CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
Background
Due to the competitive environments in which businesses find themselves, they are obliged to ponder policies that will help them become more inventive, dynamic, and resourceful. It is vital that businesses make the most of all means to augment the efficacy of their processes. While many elements impact upon this value, employees are an important means and not cost. Employees often represents an important quota of expenditures incurred by institutions (Schraeder & Becton, 2001). Considering the need to remain economical, state-of-the-art benefit policies such as motivation plans are often established in an effort to support employee motivation and goals with the objectives of the business. Throughout the world, the question of employee career development is an important motivational tool as it can decrease employee’s displeasure, conflict and strife. Professional development nurtures the effectiveness of institutional forces by means of assignment of appropriate ranks (Bhattacharyya, 2012). In emerging nations, workforce motivation and development remains a dire issue that has led to the development of various schemes geared towards employee satisfaction. Amongst the numerous employee incentive schemes being practiced by organizations are workforce honorarium and incentive systems that are appreciated at numerous establishments as the most prevalent type of individual performance-related system in the UK (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2015). Others include retirement benefit schemes like industrial pension system, provident fund scheme, individual pension scheme as well as other other privately managed pension schemes. A scheme that directs a career development path for an employee in his/her working life is the Scheme of Service.
The Scheme of Service is a administrative instrument fashioned to offer a comprehensive structure to enable the employment, advancement and career development of the workforce. It affords for a distinct job organization, which will draw, inspire and aid preservation of appropriately skilled workforce of the institution.
The Forestry Commission (FC) is a non-private sector organization that was set up in accordance with the 1992 Constitution through an Act of parliament, Act 571 of 1999. This Act brought under the Commission the main non-private sector organizations that were executing the roles of guarding, advancement, administration and providing directives for forests and wildlife resources and related matters like the Forest Services Division, Wildlife Division, Timber Industry Development Division, Forestry Commission Training Centre, Resource Management Support Centre. The vision of the Commission is “To leave future generations and their communities with richer, better, more valuable forestry and wildlife endowments than we inherited” and in order to achieve this vision, a mission “To sustainably develop and manage Ghana’s Forestry and Wildlife resources” was set out to achieve this collective vision of the Commission.
The Commission is overseen by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources who has a mandate to regulate the utilization of forest and wildlife resources, the conservation and management of those resources and the coordination of policies related to them. The highest decision body of the Commission is the Board of Commissioners consisting of eleven (11) members drawn from various backgrounds within the sector. The Forestry Commission currently has a total staff strength of 3,535 spread throughout the various divisions out of which 519 are within the managerial band whiles 3,016 are non-managerial staff. The Chief Executive administers the daily management of the commission, and doubles as a member of the board. The Forestry Commission has an Executive Management Team that is made up of Executive Directors from the three main
Divisions (Forest Services, Wildlife and Timber Industry Development) and other Directors from the various units/department.
The Forestry Commission according to its strategic imperatives are to attract, develop and retain well motivated, skilled and efficient workforce by implementing an efficient and effective organizational infrastructure and culture. The relevance of such a document is so critical in the evolution of the Forestry Commission, as a distinct public service organization in Ghana, in compliance with the provisions of the Forestry Commission Act 571. The purpose of the Scheme of Service is to provide the Commission with a policy guideline that will ensure that all staff are highly motivated, disciplined, equipped and loyal with the relevant knowledge skills and attitude (Forestry Commision, 2015). The Commission is also involved in other retirement benefit schemes like the pension scheme and the Staff Terminal Benefit Scheme that have been put in place to secure staff during retirement.
However, four years after implementing the scheme of service, staff of the commission still feel they have no idea regarding the content and the effectiveness of its implementation. It is therefore imperative to demonstrate how different category of staff bring different perspectives to understanding the commission’s scheme of service.
