Aubyn Hill
A WEEK ago today, this newspaper carried a front-page article about foreign police being interviewed for four assistant commissioner posts in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). The advertisements for candidates were placed in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Gleaner article brought home, once again, the unavoidable truth that, like it or not, we are living in a globalised world that is interconnected through communication, tourism, business, and in this case, crime and security.
THE RIGHT THING TO DO
It does make sense, however, for us to recruit foreign expertise at senior management levels in the private and public sectors to straighten out problems that we have and train our people, over time, to be effective managers in these posts. But it is our responsibility to ensure that these foreign experts do train and impart the knowledge and skills that they possess to our executives and officials. They should be monitored and measured and an important part of their compensation could be variable and linked to the training they impart to the appropriately identified Jamaicans.
As a small country with limited resources and limited avenues to garner certain experiences and expertise, it is natural that we will have a continuing need to recruit foreigners with expertise that we do not now possess. Many countries adopt this approach to growing and developing a pool of local expertise - over time. Given that our people are our biggest asset in a world that puts more and more value in the knowledge worker, the recruitment of foreign experts will have to become commonplace in the coming years until we build our own range of expertise over time. Luckily, some of those "foreign experts" will come from the extensive and learned Jamaican diaspora.
LEARN FROM THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
On November 2 1883, about a year before she died, Emma Lazarus wrote a sonnet that was placed on the Statue of Liberty in 1903. The famous part reads:
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore;
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me..."
Objective observers who look at the record at Ellis Island will have to conclude that the United States of America did honour that commitment that has made many people - from Ireland, Greece, Germany, Mexico, and even Jamaica - achievers in a land that values merit.
It is fair to say that over the last decade or two the USA has decidedly not been looking for "huddled masses" but rather very bright experts who can address particular needs in the American economy and society at large. We will easily recall the great speed and ease whereby work visas were given to Indians in the late nineties who had particular and high-level expertise in computer programming and software management. They were hardly your normal "huddled masses".
Frankly, it is going to take a country like Jamaica many decades to train its own group of experts to grow our own expertise at home. We are going to have to take the pragmatic approach and search the world for the best experts and offer them contracts that have reasonable tenures. We are competing in a globalised world and we will have to pay market prices. But we must use these experts sensibly and ensure that a great part of the work that they do will be to train bright Jamaicans to take over their positions when the experts leave. We need to be careful not to train just one bright Jamaican for each expert's job since that "bright" Jamaican will quickly get the wrong idea that the job of the expert is his or hers when the expert leaves. That future job recipient will generally just do the minimum to secure the job. Instead, let four or five people be trained by the expert and the best one is given the job when the time comes.
Also, before we get too touchy about bringing foreign experts in to train our people in the skills that we do not now have, let us remember that many Jamaicans make their living overseas working as professionals and experts in other peoples' countries. The quicker we get our minds around the fact that globalisation is around to stay and when used properly can benefit us, the quicker we're going to get the best benefits from this phenomenon.
Aubyn Hill is managing partner of Corporate Strategies Limited, a restructuring and financial advisory firm. Respond to: writerhill@gmail.com
