BoG: 50-60 Staff Retire Yearly, Governor Explains Hiring

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Every Year, 50 to 60 BoG Staff Retire — Governor Explains Recent Recruitment

Governor Dr Johnson Asiama tackled that question head-on, offering a defense of the central bank’s hiring push over the past year.

Asiama explained that when he stepped into leadership, he found several critical areas the Bank simply wasn’t equipped to handle. Virtual asset monitoring, data analytics, artificial intelligence, cyber monitoring these were all gaps that needed filling, and filling them meant bringing in new people with the right skills.

Beyond those new capability gaps, Asiama pointed to something more routine but equally important: every year, between 50 and 60 BoG staff retire. That consistent outflow means the Bank has to replace departing employees just to maintain its existing workforce, let alone grow into new areas.

He shared these details while fielding a question on whether the Bank of Ghana can realistically sustain its recent pace of recruitment, during the 132nd Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) press conference in Accra on Thursday, September 24.

Asiama framed the hiring in the context of an evolving institution. By way of staff cost, you have to put into proper context. You have a central bank that is evolving in the sense that when we came last year, remember that there was a whole lot we were not doing; we were not monitoring the virtual asset space; we were not doing it by way of data analytics, artificial intelligence, in terms of cyber monitoring and a lot more had to be done, and so we needed more hands, he said.

On the retirement side, he was equally direct. At the same time, remember every year we get about between 50 and 60 staff retiring so what do you do? You have to replace them. You have to recruit new skills; you have to make sure that you are able to meet your mandate in the context of evolving trends in technology. Even in the FinTech space, things are changing by the day. You need to be prepared for it for that so you have to bring people in.

Asiama also touched on a challenge many institutions face retaining highly skilled employees once they’re hired. When you bring them in, you have to be competitive as well because, for the highly skilled ones, if you don’t look after them well, they just get another job and leave, so you need to be competitive at all times and bring them in to keep them; some of them you spend money to train. You want to be sure that they stay and are not tempted to go elsewhere, so staff cost is significant, but we believe that over time it will taper down.

Looking ahead, Asiama was clear that last year’s recruitment push was more of a catch-up moment than the start of an ongoing expansion. Last year we did a bit of recruitment; this year, from next year it will go down deeply and over time we match it to the number of retirements on a yearly basis, he said.

Asiama offered a useful benchmark for understanding whether current staff costs are actually a concern. According to him, the general rule of thumb is that staff costs shouldn’t exceed 40 percent of total operational costs. As things stand, BoG’s figure sits well below half of that threshold.

What is important for me is to compare your staff cost to your level of operational cost. The rule of thumb is for it not to exceed 40 per cent of our operational cost; as we speak, it is nowhere near half of that, and so in absolute terms, yes, the figure might look significant, but if I relate it to my total operational cost, it is not up to the threshold, and so for now we believe that we can operate with that, he explained.

He added that the real financial pressure facing the Bank isn’t primarily staff costs at all, but rather two other key factors including the cost of Open Market Operations (OMO), which he described as the cost of maintaining economic stability.