Abstract
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This paper seeks to describe current Ukrainian efforts and approaches aimed at developing a new approach to civil servants appraisal. The Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine with the support of the Ukraine Civil Service Human Resources Management Reform Project (implemented by the Canadian Bureau for International Education, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency) has developed the policy paper on civil servants evaluation and drafted the new approach to it based on consultations with the Ukrainian civil servants.
The need to ensure effectiveness of the civil service performance appraisal in Ukraine is officially recognized. The goal is to increase its result orientation. There are several key problems to address and objectives, which are to be met.
First of all, it is important to provide a single approach to the civil servants performance appraisal system, improve the mechanism and to ensure consistency, transparency and fairness in its implementation. Currently, there are two parallel procedures exist: annual evaluation, conducted between the manager and employee and attestation, with the key role of special attestation committee with the participation of high level officials. The evaluation of managers, especially senior one are not often done in Ukraine. The high turnover at managerial positions effect situation, in which large percentage of servants do not go through any form of appraisal.
Although 80-90% of servants and evaluated at the good and excellent levels, both existing procedures demotivate personnel and are not considered to be the tools which could help managers nor employees in their work. It is important to reduce pressure on servants, reduce subjectivity and clarify criterions based on which the evaluation are to be done and communicate them clearly across the civil service. It is essential to help managers to realize their responsibility for human resource management and the potentials of the evaluation tools to maintain feedback, build trust and foster development. Thus information and training support is of great importance.
Improvement of appraisal require significant changes in planning, as it is highly undermined due to the absence of the hierarchy of policy documents, lack of consistency in priorities and the cascade of tasks-orders from higher level institutions, which make unexpected tasks to be the predominant part of the work load. The development of comprehensive performance management system is needed.
The reporting is also to be modified to allow its feasibility, analyses, comparability, sharing and learning from it. Not only format (template) is to be changed but also the content and mechanisms of reporting at the level of an institution and the government in general (to strengthen policy oversight). Not only quantitative data but also qualitative data are to be available for analyses.
The Ukrainian legislation presuppose linkages between annual evaluation and attestation, and promotion, training, getting incentives, etc, but in practice these procedures have little effect. By now they matters mostly in case of prolongation of service (for those who rich the pension age) and firing.
The reform requires cultural transformation, as it is vital to strengthen the appraisal procedure not as a mean of punishment, which is the prevailing image by now, but as a tool for learning, development and fostering achievements both on individual and organizational levels. The local tradition of public administration affects heavily the speed and scope of the civil service appraisal improvement.
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