People and Organizations

  Walk into any established freight forwarding office in Colombo. Look at the senior management team. Now look at the junior staff. The age gap is striking. Many senior managers are in their late 50s or 60s, having built their careers over three decades. Below them are young workers in their 20s and early 30s. The middle layer, experienced professionals in their 40s, is remarkably thin. This is not a coincidence. It is a  succession planning crisis . The nature of the problem Sri Lanka's freight forwarding industry expanded rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s following economic liberalization. Those pioneers are now retiring. Meanwhile, the industry struggled to attract mid-career talent due to: Relatively low starting salaries compared to other private sector employments Perception of logistics as a "blue-collar" field Migration of experienced professionals overseas post 2022 economic crisis The result? When senior managers retire, there is no ...

  Customs compliance is usually discussed in legal terms – penalties, audits, seizure notices. But here is an HR question rarely asked: what do logistics employees  gain  from being compliant? In most Sri Lankan freight forwarding and trading companies, the answer is "nothing." Compliance is invisible. Errors are punished. There is no reward system for doing things right. The HR problem From a  reward management  perspective, organizations get the behavior they reward. If a logistics officer processes 200 declarations with zero compliance errors but receives the same bonus as a colleague with 20 errors, the message is clear: accuracy does not matter. This is a structural failure of performance-based reward. Theoretical lens – Expectancy theory Vroom's Expectancy Theory  (1964) explains that employee motivation depends on three beliefs: Effort → Performance  – Will trying harder actually improve my compliance accuracy? Performa...

  Bonded warehouses across Sri Lanka, in Colombo, Katunayake, and Kandy, store millions of rupees worth of dutiable goods awaiting clearance. Behind the security gates and customs seals, warehouse workers face a hidden HR problem, chronic fear. Fear of sudden inspections. Fear of being accused of theft or tampering. Fear of losing their job for a minor paperwork error. This is not a compliance issue. It is a  psychological safety crisis . What is psychological safety? Coined by Harvard's Amy Edmondson (1999), psychological safety is the belief that one can speak up, raise concerns, or admit mistakes without fear of punishment. In high-performing organizations, psychological safety predicts learning, innovation, and retention. In bonded warehouses, it is conspicuously absent. The sources of fear Warehouse workers in Sri Lanka's customs bonded system operate under intense scrutiny: Unannounced customs inspections can occur at any time Minor inventory di...

  Picture credit: https://allaboutwork.org/2014/10/18/precarious-work-and-the-failure-of-human-resource-management/   For every licensed customs broker in Sri Lanka, there are perhaps three unregistered "clearing agents" operating in the grey economy. They work outside formal contracts, pay no taxes, and have no HR representation. Yet they clear a significant portion of low-value and personal imports. This is not a small problem. It is the  informalization of logistics labor  and HR has largely ignored it. Who are informal clearing agents? They are friends of clearing agents, unemployed graduates, or port workers who learned the system through observation. They operate through personal relationships with licensed brokers or directly with small traders. They take cash payments, leave no audit trail, and disappear if something goes wrong. From an employer's perspective, they offer convenience. From a worker's perspective, they offer precarity. Theoretical ...

  Picture credit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reskilling-logistics-preparing-warehouse-workers-drivers-tomasz-tyras-pk61e/ Sri Lanka Customs is gradually digitizing. The Electronic Customs Declaration System (eCDS), ASYCUDA World, and the proposed National Single Window promise faster clearance and less human discretion. But here is the problem. Thousands of logistics workers, customs brokers, freight forwarders, warehouse clerks, lack the digital literacy to use these systems. Technology is ready. People are not. The HR development gap Digital customs systems require more than typing skills. Workers need to understand data entry protocols, system logic, error handling, and basic cybersecurity. Yet most customs agents are reported to be never received formal training on any digital customs platform. Most learned "on the job" from colleagues who themselves had only partial knowledge. From a  Human Resource Development (HRD)  perspective, this is a classic...

  Picture credit: https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/stories/press-release/2022/03/new-report-details-barriers-that-restrict-sri-lankan-workplaces Walk into any customs house in Sri Lanka – at the Port of Colombo, Katunayake Free Trade Zone, or Galle, and one observation is unavoidable. Men dominate. Women are visible in clerical roles but strikingly absent from clearance operations, inspections, and supervisory positions. This is not incidental. It is a structured gender diversity failure with real economic consequences. The evidence Sri Lanka has high female literacy (over 90%) and a majority female university enrolment in humanities and commerce. Yet women constitute of a very less licensed customs brokers and approximately 10% of frontline customs officers. The drop-off happens between education and employment. From a  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)  perspective, this represents a classic "leaky pipeline." Talented women enter supply chain...

Picture credit: https://financialcrimeacademy.org/the-sanction-compliance-kpis/ Bribery at Sri Lanka's borders is widely acknowledged but rarely measured. From "expediting fees" for faster clearance to outright payments for undervaluation, corruption persists. Traditional responses focus on criminal penalties and surveillance. But what if the solution lies in HR performance management instead? The HR problem Customs officers operate under ambiguous performance expectations. Are they judged on speed of clearance? Accuracy of declarations? Revenue collected? When KPIs are unclear, informal systems fill the void. An officer who delays a shipment until a bribe is paid is, in some local cultures, simply "getting things done." From a  goal-setting theory  perspective (Locke & Latham, 2002), employees need specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. Without them, behavior drifts towards whatever is rewarded informally, inclu...

Picture credit: https://usimportbond.com/what-is-the-role-of-a-customs-broker-in-relation-to-a-customs-bond/ Sri Lanka has over 5,000 registered customs brokers, yet importers consistently face delays, errors, and informal "expediting fees." Too many brokers, but too few who are genuinely competent. Behind this paradox lies a silent HR talent pipeline crisis. The nature of the problem Becoming a licensed customs broker requires passing a Sri Lanka Customs examination with a pass rate often below 10%, followed by two years of apprenticeship under an existing licensee. On paper, this ensures quality. In practice, it produces three HR failures: High barriers to entry  – Talented graduates from poorer districts are discouraged Opaque apprenticeships  – Trainees depend entirely on one broker, creating feudal relationships No continuing development  – Once licensed, no one requires brokers to update their knowledge of tariffs ...

  Source: https://www.adaderana.lk/news.php?nid=113368 The Colombo Port handles over 7 million TEUs annually, acting as South Asia's busiest transshipment hub. Behind these impressive numbers are customs clearance staff, freight forwarders, and trade compliance staff working long shifts, often six days a week. Since Sri Lanka's economic crisis began in 2022, staff shortages have worsened dramatically, hundreds of expe   rienced workers resigned, migrated, or retired early. The result is rising burnout, falling morale, and a quiet quitting epidemic in one of the nation's most strategic industries. Why customs facing roles are uniquely stressful Customs-facing jobs carry unusual weight. A single documentation error can mean cargo delays of weeks, demurrage charges running into lakhs, or even allegations of bribery and collusion. They work under constant surveillance, from CCTV, from supervisors, from traders desperate to clear goods. There are little autonomy and les...