| Unregistered |
06-10-2021 10:47 PM |
Unsavory work
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
(Post 183892)
It's very sad that MAS is trying to do so many new things but is unwilling to hire additional staff. Instead, they simply dump it on the existing staff and ask them to handle it.
The management needs to understand that we are not the Bank of England. It cannot expect us to be producing cutting-edge work when we don't have the same amount of resources or expertise.
Worst is that many of the bosses do not even understand how difficult their requests are. Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?
Yes, it is easy to make such requests. But have they considered operationally how it is supposed to be done? Whose responsibility is it? How should the work be divided? Is it better if we outsource this to a third party? Do our existing staff have enough resources to cope? Should we actually hire personnel who are experienced in this rather than asking our staff to handle something they have not done before?
In many cases, unfortunately, bosses are only capable of "big picture" ideas, which I believe any MAS officer is also capable of. It is not hard to dream. In terms of delivery though, this is where they completely fall short. There is a remarkable lack of awareness on constraints, believing that any constraint can somehow be solved. Or even if they are aware of the constraints, they do not want to think about it deeply, hoping that by delegating it to someone, that person can miraculously complete the task without any fuss.
Thus, what usually happens is that the person tasked with the additonal responsibilities:
1) Is already packed to the brim with existing work.
2) Has no idea about the additional responsibilities.
3) Being Singaporean, is too afraid to reject the new task.
He thus makes a half-hearted attempt trying to contact a few people who might know about the new task. If he is lucky, he gets a reply because other people are also busy with their own work. If he is unlucky, he gets no reply. But, he also does not want to follow-up because he is also busy and has to spend his time on his core responsibilities.
Thus, this issue just lingers on and on until the staff either leaves MAS or the boss is absorbed is some other new idea and forgets about the issue. After wasting everyone's time over months/years, it becomes apparent that this issue was not really important in the first place. This cycle then repeats itself with other issues.
The other major central banks are much more focused. When they want to do something, they are willing to commit the necessary resources to do it, even if there is no guarantee of success. They accept as a core principle that if you decide to do something, you put your best foot forward. MAS, on the other hand, loves to pussyfoot around issues and naively hopes that everything will somehow turn out well in the end. Quite sad in my opinion.
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Totally agree with this post - Not sure why management will naively think that it is possible to keep increasing productivity of staff to deal with the ever increasing work demands as the financial sector grows. The technological "improvements" introduced involving analytics have given rise to more issues/false positives to be followed-up manually in the supervisory space.
The general morale of the existing staff is only going to get worse, with ever increasing workload, leaving very little time to pursue training, self development and reflection, coupled with peers in the private sector earning more in general for their hours of labor. The whole vicious cycle leading to low morale can be summarised as follows:
Boss or his/her superior wants multiple initiatives to pursued within the work year, delegates this task to a team without consideration of resource/capacity constraints ---> This gets delegated further down the chain, with arbitrary deadline set, officers are expected to multitask and meet this deadline ---> get questioned why the task cannot be completed, reason such as being bogged down by daily BAU, or covering team-mates who have resigned/on long term leave is often unacceptable ---> Officers burn out over time, and tries to kick the can down the road as much as possible, until they resign ---> Boss again delegates the task to other officers/new joiners who often don't get proper handover from officers who have resigned.
This is only the unsavory work part (the push factor) of the equation. Coupled with the generally low pay factor vis-a-vis the private sector which is hiring, it is a no brainer why officers will eventually leave. Perhaps management should also reflect on why are there so many job opportunities in the market that are suitable for MAS officers to fill, that is because there are many new initiatives (developmental, new regulatory requirements) that have already been pushed out, forcing increase in labor demand to pursue new opportunities or to implement a new reg change. When will management think it is enough to take a break, or that it warrants increase in headcount to deal with the enquiries or applications borne out of these new initiatives?
Management often pitch that technological improvements will help us to manage our workload better (think - chat bot). Please wake up from this Joke (think - the recent embarrassment of "Ask Jamie" answering a simple and relevant question on COVID). Technological improvements will not make our daily tasks of answering enquiries that are so dynamic (with varying degree of understanding required) any easier, and will only embarrass MAS further, if we are sending Bots to address consumer queries. The solution is really to increase labor to meet the demands of the new economy. And please stop underpricing the cost of staff turnover (especially experienced staff with rich institutional knowledge) - Please appreciate the well being of your existing staff more! |
