Barbados' largest employer, the Government, is committed to employee engagement and will be striving to increase work efficiency, improve customer experiences and staff development.

This was emphasised by Dr. Esther Byer Suckoo, Minister of Labour and Social Security as she addressed the launch of the National Initiative for Service Excellence (NISE)'s 100 Improvements in 100 days outreach programme at Scotia Bank, Rockley, Christ Church last Monday. 

Asserting that this would be done in Ministries, departments and statutory corporations across the island, she remarked: "Government continues to pay much attention to the education and training of its people."

The Labour Minister told those in attendance that employee engagement was a critical factor towards increasing productivity, and she noted that, "for some time, there has been a concern about worker attitudes, service delivery, productivity and service excellence."

Commenting on the results from a recent NISE Employee Engagement survey, Dr. Byer Suckoo stressed. "Barbados, which is heavily reliant on the provision of services, is running an economy at a low employee engagement level of 30 per cent. This cannot, and should not, continue."

She said regardless of the number of staff within an organisation, there were always areas in business that could be improved with greater team effort and staff involvement.

"Research has demonstrated that employee engagement is a good predictor of customer satisfaction, retention, productivity and profitability. This is linked to the fact that employee engagement is considered a very good indicator of an employee's positive or negative emotional attachment to his or her job, colleagues and organisation," Dr. Byer Suckoo pointed out.