Accra, July 25, GNA – Mr Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafo, Chairman, National Media Commission (NMC), has urged management of media houses to dignify their work environment as they pursue teamwork to enhance productivity.
He said the functional leadership in every media organisation must ensure that the people who work under them were treated well and accorded the dignity and respect that they deserve.
Mr Boadu-Ayeboafo made the appeal on Sunday in his address at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation’s (GBC) Head Office Orientation and Training Programme for the staff and management of the state broadcaster in Accra.
The three-day programme on the theme, “Transforming GBC from Bureaucracy to Business,” aims at re-positioning GBC from a bureaucratic set-up to a business-oriented corporation.
Similar training sessions have already been held in Kumasi for the northern sector and Koforidua for the middle belt.
Mr Boadu-Ayeboafo said, he wondered why management and functional leaders would treat people with disrespect and still expected them to perform well.
He reiterated that mutual respect and mutual recognition were generally essential for productivity in every organisation.
He recounted that when he was the Editor of the Daily Graphic, he ensured that staff who wanted to go on study leave were given the opportunity to do so, as long as it did not affect the work.
“My philosophy was this; you can go and do your PhD, triple PhD and all that, for as long as I was the Editor, you will not remove me from office, you will still come and work under me. But the quality of your output will improve. If you were giving me stories that were full of mistakes, at least going back to school will improve upon the editing, thus the better-quality work you will give me, the little work that I do and I take all the credit,” he stated.
“Because at the end of day, if anybody takes the newspaper and it is good, the Editor is praised, it is not the individual journalists. So, why should I be a clod against your progress?”
He urged management of media organisations to stimulate their staff and identify those with potentials and nurture them.
Mr Boadu-Ayeboafo intimated that the greatest and most sustainable change that could ever happen was the change from within; saying “it is when we change as individuals that we can help nurture and change others”.
He appealed to those in leadership to be concerned about the wellbeing of people who work under them, and to also be thinking about how to improve upon the total quality of the output.
He reminded the staff of GBC that their mandate included selling air time and providing information; and that they must always ensure that their credibility was not tainted in any way.
He advised the staff not to allow themselves to be manipulated by politicians; saying “if we do our work well as workers of GBC, the prestige that goes with it is far more important than tying your destiny into the apron of some politicians”.
Professor Amin Alhassan, Director-General, GBC, said GBC staff would continue to do the work that they were doing but with a new perspective.
“It is about change management and we want to get our staff to come along, you can’t change the Institution without the people. So, we are doing this extensive staff re-orientation to let them understand that the industry has changed, technology has changed; the days of analogue television and radio, where we were a monopoly is far gone. We are in a competition and we must be able to compete but we need to tune our staff into that position.”
He noted that aside orienting and training their staff, they were procuring new equipment for the Corporation.
Dr Charles Kwening, a Board Member of GBC, reminded the staff of the Corporation that their destiny was in their own hands and that they could decide to kill it or nurture it.