The Sunday News
In our last article, we discussed the roles played by Agencies of the Public Service Commission Secretariat. This article focuses on the Human Capital Development and Management Agency and shines the spotlight on what it does.
The Human Capital and Development and Management Agency is responsible for all the steps to be taken in finding the right people to fill jobs, putting them in the right jobs, keeping track of how they are doing their jobs, advising on whether they are ready to be interviewed for promotion, and on their transfer from one ministry to another when there is need. The agency also makes sure that the rules are followed when dealing with civil servants who are accused of doing bad things.
The Agency oversees the development of human resources policies, programmes and structures that are meant to make the workforce useful to the public, and to help it to work well with all other sectors to achieve the best results for citizens. It comes up with the best ways to organise Government ministries to help them to do the work they were created to do, and finds people who have the skills to do those things.
To ensure that the public benefits from all those who have the ability to get results, the Agency makes sure that Government looks everywhere for the skills that are needed. In doing this, Government must ensure that men and women, including those who might be physically disadvantaged, play their part in delivering services to the public, as the skills and abilities they possess must not be wasted.
The Human Capital Development and Management Agency does all this through its four main departments, namely: Organisational Development and Management; Talent Management; Behavioural Alignment; and Performance Management.
Organisational Development and Management
Personnel in this department work on the shape that Government ministries must take in order for them to do what the President created them to do. They work out how many different jobs must be done in the ministry, and draw up clear descriptions of each of those jobs, so that only those jobs that produce the expected results are found in the ministry. Once the nature and number of jobs is known, the Agency arranges for the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development to be asked for money to support those jobs.
Talent Management
Talent Management personnel study the details of the jobs described by Organisational Development and Management and look for people who have the talents that are needed to do those jobs. As they look, they do their best to include men and women, including those with physical challenges, who can do the job. Once people with the right talents and qualifications are in the right jobs, the department keeps track of their progress, and recommends their upgrading or testing for promotion.
They can also be transferred to different ministries or departments, and it is this Agency that makes arrangements for this. When workers retire or leave Government employment, they need to be replaced, and it is the job of the people in Talent Management to plan ahead and to prepare advertisements to invite new people to apply to replace those who have left.
Behavioural Alignment
Behavioural Alignment compares what people are doing with what the job requires, and then points out the gaps and areas that must be corrected. When civil servants break the rules, or are suspected of breaking them, steps are taken to investigate and to decide what action must be taken if they are found to be in the wrong. The department is responsible for making sure that all the steps are taken the right way. More importantly, Behavioural Alignment must work continuously to make sure that civil servants know the rules and are encouraged to respect those rules.
Performance Management
The Performance Management department keeps track of how each civil servant is working, and whether they are producing results that help the Ministry to be successful in doing what its plans say it must do. It also provides the method to be used in measuring how well the civil servant is performing his or her duties, and suggests what could be done to get the civil servant to perform better.
People in Performance Management design the form that must be completed by the civil servant and his or her supervisor to track the results being produced and to see whether those results are of a high enough quality. At the end of each year, the department receives the forms from ministries and studies each one of them to see if civil servants are doing well enough to be kept in their jobs, and also if steps taken to help them perform better are working or not.
As is clear from the description of what it does, the Human Capital Development and Management Agency has the important job of ensuring that Government ministries, departments and agencies are designed to produce expected results, that the right people are employed for the right jobs, that the behaviour of employees supports the good results they are expected to produce, and that the way they perform their duties is properly measured to see if it is wise to keep them in their jobs.
Government ministries do their work according to clear plans that show what important results must be produced, and at what time the results must be seen. At the Public Service Commission, the Agency that assists ministries with their planning is the Strategic Planning and Programme Management Agency. Our next article will explain how this Agency works.
This article is part of a series of articles by the Public Service Commission aimed at engaging with and updating the public on matters of public interest that fall within its mandate. For comments, enquiries and questions, please write to [email protected]. For more on the PSC and its programmes, visit www.psc.gov.zw or follow on Facebook Zimbabwe Public Service Commission or Twitter @Public Service Commission Zimbabwe
