CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT IN OUR SECTOR

Capacity is the ability of people, organisations and the sector to manage service delivery successfully. Capacity development is the process where these people, organisations and the sector develop, action, maintain, strengthen and adapt over time. Together, capacity and capacity development contribute toward an enabling environment for success and delivery.

By Lester Goldman, CEO, WISA

Ioften wonder about the people in this process, and whether we sufficiently pay attention to them. Some questions I ask myself are: Do we hire the right people? Does the brain drain really exist? Do we measure performance and accountability? Consequence management – is this just a management excuse? Do we really empower our people? Leadership – is this something we define and measure?

Innovation

Innovation can lead to the creation of new and improved technologies, approaches, and strategies in the water sector. However, for these innovations to be successfully implemented and scaled-up, it is essential to have the necessary capacity within the water sector. This includes having skilled and knowledgeable professionals, well-functioning institutions, and supportive policies and regulations. There are many modern automated tracking systems available, and they should be utilised within our sector. They should help to find the best candidate, track the process, then work through the process of recruitment. We learnt from our various commissions recently that mistakes in recruitment have cost us a lot. We must take extreme care of who we are employing, but even more importantly, who we do not want to employ. How is it that people can jump from one employer to the next, despite poor track records? This goes against the grain of best practice.

I recall the topic of brain drain being discussed in the 1990s, and it is still relevant today. Even more scary now is that the gap between urban and rural skills required has increased. Surely this is an empowering tool to get young graduates to gain experience. The medical sector uses this very effectively; we should learn from them.

I believe that performance management (and there are many innovative ones) seems to be a tool only used to determine annual increases or bonuses. I may be mistaken. However, it really should measure employee objectives along with organisational objectives, while enhancing the skills and development of employees. Is this your experience? Consequence management is a necessary intervention tool, to improve and develop individuals –not only a tool to mitigate irregular expenditure, or a disciplinary tool. We need to train and develop our people more. We cannot ignore the fact that we are losing skills, and that we must fill this skills bucket. We must allocate more money to training, and show our people that we value it, by developing them.

Lastly, we must also develop our leaders. There is no one person who can state that they do not need development. Leadership development and governance training should be on the agenda of every board or accounting authority in our sector. If not, a vital opportunity is missed.