FREEPORT ﾖ Bahamasair has awarded a six-month contract to the CEO Network to conduct a company-wide training programme aimed at instilling in its employees the importance of service with excellence.
Half of the national flag carrier’s employees here in Freeport participated in a day-long seminar on Tuesday conducted by CEO Network President Deborah A. Bartlett and Bishop Samuel Green, President of The Bahamas Christian Council. The seminar was scheduled to be repeated for the remaining staff members today (Wednesday), and follow-up seminars are planned on a monthly basis.
Ms. Bartlett said the entire staff of Bahamasair in New Providence, the Family Islands and Miami will also participate in the training programme. In an interview following Tuesdayﾴs session, Bishop Green said the training sessions are being conducted by the CEO Institute, which he described as “a new entity” created as a result of a “merger between the CEO Network and Manpower Training and Development Systems,” a company which he owns.
“We want to begin to prepare Bahamians for the impact of the FTAA and to try and increase the level of understanding as to the need to be productive,” said Bishop Green, who conducted the morning session. “Right now if we were to sign FTAA with all of its implications, The Bahamas would be totally lost, in that we cannot possibly compete with Mexico and South American countries. We are a service-oriented country, but the service that we are rendering now is sub-par.”
Ms. Bartlett, who gave a stirring motivational presentation during the afternoon session, said she was pleased with the “vision and I believe sincere interest of the Board of Directors and management of Bahamasair” in responding to the need for continuing education and training for what I consider the greatest assets of the national flag carrier; that is, its employees.
“I think it is a response to globalization and the need to ensure that we have productivity gains in the workplace,” she said.
The mission of the CEO Network, she said, is to “help strengthen the work ethic, raise levels of productivity, and serve as a networking platform for economic empowerment, which really in my view positions us obviously to be a response to the FTAA.”
Referring to the Trevor Hamilton Report commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce, Ms. Bartlett said the workforce of The Bahamas received a failing grade of 1.7 on a scale of 4.0.
“Mediocrity will not deliver opportunity in a globalized community,” the CEO Network President warned. “Within that report, it also said that a part of the problem and challenge that we face as a country is the absence of commitment to training.”
Ms. Bartlett said globalization is not “something we should be afraid of, but we should be afraid of it if we are not prepared for it.” Preparation for globalization, she said, “must come through a renewed and strengthened commitment to training.”
Excellence should be a culture and natural way of thinking, Ms. Bartlett said, adding that The Bahamas has a service-driven economy, but “we will no longer get away with being compared with ourselves.”
“We will be measured by what the world requires and demands,” she said. “So we are not going to be excused because we are from The Bahamas. We will be compared with the United States. As Bahamians, I believe we are prepared for a moment such as this because all of our lives we have served the world.”
Noting that the CEO Network has a six-month contract with Bahamasair, Ms. Bartlett said the training programme will be conducted in phases.
“When you have a problem, the problem didnﾴt come overnight,” she said. “It is a result of a history; it is a result of what we did in the past, over and over again. If we want to shift the paradigm, we have to do the right thing over and over again.”
Presently the focus is on customer service principles, ethics, the power of submitting to authority and “any number of things that impact the environment,” Ms. Bartlett said. She indicated that experts will be brought in to do some classes, saying that “the best minds” will be brought in “to share their experience.”
“Certainly I do not have all the answers nor do I have all the expertise,” Ms. Bartlett said. “We identify the best with their core competencies and bring them into the classroom environment so that we can hopefully bring out the best that is inside all of us.”
At the completion of the six-month training programme, Ms. Bartlett said, “What we want to do is see a self-motivated team that is guided by understanding that every individual has a focus, and out of that focus comes a vision. That vision is undergirded by values, so that we have a workforce that operates like what I call the ant. The attitude of the ant (is that) the ant needs no commander.”
Stressing the importance of integrity, she added that it is their hope that service at Bahamasair “would be consistent with service excellence.”
Founded seven years with a mission to “strengthen the work ethic,” the CEO Network sponsors an annual conference involving experts from the United States, Europe, the Caribbean and The Bahamas that serves as a networking platform for economic empowerment opportunities.
By Oswald T. Brown, The Bahama Journal
