Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima's speech at the Gawad Punla Loyalty Awards

To all the Landbankers present here: good afternoon, and thank you very much for having me.

It is a great honor for me to share the room with the loyal and tireless workers of Landbank, who represent the frontline of Landbank’s fifty-year fight against poverty. The Gawad Punla award is meant to recognize those whose service to Landbank and to the country has been solid through the years, and whose tenures have become institutions as recognizable as Landbank itself. I think this is as good a time as any to reflect on what loyalty is and how we recognize it.

The Gawad Punla awards are given to those who “rendered continuous loyal and dedicated service to the Bank for at least ten years.” There is much that is well and good about employees that have been with the bank for a long time. You acquire a deeper understanding of the people, the processes, and most importantly, the problems facing and surrounding Landbank. However, spending time for a long time in one location is only one kind of loyalty – which I call a “passive” loyalty.

I do not mean to disparage the length of service of those who are gathered here. What I am saying is if we only recognize the amount of time each and every one of you have spent at Landbank, then we discount the many other ways in which you have shown your loyalty to Landbank’s mission – by exceptional service to our clients and partners, by mentoring younger Landbankers, and by the different acts of self-sacrifice that allow you to do your very challenging jobs.

Those many other ways that I mentioned speak to the “active” loyalty that I want for us to cultivate and uphold. These forms of loyalty are not always as readily visible as one’s years of service. However, it is precisely because active loyalty is harder to spot that we should direct our effort and praise to it. After all, who is more loyal than the Landbanker who goes beyond himself or herself to tangibly embody the mission of Landbank?

We need to recognize those who have done well and have sought excellence, those who have gone one step further in the name of service. This is the kind of loyalty that makes a difference. Loyalty where I am sure that all of you, in the years of service you have rendered Landbank, can recall moments where you put the cause of Landbank before yourself. We want to recognize the people who in their years of service, chose to do something when other people had given up, or to work on solving a problem rather than sweeping it under a rug. We want to honor those people who not just look to make themselves better, but to make Landbank better through their initiative, drive, and creativity.

If we boil loyalty down to having grown old with Landbank, then not only do we discount the quality of service that each and every one of you have put in, we sell ourselves short in one other way: we also fail to recognize the loyalty in Landbank’s youth. If we define loyalty as length of service alone, then we fail to see those young people who embody Landbank’s mission in their personal values and actions. I think it is especially important to recognize the youth because they are the ones whose energy and perspective are valued greatly by any company – yet they choose to serve the cause of the poor by working with us in Landbank. Is it not loyalty to forego a lucrative career in order to work for the betterment of the country?

According to Landbank’s own personnel profile as of 2012, 71.1% of Landbankers are older than 36 years old. Given that the Philippines’ average age is only 23, the picture of Landbank is very different from where our country is today. We need to have a deeper engagement with the youth, and we need to have more youth-empowering policies, particularly in recognizing loyalty, if we are to tap into the great demographic potential of our country.

One other issue we must face is that as the times have changed around Landbank, the nature of employment has changed as well. Gone are the days when fresh graduates join a company and expect to stay there for their entire careers – the job market is much more dynamic now, and today’s worker has evolved to be more mobile. If someone chooses to leave Landbank before reaching the next tier of Gawad Punla, we should not see that person as being less than perfectly loyal. In fact, we should be happy if our workers have highly marketable skills, and are coveted by other organizations. Loyalty in action can flourish even in a short period of time, and we should invest in our people so that even those with us briefly can be rewarded for exceptional service to Landbank.

It is challenging, but necessary, to question what we recognize and honor. But I think that we should continue to think about the way in which we celebrate our values. I hope that in the future our loyal Landbankers will be praised not just for the length of time they spend with us, but for the way in which they filled that time with a long career of going extra miles for their clients and partners, for their co-workers, and for Landbank as a whole.

Once again, I thank all of you here today, particularly our awardees who have recorded many Our path to inclusive growth, particularly for the countryside that most other banks do not serve, is fraught with challenges. However, while we are locked in an uphill battle against poverty, we have to celebrate the wins when they come. And any time a Landbanker puts in the extra effort, any time when one of us says “I can” when others say “we can’t.” and any time we decide to do more than what is asked because it is what a Landbanker would do – that is true loyalty, and to me, that is the greatest win of all.

Thank you.