Managers urged to reflect on their practices to become more effective |10 September 2014

Improving your productivity and that of your organisation requires more than just hard work. The secret of effective management is about managers taking personal responsibilities. This requires managers taking responsibility to enhance their managerial and leadership skills by doing a self-assessment to identify strengths and formulating and implementing strategies to overcome managerial challenges. It is about managers working smarter – becoming more effective.

These are some the issues of discussions of a two-day workshop under the theme ‘Becoming a more effective manager’ which started yesterday morning at the Guy Morel Institute at Ma Joie.

Some 35 middle managers and supervisors are getting the chance to reflect on their current practices and look at areas needing improvement.
The workshop is being organised by the Ministry of Employment and Human Resources and Shella Mohideen is running the two-day course.

As it is certain that everyday habits can have a strong impact on the effectiveness of managers, the objective of the workshop is to provide them with the opportunity to reflect deeply on these habits that often get in the way of productivity.

They will then formulate an action plan to apply modern and specific skills to increase effectiveness and productivity.

Explaining how such a course came about, Mary-Vonne Francis, senior employment officer within the Ministry of Employment and Human Resources, said its forms part of the Productivity Action Plan 2014.

It is the first of a series of productivity-related training courses that are being done this year. It came about after a conference on productivity in February where one of the recommendations from those who took part was that the ministry runs training for employers and workers about productivity.

“When it comes to productivity we must every now and then train and equip people with the necessary tools so that they can make a difference and improve productivity in their work places. The training must be based on pertinent issues in their respective domains. This is the first workshop for this year and others based on productivity will be organised later,” said Ms Francis.

She said that Praslin and La Digue will also be included in the programme.
When she explained the contents of the course, Mrs Mohideen said the managers will reflect on their own practices.

“We are doing some self-reflection on the first day so we as managers can detect our strengths and areas of weakness and what we can do to improve. I believe if we as managers cannot manage ourselves, it is not possible for us to manage others,” she said.

She added that on the first day the workshop focused on how the managers can manage others; on certain organisations that have productive workforce and what they are doing to achieve that; and also on organisations that feel their workers can be more productive and what is it they are not doing right.

Then they will share those experiences so they can detect what can be done to make a difference.
 
On the effectiveness of the course, Mrs Mohideen said there are some training where those chosen to attend just sit and are told what to do as a manager.

“This workshop is different. As the one running the course, I am not telling those taking part what to do. The managers will do self-reflection on their practices and share those with each other,” she said.