Formulate policies to promote civic engagement at workplace — Consultant
The Executive Chairman of the Institute of Executive Studies (IES), Philip Gamey, has urged institutions to formulate policies that encourage civic engagements at the work place.
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That, he explained, would help in a healthy way as the country prepares for this year’s election.
He said the objective of developing a framework was to enhance productivity in organisations in an election year.
He told the Daily Graphic that during an election year, the passion for politics could ignite heated discussions at the work place and that could adversely affect productivity and so companies must immediately take steps to develop a policy to that effect instead of sweeping the issue under the carpet.
Pretence
Mr Gamey said the pretence was too much in the country and that organisations must allocate specific time, say 30 minutes, during lunch time, to such engagements, adding that political discussions affected productivity and so there was the need to put in such guardrails.
“It’s time to confront this challenge and slay the monster with a policy; a friendly policy allows inclusive discussions and debates in a very timed way,” he said and added that organisations must look at the peculiarity of their establishments and have such a policy.
“It’s a novelty, so it’s looking funny,” he said, and that there was something Ghanaian companies could develop and push to the rest of the world where it was non-existent, by removing barriers to create healthy policies to encourage civic engagement in an organised manner.
Mr Gamey said such a policy should not be implemented in a non-election year creating partisan confrontations but only election year to allow civic discussions and that organisations could do it three or six months to an election “but there must be something”.
Productivity
Political discussions, he explained, affected productivity and that having a policy was something that must be looked at at all work places since it was important.
“If this is done, it would allow for different perspectives to be tolerated and appreciated and it would also foster an inclusive environment where even when a company has a heavy tilt towards one party, the other party would feel involved.
“So these things must be done immediately because productivity can be affected, if any of these factors are allowed to occur and it would come in the form of polarisation or divisiveness, loss of focus and decreased productivity.
It could also be issues of bias and discrimination and there is going to be general disengagement and when people’s feelings are hurt, they would feel disengaged in a team, they would become disengaged automatically,” he said.
Members of the public, Mr Gamey said, were aware of the issues of political discussions at the work place every four years although it was not on the front burner.
The policy by an organisation, he said, must have clear outlines of what was acceptable and what was not and that every company must define boundaries that could be crossed and those that could not be crossed.
For example, he said there should be open discussions and that personal biases and aggressiveness must be kept in check.
