Monitoring of Public Administration Reform Results in the Area of Human Resources Management in 2015

Collected data show that in 2015 there was pretty intensive work on reforms in the area of human resources management (HRM), although the end results are limited and reforms did not meet the expectations.

The main problem of human resources management (HRM) reforms remains to be the weak political support, insufficiently effective coordination system, politicization of civil service and lack of general managerial skills among the existing managerial personnel. In 2015, the trend of further politicization of public service was especially dominant, both through adopting of extremely harmful solutions in the FBiH Law on Public Service, and through preparation of similar solutions at the state level and in RS. Recruitment procedures continue to generate most public controversy because citizens have lost confidence in the objectivity and impartiality of those who make decisions about who is the best or who are successful candidates. It is necessary to ensure that, through new regulations at all levels in BiH, clear selection criteria are determined, which are based on personal competencies and merits. Also, jobs in the administrative structures in BiH have never been properly classified, so what happens as a result is that very often the same jobs vary widely between different institutions, even if they are nominally classified in the same group of jobs.

Professional development is probably the only area that might get the passing grade. Trainings are done in continuity, although without the support from technical assistance projects those trainings would be reduced to learning foreign languages and computer courses. Analysis of the training needs also became just the formality.

Analysis of the existing situation in the area of recruiting in civil service shows significantly increased level of politicization. The reason being the fact that very harmful amendments to the Law on Civil Service have been adopted at the level of FBiH, and there are indications that similar scenario exists for the state level and RS. Besides strengthening of capacities of civil servants and officials who work on recruiting and selection, it is needed to examine all options in order to introduce the practice of recording job interviews.

All public administration structures in BiH reported that a large number of professional trainings had been held in the last year. Activities of majority of institutions are reduced to attending trainings organized by central HRM institutions. There is still no practice of checking the training efficiency through improved work performance. This is the practice based on serious approach to performance evaluation, but unfortunately it is not the case in BiH civil service structures. The purpose of performance monitoring and evaluation in BiH is almost exclusively reduced to rewarding or sanctioning individuals, and since it is not possible to allocate funds for financial rewarding due to chronic budget restrictions, the whole sustainability of the system is put into question. Evaluation procedures are conducted pro forma, and the end result of such approach is extremely high number of employees receiving the highest grade.

Monitoring found the huge discrepancy in understanding and implementation of modern human resources management between different agencies and levels of government. In most institutions that have been covered by this research, HRM is still positioned within departments for material-financial, general and legal affairs, and not one institution disclosed the data on funds invested in the area of HRM. This is a clear indicator that HRM is still not considered to be the strategic function within institutions/agencies of civil service, and majority of activities in that area are the result of external assistance. The system of staff planning in BiH is based on maintain the existing number of employees, so the number leaving the service is replaced with the exact same number of new employees. In that way the practice of human resources planning is reduced exclusively to its quantitative aspect, completely neglecting the profile of people needed from the point of view of institution’s future needs.

Activities in the area of TQM in the previous period were mostly focused on raising awareness of the need for introduction of quality standards, but the results of monitoring show no significant improvement in HRM staff being better informed in certain situations.

Overall, the area of human resources management has seen some progress, but this progress is not at all proportionate to the amount of resources expended.

Human Resources Management in 2016