My friend works in a senior position in the Hong Kong civil service. She said, "We are paid a good salary. We do not receive any performance bonus. We do our best to serve the public. We are not motivated by any bonus".
I agree with her. This is the correct approach. The system adopted in Singapore is bad. It is Lee HL's system. He believes that the civil servants should be given performance bonus to improve their performance.
Instead, it created a bad outcome. The civil servants compete among themselves to score better and get a higher performance bonus. They distrust each other.
I am not referring to all civil servants. But the competitive behavior comes through various subtle forms. Sometimes, they are not aware about it.
This is why things are falling apart in Singapore.
We need to change our culture away from the greed for money. We have to refocus on a sense of honor and duty. Of course, we still have to give an adequate pay, like in Hong Kong.
I agree with her. This is the correct approach. The system adopted in Singapore is bad. It is Lee HL's system. He believes that the civil servants should be given performance bonus to improve their performance.
Instead, it created a bad outcome. The civil servants compete among themselves to score better and get a higher performance bonus. They distrust each other.
I am not referring to all civil servants. But the competitive behavior comes through various subtle forms. Sometimes, they are not aware about it.
This is why things are falling apart in Singapore.
We need to change our culture away from the greed for money. We have to refocus on a sense of honor and duty. Of course, we still have to give an adequate pay, like in Hong Kong.
1 comment:
Based on what I hear from civil servants I know, my impression is their bonus is very high even when compared to private sector.
They get 1 month AWS, another 0.5 months mid year, another 0.5-1 months end year plus another 2 months performance bonus if you are average 'C'. That is like at least 4 months on average.
Apparently it goes much higher than that if you score a 'B' or 'A'. I'm all for paying our civil servants adequately to make sure they don't lose out money wise, but paying an average middle level 'servant' 4-5 months bonus seems very excessive.
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