To effectively manage the rapid growth in its membership, directors of the Barbados Association of Retired Persons (BARP) are upgrading its information technology (IT) system and strengthening its processes.
Recently Board Secretary Sandra Osborne and Director Desmond Crichlow spoke to Executive Manager Alphea Wiggins-Rock, explaining some of the changes that are being made to enhance the organization.
Crichlow, who specializes in IT, said BARP was growing so fast that it had outgrown its database. The new system, which was going to take BARP well into the 21st century, was about 90 per cent complete, he said, and will include a database of the membership as well as all the information related to the financial set-up of the Golden Health Plan.
With the data generated by the system, management would be better able to disaggregate most of the components of membership so as to understand what was necessary for them, he said. All the members had specific needs and a specific profile.
He said that from a strategic planning perspective, it was vital that the information was structured so that management could easily access it.
The way the information was stored let them know who the members in the Golden Health Plan were and how much money would be collected each month.
Regarding the health plan, he said that members reacted quite nicely to the new approaches being introduced.
“They come to BARP and we have special facilities for them to pay. They can come in, easily pay their fees and get an online receipt. They do not have to wait in a long line to get an original receipt.
“The facilities which have been actually developed cater specially to the membership.
“What we have done to get here is streamline all of the processes that go into a health-care system. We have streamlined it in such a way that it becomes efficient; there is speed. You can get information on a timely basis,” he said.
Asked about the changes that have occurred over the past year, Osborne said that the rapid growth in membership had put pressure on the organization and therefore the need to improve the systems and processes. She said that these improvements also required the strengthening of staff capabilities.
She was quick to note that BARP had a tradition of relying on volunteers and this would continue, but not to the detriment of volunteers.
Some of the changes include written job descriptions for staff and renovating and retrofitting offices to maximize efficiency.
“We have been able to improve on the workflow and the overall customer experience,” Osborne said.
“Generally speaking, we tried to make the organization more friendly and more accommodating to the volume of members who keep coming.”
To Osborne, these upgrades are seen as very important in terms of the corporate governance of BARP which, she said, was simply about how one led an organization and was accountable to the members.
“In order to ensure that the organization is led properly, there are probably four components you would want to look at.
“If one has a system around these four components, you would probably find that the directors are able to discharge their obligations to the membership,” she said.
The four components are:
a) the values and ethics of the organization;
b) the structure and composition of the board;
c) the roles and responsibilities of the board and management;
d) performance, accountability and transparency at board and management level.
“We need to be accountable to our members and that dictates how we engage our members; we need to communicate to our members,” she stressed.
“Our members understand that we are discharging our obligations and are seeking to address the issues which are of concern to them.”
