector have cut back on training then at the same time they expect to recruit smart people whose training has been paid by others which again it is not equitable and shows lack of vision.

As a society with 40% of our population living below the poverty line we have a huge mountain to climb and not climbing this mountain will keep us Seychellois at the bottom for eternity while we keep having to employ foreigners because we cannot find Seychellois to do the job with the right qualifications. What do you expect when you do not sow seeds you rely on the birds to drop a few seeds in your garden to grow what you need? Of course not! You invest in people and we create qualified Seychellois workers who need to move around but the bar has been raised. I always say to my students stay in a job for 5 years then either move up or move out before you grow roots. There is nothing to be gained nowadays doing a job for 40 years then you get a rice cooker when you retire. This is an insult.

The mood in the new AG’s Office is one of positive expectations that at long last the old attitude and the old way of doing things will now be modernised and streamlined and once the secretaries are paid what they are worth then productivity will rise and they will not mind having to cope with everything being “urgent” and wanted yesterday.

Let us hope we invest more in Seychellois then we will be in control of our own country and our destiny and not go the way Mauritius has gone.

Contributed by Barry Laine FCIM, FInst SMM, MCMI, MBSCH

Academy of High Performance Ltd