Public Personnel Management

Many public sector agencies currently facing mass retirements from long-term, experienced workers are struggling to fill higher-level leadership roles. The County of San Diego has employed creative methods to address this “brain drain.” Through intensive leadership development, the county is developing its future leaders using a variety of cutting-edge training tools. According to Human Resource Director Carlos Arauz, “By involving the executive leadership team and by implementing a comprehensive Leadership Academy, among other key HR-related improvements, the county is working to become an employer of choice.” This article will outline the steps taken by the County of San Diego to implement the Leadership Academy and will offer tips for other agencies wishing to embark on their own leadership development efforts.

Do adult learners participate in discussions differently than non-adult learners? This is a question that can only be defined through the eyes of the learner. Of course, there are conclusions that can be drawn but the learner should start the thinking process by asking the following questions:

Are the questions to be addressed accurate and well-defined?

This article will take a look at how adult learners learn and will focus on some thoughts and ideas regarding how a person learns. The key factors that will be addressed are: the environment, the decision-making process, and the leadership process. These factors will be used as part of the process for an adult learner to develop or nurture his or her leadership style.

In the era of globalization and borderless economies, performance improvement is not an option. It is a must for enhancing government's global competitiveness. Quality and performance of government employees need substantial improvement. In that regard, this study focuses on how performance-related pay (PRP) strategies strengthen the pay-performance link. Establishing PRP programs in government seems to be a good idea, but the Korean government's current experience with PRP shows a number of limitations. Recently, PRP and performance measures faced serious criticism from government employees for various reasons. PRP and performance measures must be improved in order to alleviate complaints and dissatisfaction. Cultural transformation, in particular, must occur for successful implementation of PRP measures.

Two important issues prompting the creation of comprehensive management development programs in state government are the promotion of technically competent employees to supervisory positions who have not been prepared to manage, and the impending loss of state managers to retirement and the need for succession planning. With these issues in mind, training needs assessment (TNA) is necessary to understand both the needs of the organization for competent managers and of the individuals who are to be prepared to manage in state government.

In this case study, we review the advantages and disadvantages of various TNA techniques and select focus groups to conduct the training needs assessment for a comprehensive management development program. Through several focus group sessions, the perspective of practicing managers was solicited for management training needs throughout the state. Alternatives were widely discussed and a synergy of ideas created through the group discussion format. State managers became more informed about the plan for management development and support for the concept was generated among important stakeholders. State managers clearly wanted training that would be immediately applicable to their job duties and wanted the training delivered in a way that is conducive to adult learning. We found that managers are most concerned with effectively performing their roles and responsibilities as managers, and that they must demonstrate leadership and human relations skills in the performance of their responsibilities.

A well-designed training system contributes to a public organization's performance by ensuring that employees have the knowledge and skills they need to meet the demands of their current and future jobs. Training may also help governments attract and retain workers in an increasingly competitive job market. Thus, it is important to understand the nature of training in public organizations. A comprehensive study of training in local government is almost nonexistent in literature.

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, using data from the Government Performance Project, it describes the training infrastructure in 33 of the largest cities by revenue. Second, it develops a framework — the Strategic Systems Training Model — that integrates the needs of individual employees and organizations, and can be used by governments to plan and analyze their training effectiveness.

The IPMA HR Benchmarking Committee has identified a series of successful approaches—“best practices”—in key human resource areas from the 2001–2002 HR Benchmarking Survey. The primary purpose of the benchmarking project is to provide human resource practitioners with tools, models, skills, methods, and data to improve the effectiveness of their human resource programs for their customers. The main goal of the benchmarking project is to: identify, measure, and share the best practices of leading HR organizations so that others can compare their practices to these HR organizations and identify opportunities to improve their own organizations.

Rarely can a program or solution seamlessly transfer to every other organization, but the IPMA HR Benchmarking Committee will feature successful models for HR professionals to review and determine whether they may adopt or adapt the practice—or elements of the practice—in their own organizations.

In conjunction with IPMA's available benchmarking data, the HR Benchmarking Committee will use the following criteria to determine which agencies have “potential” best practices.

Training and Development was one of the “best practice” program areas identified. Linda Bjornberg, a member of the Benchmarking Committee, discusses the innovative and successful efforts of the selected HR organizations in measuring the impact of training on their organizations' missions.

Successful over time

Ramsey County, Minnesota successfully implemented an innovative and effective leadership training program. The county includes the metropolitan St. Louis area and serves a diverse population. The leadership academy is an ambitious endeavor that includes traditional and non-traditional training and is available to all employees through a rigorous selection process. The outcomes included reports from eight teams on leadership challenge projects where participants were asked to apply what they learned to real-life situations.

This article references the work of Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, Working with Emotional Intelligence, and co-author of Primal Leadership, creating an awareness of the contrast that exists between traditional training approaches and self-directed learning as we pursue leadership development. The emotional intelligence premise is overviewed and linked to the discussion of demonstrating a return on investment in our organizations as we deploy training programs to impact performance. The author contends that our traditional deployment of leadership development/communication skills training fails to produce sustainable change in behaviors and supports Goleman's initiatives to invest in the emotional intelligence of leaders with individualized plans to impact the climate and performance of an organization.

Public servants in Botswana play an important role as partners in the management of the public sector and national affairs. During the past three decades, the country has acquired a reputation for sound development management and good governance. That reputation has been derived primarily from the behavior and performance of the country's public servants, who have been motivated to fulfill their duties honestly and effectively. In recent years, however, a culture of indifference and outright laziness has crept into the public service, leading to serious bottlenecks in service delivery. This article discusses and analyzes employee perceptions of leadership and performance management in the Botswana public service.

One of the most significant challenges faced by public personnel executives today is measuring the performance of their human resources information system (HRIS) in order to justify the value-added contribution of the HRIS to accomplishing the organization's mission. Over the last year, the CIA developed and implemented a balanced scorecard-based performance measurement system for its HRIS to justify cost and highlight the effectiveness of the system. The HRIS Program Director, Patricia Minard, used the Kaplan-Norton balanced scorecard framework to identify and align the organization's goals, objectives, and measures; to gather baseline data to measure against established measurement targets; and to measure and demonstrate the value-added contribution of the HRIS.

Since the term was popularized in the 1980s, the “glass ceiling” has become a significant concept in the American workplace. The metaphor describes a reality in which women and minorities tend to be overrepresented at the lower levels of an organization, yet underrepresented at more senior levels. The research described in this paper shows the progress of women in the federal government's labor relations career field during the 1990s. Using government employment statistics from throughout the 1990s, the article shows that women in labor relations have made significant progress toward equity in both salary and level of management. At the same time, the data presented show that there remains substantial room for continued improvement.

Training needs assessment is an ongoing process of gathering data to determine what training needs exist so that training can be developed to help the organization accomplish its objectives. Conducting needs assessment is fundamental to the success of a training program. Often, organizations will develop and implement training without first conducting a needs analysis. These organizations run the risk of overdoing training, doing too little training, or missing the point completely.