President of the Bermuda Employers Council (BEC) William DeSilva highlighted the need for leadership and collaboration in 2006 in his address yesterday to the 45 BEC Annual General Meeting.

The meeting held at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess was attended by Minister of Finance Paula Cox, Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons and other dignitaries.

?Bermuda is too small a community to have divisiveness formed out of adversarial positions and too intelligent a community to allow these evils to foster for long.?

?We hope 2006 holds good leadership, collaboration, consistency and fairness. Our country needs good experienced leaders.?

?We need leaders who will be concerned for all of our constituents, who will make decisions carefully, only after listening to all possible input and are not afraid to encourage and guide various interest groups to reach a consensus conclusion.?

Mr. DeSilva also said it is imperative for leaders to lead by example and have high moral standards.

In order to maintain effective social dialogue among the tripartite parties (Employers, unions and Government) he said there must be a commitment by each party to be collaborative.

?A key component to collaboration is respect.

?Clear, demonstrable respect towards another party?s views will serve to speed up the attainment of resolution and will lead to a better, more balanced conclusion.?

?We live in a world in which change has become a fabric of our everyday lives.

?It has forced us to be adaptive, responsive and flexible.?

Mr. DeSilva said with external and global factors thrusting change on Bermuda there was no need for poor policies and legislative changes to impinge on the Island?s ability to compete and serve its clients.

?We need consistent policy and legislative changes that will stimulate our economy?s growth and in turn provide a more stable business climate for both employers and employees.?

The erosion of a business?s value proposition or worse yet an industry?s, creates uncertainty for all those whom its employs Mr. DeSilva warned.

?We need to bring fair minded attitudes to our workplaces.

?By demonstrating the ability to listen, to be just and impartial, we can create vibrant workplaces where individuals are encourage to think and act and not be stifled.?

He said growth will directly benefit all constituents in the community by having the tri-partite parties actively involved in the social dialogue process.