Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) has launched a five-year strategic corporate scorecard and transformation plan aimed at enhancing service delivery and performance at the port of Mombasa.

The new performance management system dubbed Wajibika Na Tekeleza Ahadi (Delivering the promise), is anchored on four major pillars. KPA managing director Gichiri Ndua said the pillars are customer focus, customer excellence, business growth and governance, which he said if properly utilised, will increase both the input and output at the port.

Ndua said the programme will be evaluated at the elapse of five years to find out the impact it will have had and if it should be continuously run or abandoned. He further explained that systematic assessments and monitoring will be done in the course of the set period. Speaking yesterday during the launch of the programme, Ndua challenged port workers to be proactive and agile, saying state corporations have over the years undergone a robust paradigm shift, which must be complemented by similar efforts if the port is to maintain its leading position in the region and also achieve its vision of being a world class seaport.

“Today, the situation has changed and public bodies are required to operate on commercial basis with customer focus and within set targets. It is therefore inevitable that the style of management and staff attitude must change to embrace this requirement,” said Ndua. He said apart from using the scorecard to measure personal performance, employees will also be expected to take personal responsibility.

Ndua said the balanced scorecard system is an organisational transformation, which will present the opportunity for the port to take stock of collective changes including port services, technology and new policies required to meet new competitive challenges, regulations, governance direction, economic, world realities and societal development.

“Trends in the global shipping industry over the last decade show growing ship sizes, an increasing focus on customer sovereignty and need to cut costs. The concept of just in-time dictates that shippers want goods when they just need them to avoid costs of keeping large stocks,” Ndua said.

The system, according to Ndua, is expected to cultivate good attitudes among the KPA workforce, install transparency, responsibility and accountability to ensure silo mentality is eliminated and instead improve work relationships. Silo mentality is an attitude found in some organisations that occurs when several departments or groups do not want to share information or knowledge with other individuals in the same company.

KPA human resource general manager Salim Chingabwi said the scorecard system will have strategic initiatives, which will be continually measured and evaluated against best practices and methodologies across all departments in the organisation

Source: The People

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