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2DoingPublicHRMintheUSA-2.pptxDoing Public HRM in the USA
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Leadership vs Management of Public HMR
What is leadership?
What is management?
How does leadership and management of HMR compliment each other
and how do they conflict with each other?
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All Solutions are tomorrow’s problem,
Redefine the problem as a challenge,
then look for opportunities.
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Problems that impact Public HRM in the USA
How many public employees are there?
Is it really cheaper to use third-party government and contingent workers than a public worker?
How many others share in the responsibilities with personnel managers and their technical specialist in the supervision of HRM?
How do they work in practice?
How do these shared HRM roles and functions translate into structures and administrative in a given organization?
How do the evolving values and systems affect the roles and competencies of public HRM?
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Myths and Realities of Public Employment
All federal employees symbolize government bureaucracy!
In reality they only constitute about 13 percent of all public workers.
The primary federal functions are national defense, postal service, and financial management.
The primary state and local functions are education, police protection, highways, corrections, welfare, and utilities.
Education comprising more than half of state and local public employment.
Question: Is a public computer a dictator or a servant of the people?
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Shared Responsibility for Public HRM
Elected and Appointed Officials.
They are responsible for creating agencies, establishing their program priorities, and authorizing their funding levels.
Personnel directors and specialists:
Once a personnel system is authorized, these folks design and implement the with help from key specialists when needed.
Administrators and supervisors:
they are responsible for the managerial activities most directly connected with goal accomplishment.
Question: How does Organizational Culture impact on how Public HRM is done?
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HRM under a Patronage System
HRM emphasizes recruitment and selection applicant based on personal or political loyalty.
Once hired political appointees are subject to the decisions of the effected official.
Few rules govern their job duties, pay, or no rights; they serve at the pleasure of the appointing authority.
The HRM specialist is not a personnel director but s political advisor (or a political party official).
They identifies those individuals that deserve or require a political position, vets them and gets them approved.
Note: Affirmative Action laws do not apply to judicial, legislative, or other patronage position (exempt appointments).
They served at the pleasure of the appointing authority.
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HRM in a Civil Service System
In a civil service system, Human resource management (HRM, or simply HR) is a function that supports the city manager, school superintendent, hospital director, or other chief administrator.
It’s designed to maximize employee performance in service of their employer’s strategic objectives.
HR is primarily concerned with how people are managed within organizations, focusing on policies and systems.
HR departments and units in organizations are typically responsible for a number of activities, including:
employee recruitment,
training and development,
performance appraisal,
and rewarding (e.g., managing pay and benefit systems).
HR is also concerned with industrial relations, that is, the balancing of organizational practices with regulations arising from collective bargaining and governmental laws
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Planning is the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal. An important aspect of planning is the relationship it holds with forecasting.
Forecasting can be described as predicting what the future will look like, whereas planning predicts what the future should look like.
Traditionally HR maintains the system of position management.
The total number of positions, the types of jobs, and their pay levels are established and restricted legislatively by pay and personnel ceilings.
Pay is usually tied to a type of classification system, with jobs involving similar degrees of difficulty being compensated equally.
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Moving forward into the Unknown
In order to prepare for the future public HR must go beyond position management to productivity measurement and improvement through strategic alignment of human resources with organizational mission and programs.
For this to occur, the HR department must focus less on control of personnel inputs and more on measurement and management of HR outputs and outcomes.
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Acquisition: Manpower and Personnel
Manpower and personnel involves identification and acquisition of personnel with skills and grades required to operate and maintain a system needed by the organization.
Once identified, HR schedules periodic test for frequently available jobs (i.e. secretary / maintenance worker).
It advertises vacant or new positions, reviews job applications for basic eligibility, and gives written tests.
Once a list is compiled the HR unit will be maintained until a new test is requested by the organization.
HR is responsible for establishing and maintaining the databases that enable online posting of positions and hosting of applications.
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Maintaining a High-Performance Workforce
The organization’s mission should determine important performance goals.
Evaluation techniques must fit performance goals.
Performance evaluation techniques must be valid and reliable.
Cooperation between management and rank-and-file employees is an important as the evaluation technique selected.
Performance evaluations should report both strength and weakness.
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Training & Development
As HR orients new (and existing) employees to the organization, its work rules and benefits, it tracks and distributes notices of training opportunities.
It also uses, in some organization, competencies to establish training programs and to work with agency managers to help design an annual training menu.
It may train supervisors and employees concerning newly developed or mandated HR policies and programs.
HR also tracks and processes all personnel actions, to wit:
changes in employee status such as hiring, transfer, promotion, retirement, or dismissal.
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Sanction
HR establishes and staffs an employee grievance and appeals procedure.
It tells supervisors the rules of employee conduct, establishes the steps used to discipline an employee for violations,
and makes sure the organization follows its own procedures if an employee appeals this disciplinary action or files a grievance.
Importantly, HR staff frequently serve as advisors to managers and supervisors considering disciplinary actions.
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What is Collective Bargaining?
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiations between employers and a group of employees aimed at reaching agreements to regulate working conditions.
The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong.
The collective agreements reached by these negotiations usually set out wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.
A collective agreement functions as a labor contract between an employer and one or more unions.
Collective bargaining consists of the process of negotiation between representatives of a union and employers in respect of the terms and conditions of employment of employees, such as:
wages, hours of work, working conditions, grievance-procedures, and about the rights and responsibilities of trade unions.
The parties often refer to the result of the negotiation as a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) or as a collective employment agreement (CEA).
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What is Affirmative Action?
The concept of affirmative action was introduced in the early 1960s in the United States, as a way to
combat racial discrimination in the hiring process and, in 1967, the concept was expanded to include sex.
Affirmative action was first created from Executive Order 10925, which was signed by President John F. Kennedy on 6 March 1961 and required that government employers
"not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin"
and "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."
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The Purpose of Affirmative Action Systems
Affirmative action is intended to promote the opportunities of defined minority groups within a society to give them equal access to that of the majority population.
It is often instituted for government and educational settings to ensure that certain designated "minority groups" within a society are included "in all programs".
The stated justification for affirmative action by its proponents is that it helps to compensate for past discrimination, persecution or exploitation by the ruling class of a culture, and to address existing discrimination
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Public HRM under Third-Party Government
Reliance on privatization and contractors reduces public employment reduces public HR’s direct workload…..
But it can also increase HR’s indirect work needed to develop, tender, and evaluate
contracts;
citizens volunteers;
and community-based organizations (i.e. recreation programs, hospitals, and schools).
In order for this to work, HR managers, directors, and staff must become more skilled in recruiting, selecting, and motivating temporary, volunteer, part-time, and / or seasonal workers.
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Hybrid Systems: The Real World of Public HRM
In the real world, political leaders often disagree about which personnel system should predominate. Different designs can create dilemmas (i.e. bumping rights) in HRM systems.
Civil service
Civil service / political patronage appointment
Civil service / affirmative action appointment
Civil service / collective bargaining appointment
Civil service / contract appointment
Civil service / contract professional appointment
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Role Expectations for HR Managers
Elected and Appointed Officials:
Reduce taxes by reducing the size of government through the reduction of permanent number of public employees.
Elected officials decisions need to reflect public attitudes towards supporting public services
or allowing taxpayers to keep their own money and make their own choices as individuals in the private market.
Note: They want the public administrator (at all levels of government) to do more at less cost to the taxpayer.
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Role Expectations for HRM Directors and Specialist
Watchdogs (to guard against the misuse of the systems)
Collaboration ( to work with others to accomplish the mission)
Consultation ( to help folks to work together within accepted guidelines)
Consultation and Contract Compliance; over the years the operational definition of “a good manager” is narrow by pervious standards:
First, legislative and public mandate HRM for cost control;
Second, their skills will increasing be define as minimizing maximum loss through risk management and contract compliance rather than training and development.
Third, pressured to develop an employment relationship characterized by commitment, teamwork, and innovation.
Paradox: HR needs to develop a variable pay systems that can reward individual and group performances for both the Core (or essential) Employee and the Contingent (or replaceable) Worker.
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Role Expectations for Managers and Supervisors
Individual managers and supervisors must often choose between
short-term productivity and long-term organizational effectiveness,
between spending time with employee issues and letting employees fend for themselves,
While the manager focuses on planning, budget management, or crisis control.
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Key HRM Roles
Technical Expert:
Entry level or technical HR experts are responsible for HR planning, acquiring, developing, and sanctioning.
Professional:
are administrative workers that focus their behavior around an identifiable body of competencies that defines the occupation and an accepted process of education and training for acquiring these capabilities.
Management Educator:
the one that trains others formally ( an informally) to think about human resources strategically.
Organizational Entrepreneurs:
those that view the field of public HRM as emergent and dynamic.
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Building a Career in HRM
By performing effectively in a climate of change and uncertainty HR managers assert a central role in agency management, developing not only their own professional status but also that of their profession.
Because of this conflict and instability, there is a high demand for HRM professionals in public and private organizations, whether they work as HR directors or as managers with specific HRM competencies.
What competencies do HR professionals need?
How can they get them?
How can they maintain their skills in a complex and changing environment?
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What are HRM Competencies?
Traditional public HRM requires technical competencies.
They must be competent in the techniques need for:
the recruitment, selection, training , evaluation, and motivation of employees under a wide range of personnel systems. Working within the limits of the law and policy; to reward good employees and get rid of the bad ones; writing and or rewriting job descriptions; reaching quality applicants on a list of eligible; conducting performance evaluations.
The list goes on…
That focuses on professional and ethical standards
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The Society for Human Resource Management [SHRM]
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is a professional human resources membership association headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia.
The largest association in its field, SHRM promotes
the role of HR as a profession and provides education, certification, and networking to its members,
while lobbying Congress on issues pertinent to labor management.
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Key Terms
Contingent workers
Core employees
Exempt appointments
Internship
Loose-leaf services
Watchdogs
SHRM
AMA
ASPA
ICMA
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Questions:
What are the six stages in the development of the role of the public HR manager?
What different expectations have people had for them in each stage?
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