21 Mar 2017

Motivating employees can lead to increased productivity, allowing an organisation to achieve higher levels of output.

This was said by Assistant minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Ms Botlogile Tshireletso in response to concerns raised by some senior officers in a meeting meant to iron out issues affecting performance in the public service.

She agreed that employees had to be motivated to retain a high level of innovation while producing quality work at a higher level of efficiency.

She urged supervisors to motivate their juniors to generate higher value that could lead to more substantial levels of achievements.

Earlier on, Ms Boitumelo Thebeng informed the assistant minister that lack of motivation was a hindrance to performance in the public service.

She noted that the human resource section in every organisation was vital in service delivery, and that employees could deliver effectively if their efforts were recognised.

In addition, she noted that some hard working employees were at times demoralised due to lack of motivation from their superiors.

Ms Tshireletso acknowledged the importance of human resource and stated that for effective governance, there was need for a strong connection between management and the rest of the staff.

She pointed out that leadership should inspire and influence the desired behaviour towards delivery of results and ultimately customer satisfaction.

“As leaders you should pay attention to your employees, invest in them and empower them in order to have an inspired, motivated and customer focused workforce. We need to adopt the culture of teamwork with emphasis on delivery by all,” she added.

Ms Tshireletso raised concern about unfair promotions and transfers which she said were based on friendliness and favouritism in the end disadvantaging deserving officers.

The practice, she said, demotivated hard working employees and urged relevant officers to take that into consideration and do the right thing.

Another issue raised was introduction of some incentives especially for those officers working in rural areas to retain and motivate them.

It was reported that the District Health Management Team (DHMT) was hard hit by nurses who leave for greener pastures.

Currently, the DHMT has a shortfall of nine nurses while some areas in the district have no doctors and specialists.

Ms Tshireletso noted the concern and promised to take it up with relevant authorities.

For his part, the council secretary, Mr Charles Amos said the vastness of the district does not hinder them to serve communities, adding that they were true soldiers holding up to the constitution of the country.

He said they were dedicated to ensuring that government initiatives were implemented as expected to uplift the livelihoods of communities. ENDS