Such a contradicting nation

How can a nation in only three days collect an amount of money which is multiplicative of its population for people with special needs?

How can the people of the same nation without hesitance park their cars on spots that are designated for people with special needs right after they have made a money contribution to help those people?

How can a nation which has only 50 years of independence be in a much better position in terms of economy and unemployment rates than many larger European nations?

How can the same nation have one of the worst public sector customer service?

How can an island with a 700K population where everybody knows each other, most of us are relatives or have a friend of a friend have so much hate for each other?

Why do we carry our personal problems into the streets by honking and giving the hand to other drivers and into work fighting with colleagues?

Why do we think that we know everything, and why do we believe that our opinion is always the right one?

Why do we say that we want to solve the Cyprus problem and yet we turn down every possible solution that comes before us?

Why do we feel the need to wear the most expensive clothes and buy the most expensive cars when our salary is a little bit more than 15000 Euros a year?

Restructuring of the public sector in Cyprus

This is a big, very big problem in Cyprus. Unfortunately the 80/20 rule becomes a 95/5 here. 5 percent of the people in the public sector do 95% of the jobs.  So here are some ideas that could be done to improve how things work:

1. Introduce bi-annual job evaluations so that the work of a public sector employee can be evaluted constantly. If the evaluation of an employee is not satisfactory delay the next pay rise.

2. Terminate the exams for employment in the public sector. Instead, choose candidates based on their experience for the specific position, their academic qualifications and INTERVIEW them! The exams is not the right way to do it because you get to pick the 5-10 highest grades, which are usually people who are studying 24/7 and have no personality, no communication abilities, no leadership abilities.

3. If you still want to have exams, add computer exams in there, you know something like Excel. If you don’t know this is a spreadsheet program provided by Microsoft (sarcasm here).

3. Training, training, training, training, training. At least train them how to be polite and how to smile. Being rude and short does not help anyone when dealing with services.

4. Change the law so a public sector employee can be fired! Especially if they don’t do their job correctly.

5. Terminate all paperwork. In 2009, people use computers! It takes leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssss time. No need to copy, no need to physically transfer from one branch to another, no, no, no. Please!

6. Prepare RFQs for consulting and restructuring of the public sector! It might cost some money, but not as much as we lose on “productivity”.

5 fast ways to improve customer service

With respect to my recent visit to a public sector service in Cyprus the other day, and my disappointment (I am way past the anger phase) with the service, here are 5 easy and non-expensive ways to restructure traditional wait-to-be-served queues so that you can improve customer service.

1. If there are applications that need to be completed put them on shelves with signs, so that customers will complete them BEFORE getting in line.

2. Delegate the work behind the desk. The person who is servicing the customer should not be responsible for making copies, answering phones, making coffees etc.

3. Make sure that short requests and long requests do not have to wait in the same line. Kind of like the supermarkets where you have the 15 or less items.

4. Give numbers to people entering or inform them of how much time they will have to wait.

5. Have a person for information at the door who will make sure that you are at the right place and that you have the necessary documents with you.