The awards were presented and the pictures have been taken, but Barbados’ Best Employers 2016 still has some work to do.
Caribbean Catalyst Inc. managing director Rosalind Jackson, who has always made it clear that the biennial programme, which is sponsored by The Nation, is not a beauty contest, said her team would now conduct a debrief session with companies that participated in this year’s BBE.
The programme’s award luncheon took place last Tuesday at Hilton Barbados Resort. Emerging from the ten finalists as winners were Hilton Barbados Resort (large category), Guardian Guardian General Insurance Limited (medium category) and Blueprint Creative Inc. (small category).
“When we debrief, we will help companies understand where, and how, they can purposefully improve,” Jackson said.
“The Caribbean Catalyst consultants will visit the management of each of the participating companies to debrief thoroughly with emphasis on the survey results and recommendations for continuous improvement.
She added: “In addition to each company’s survey results, participants will be easy to see how they did in each of the eight areas surveyed, compared to their own category average and the average of all 30 participants. This is done using bar charts and it’s really rather instructive.”
She explained that “similar comparisons will be shared on the leadership effectiveness, the engagement and the productivity indicators”.
“The companies who have participated in more than one BBE programme will have additional comparative information. Looking at their results over multiple surveys will provide useful insights,” Jackson noted.
“Repeated participation will help companies build specific information on their own trends and inform specific continuous improvement in vital areas. For 2014, inspired by some of the very innovative practices shared by many of the 27 participants in three areas, we produced an e-book, which is on our website, and in that book we shared innovative and practical tips drawn from the pool of participants.
“This year we will be creating video clips from interviews with the winners, with their permission, and posting them on our website and on YouTube.”
Jackson said 2016 BBE was another success. She said the programme was beneficial to Barbados, calling it “a process for performance measurement and continuous improvement,… building a better Barbados”.
“Being a finalist is a stamp of excellence in people practices, the key resource in building a sustainable organisation, be it private sector or otherwise. Generally, we at Catalyst will continue to be proactive advocates of excellence, we will be true to our tagline of achieving through people by promoting progressive people practices through thought leadership initiatives,” she said. (SC)
