raising a highly productive workforce
Foreward
For some years now, the working situation in the public service and the workforce itself have been undergoing series of reform processes all geared towards improving overall productivity. It has always been said that the public sector worker of today has failed to live up to the standard and decorum of the public servant of yore. A lot have been adduced to be the cause of this and those factors have informed the various reform measures government at all levels have introduced to the service.
In achieving the objectives of governance at all levels, the workforce in both the public and private sectors is very central and great attention need to be paid to their mental and attitudinal dispositions towards executing their various tasks. It has been established that the failure of government policies or business objectives can be largely attributed to human factors. These negative human factors that have continued to slide us back on the road to development are what in popular parlance is called the Nigerian factor.
This book “Raising a Highly Productive Workforce” has creatively analysed several of these negative human factors, erroneously tagged the Nigerian factor, with a view to see how the average worker can rise above them to achieve enhanced productivity.
It has often been said that productivity is hard to measure and determine in the public service but the interesting scenarios explored in this book have put a lie to that. The book shows that there is a lot workers can do to motivate themselves first before expecting motivation from the employers. The book is full of advice on work ethics which are basically the building blocks of service delivery.
The reader of this delightfully written book, shorn of long-winding theories and alien analogies, can at the end conclude that the book has been designed to be the study pack version of the SERVICOM charter and all other such manuals which the service has thrown up in the quest for building a self-motivated and highly productive workforce.
It is thus very tempting for me to recommend this book for every worker in the private and public sector. I believe a book of this nature, written by someone still in service and from a vantage point of observation as a worker in the middle management level of service, deserves to be distributed at workers’ orientation programs, retreats and all other such platforms where the issue of productivity cannot but be mentioned.
Senator Bala A. Muhammed
Minister FCT
