YOUNG BARBADIAN WORKERS DO NOT APPEAR to be as loyal to their employers as previous generations, says human resource specialist Brenda Evelyn.
In addition, the principal consultant of Evelyn Associates Limited said some workers were guilty of privately taking time from one job to attend another.
“This is not casting aspirations on anyone but I find that young people are not committed to organizations [like] we older people were committed. We didn’t come in like a grave digger. We had to work our way up the ladder,” she said.
“Younger people have a different attitude and that is something that you have to live with. However, you have to remember that they are not going to give you the kind of commitment because as soon as another opportunity comes up they are gone.
“Employees need to remember this is the organization that is putting bread and butter on their table,” she told representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises from a cross-section of industries.
Evelyn was addressing the third quarterly Republic Bank corporate commercial customer breakfast seminar at Hilton Barbados last Wednesday.
She was speaking on the Employments Rights Act while addressing the issue of loyalty to an organization, as well as being present and on time for work.
She said: “For those people who are moonlighting you need to deal with that because if you think you are coming to my job and I am paying you but at two or three o’clock you take up your purse to step out and gone to do something else for somebody else. These are things that employees should know that they shouldn’t do.
“If you find that your salary that you are working for is not enough, and you need to have two jobs, which there is nothing wrong with having the two jobs, let’s do it the right way. You ask permission . . . to supplement your salary and we can agree.
“But [not] this thing about just deciding that you are going to nip out and go do work and then come back and pretend,” she said.
She also said that constant lateness, absenteeism and presenteeism could cost the company because of low productivity.
To address this issue, Evelyn suggested the introduction of a flexi-time system. (MM)
