Employee Training and Development, Productivity Improvement in Public Sector - Literature review Example

Productivity Improvement in Public Sector Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Productivity Improvement in Public Sector Introduction Until recently, public organizations operated or provided their services to the public without regard to aspects of productivity improvement. According to Holzer and Lee (2004), environmental, personal, and organizational barriers limited the ability of the organizations to improve productivity with the respect to changes in demand and resources. However, in mid 1900s, increased competition for resources and customers from the private sector compelled public institutions to focus on productivity improvement programs as a way to preserve their public image. Productivity refers to output level with respect to the required input level. Therefore, productivity improvement arises when the level of output (including amount of products or services) exceeds required level of input (including capital, raw materials, labour, and others). Besides preservation of public image, the organizations have been improving performance of public enterprises to enhance organizational efficiency, boost productive utilization of national resources, boost economic prosperity, and improve quality of public services. Moreover, the enterprises have also realized the essential role that human resources (HR) department can play in attaining productivity improvement. In every organization, either public or private, HR ensures the firms have qualified and competent personnel, workers are motivated to improve performance, and the workplace is safe and health for improved productivity. As a result, many public institutions are employing various sorts of HR strategies to promote productivity enhancement. According to Berman, Bowman, and West (2006), some of these approaches include reengineering, use of information technology, empowerment, and reorganization. In addition, workforce training, performance-based contracts, and others HR strategies can be used to improve productivity in public institutions. The current research explores how these sorts of HR strategies can be used to promote productivity improvement in the Australian public sector. Employee Training and Development Public workers represent a fundamental element in the efforts towards productivity improvement. They can be rightfully said to be drivers of improving productivity in the organizations because they carry out organizational tasks and responsibilities. Therefore, enhancing productivity requires active involvement or participation of all workers, with employee recognition and training presenting the most effective way to achieve this. As Koteen (1997) argues, this approach entails efforts by HR to prepare the workforce for enhancement in productivity, as well as its efforts to create an organizational learning culture. Training programs present effective tools for enhancing productivity and increasing operational efficiency of public organizations. While training emphasizes on developing short-term skills and capabilities necessary to enable workers to do their tasks effectively and efficiently, development mainly addresses long-term employee skills and experiences. In the public sector, training initiatives should be more technical, including such issues as work orientation for new recruits, safety, and development of skills, among others. Such issues are pertinent in helping the employees improve productivity because of the high level of systems and bureaucracy that surround public institutions. For instance, Australian health service comprises of many systems, including hospitals, federal and state regulatory agencies, as well as insurance companies, all of which work together according to some predetermined operational procedures. Therefore, in such situations, HR practitioners need to develop training programs to acquaint new hires with necessary skills needed to work with ease. Otherwise, they will spend much time trying to understand the working procedures on their own, which will inevitably limit their work productivity. In addition, (Waldt 2004, p.74) argues that productivity can also be improved by training workers to be more flexible – “training employees to perform a number of different jobs.” This enables the organizations to operate with a smaller workforce, because employees can be moved easily between departments according to the level of work. Employee development programs present effective measures for the public enterprises to prepare their workforce to improve their productivity amid changing market demand and business policies. In many instances, public institutions operate under increased uncertainties due to unexpected changes in government policies. As such, HR departments should ensure that the workforce has skills and competencies to increase the level of output under limited level of input. An effective development program addresses this by ensuring that workers, at all times, have the skills and experiences needed to ensure sustainable productivity enhancement. Reengineering This approach describes the basic restructuring and thorough redesign of organizational processes to enhance the overall improvement in productivity. It requires a holistic examination of how business processes are accomplished and interrelated. HR bears the overall responsibility to initiate, develop, and implement reengineering process. To initiate the process, HR managers identify and assign specific job responsibilities to a team to review any process that needs reengineering. The team then maps the process under investigation, identifying and eliminating non-added value processes or activities. In contrast to private sector, reengineering in public sector should try to balance the constitutional condition of due process in trying to satisfy customer expectations for prompt delivery of services. As a result, the method applies differently in public enterprises compared to private organizations. According to Cohen, Eimicke, and Heikkila (2008), reengineering in public enterprises follows seven basic principles: a) organizing around results (not operations), b) replacing parallel with sequential processes, c) moving downstream data upstream, d) gathering data once at the source, e) proving a joint contact point for suppliers and consumers, f) ensuring continuous process flow, and g) restructuring the process before automation. In this way, the enterprises will stand in a position to adapt to changes in the market conditions, and in turn, be able to satisfy the expectations of customers effectively. This will translate to improved productivity because the organizations will be able to meet consumer demand effectively and efficiently. Reorganization While reengineering intends to restructure processes towards enhanced performance, reorganization is a HR strategy that aims to restructure work towards high levels of productivity. Reorganization implies making work more flexible and receptive to adapt to the ever-fluctuating conditions in markets today. Owing to the nature of public enterprises, reorganization presents one of the most effective ways to improve productivity. In the case of the Australian Public Service (APS), employees operate under strict administrative structures comprised of many levels. Professionals filling these levels operate individually, without or with little collaboration with other workers doing related jobs in other departments or institutions. Moreover, the agencies require workers to work eight hours for five days in a week, with only a formal work leave of one month every year. Under such working conditions, it is impossible to guarantee productivity improvement due to overwork and stress among workers. Therefore, reorganization seems an effective strategy for the agencies to improve performance by adopting some of the HR strategies from private sector, such as restructuring jobs, adoption of workgroups, and flexible working hours, among others. Job restructuring involves redesigning of job responsibilities and qualifications for enhanced performance. Among the various forms of job restructuring, job enrichment presents the most effective way for the public institutions to increase level of work productivity. Enrichment entails redesigning jobs to enhance task efficiency and employee satisfaction by extending either or both the depth and the scope of the required job. The strategy intends to make the job more challenging and offer more prospects for growth, improvement, and recognition. Used effectively, job enrichment gives employees opportunity to apply their skills effectively, motivating them to work towards improving their productivity. As Durant et al. (2006) argue, to accomplish this, APS may be forced to shade off some of its administrative structures in an attempt to give workers more responsibility for their work. Workgroups presents another approach to job restructuring that requires use of autonomous teams to accomplish various organizational tasks. Such teams comprise of individuals with diverse skills and experiences, working collaboratively with minimal intervention from the top executives of the public agencies. As such, they have capacity to handle complicated tasks through inclusive discussions, which involve active participation of every member of the team. In contrast to individual-based work, such teams can be effective in delivering high quality services to the institution’s customers. In addition, inter-team collaboration fosters enhanced communication and exchange of information, ideas, and concepts among various teams, which in turn enables the organization to handle emerging work-related issues at ease. Consequently, the institutions stand in a better position to guarantee high quality services to consumers, even in times of reduced or limited inputs. The public agencies may also flexible working hours, which are widely used in the private sector, to ensure improved productivity of the workforce. They may accomplish such initiative through either or both reducing number of working hours per week and increasing the number of workdays per week. They may also choose to employ part-time employees for supporting permanent workers in time of increased work level or to replace workers attending sick leaves. Though such strategy may mean increased operational costs for the agencies, the organizations will be able to recover the costs through enhanced employee productivity and customer satisfaction. Burke and Cooper (2008) argue flexible working time reduces psychological strain among workers, which in turn promotes job satisfaction and improved performance. Enhanced productivity among the workers will allow the agencies to satisfy needs of consumers, who will in turn refer their colleagues to or come back for the same services from the public agencies. Empowerment Empowerment presents another HR that has been lauded by many private organizations, especially those within the service industry, for its effectiveness in improving organizational productivity. The most distinctive feature of empowerment regards increasing job responsibility of employees, while at the same time holding them accountable for their outcomes. It enhances motivation and productivity of workers, as well as enhancing service delivery to the consumers and marketing the services effectively. It can take different forms, with the most common being suggestion empowerment (allowing employees to only suggest changes in delivery of services or products) and job empowerment (giving workers discretion over various elements of their work). Among these two, job involvement presents the best strategy for the Australian public sector to use in promoting productivity enhancement (Raffel, Leisink, & Middlebrooks 2009). In comparison to other public sectors, APS operates under high levels of bureaucracy. Employees, even the most senior ones, enjoy limited discretion in executing their job responsibilities. They have to wait for instructions from executive committees or board of directors to carry out duties, including those that needs emergency. Such bureaucracy limits productivity of the employees because it denies them the opportunity to exercise their creativity in delivering services to consumers. Instead, it requires them to follow a strict chain of command and operating protocols, which are characterized by time delays that derail their productivity. As such, APS needs to empower employees to exercise some discretion over their job responsibilities. Through job empowerment, employees will have control over various elements of their work, including how they organize it. APS can ensure this by either increasing responsibilities of individual employees or workgroups, while holding them responsible for their outcomes. In this way, it will encourage them to be more creative in providing associated services and in turn, ensure high quality outcomes (Berman 2006, p.137). Such empowerment is imperative, as the workers are the ones who make contacts with the consumers, implying that they stand in a better position than the executive committees to know the level of service and input required to meet customer expectations. As a result, the sector will be able to recreate and preserve public trust, which has been deteriorating due to poor service delivery. Performance-Based Contracts Although introduced recently, this strategy has been gaining recognition in the public sector as one of the most effective way to improve organizational productivity of many public agencies. As such, it may form an essential approach for the Australian public sector to compel its workers to increase level of outputs in relation to declining level of inputs. In this strategy, the agencies require workers to sign performance contracts forms specifying the level and type of performance that they expect to achieve using particular level of inputs over a specified time, usually one year (Berman 2006, p.34). Therefore, employees will feel compelled to expend more efforts to achieve work objectives set on the contractual forms, a situation that will likely lead to improved employee productivity and organizational performance. At the end of every year, the agencies will then evaluate productivity of the workers against the performance contracts to identify potential areas the needs improvement in order to guarantee exceptional service delivery to consumers. Information Technology Emergence of web services has led businesses to increasingly integrate information technology into various business functions in an attempt to tap potential benefits. However, in the past, public sector organizations have only relied on IT infrastructure on enhancing effectiveness in internal processes and the back office. More recently, they have realized that IT presents an effective tool for improving productivity through enhanced quality services in the front office. APS seems to be adopting IT in most of its agencies, with the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) having the mandate to use connect all public agencies and departments (Department of Finance and Deregulation 2011). This an effective approach towards performance enhancement among the agencies. As (Kaul 1999, p.49) argues, integration of IT in public agencies improves collaboration, communication, and exchange of information among the different agencies, making them more capable of serving the customers effectively and efficiently. Other HR strategies There are also other HR strategies, widely used in the private sector, which can be applied to improve performance in the Australian public sector. Quality circle is one such strategy, which involves organizing quality discussion within the agencies or department in order to bring together workers to discuss arising issues of quality, work, and other related issues (Balan 1992, p.60). Others include use of incentive-based compensation systems and contracting out services. Conclusion Training programs present effective tools for enhancing productivity and increasing operational efficiency of Australian public sector organizations. Employee development programs present effective measures for the public enterprises to prepare their workforce to improve their productivity amid changing market demand and business policies. Reengineering describes the basic restructuring and thorough redesign of organizational processes to enhance the overall improvement in productivity. While reengineering intends to restructure processes towards enhanced performance, reorganization is a HR strategy that aims to restructure work towards high levels of productivity. Reorganization implies making work more flexible and receptive to adapt to the ever-fluctuating conditions in markets today. Empowerment presents another HR that has been lauded by many private organizations, especially those within the service industry, for its effectiveness in improving organizational productivity. Through job empowerment, employees will have control over various elements of their work. APS can ensure this by either increasing responsibilities of individual employees or workgroups, while holding them responsible for their outcomes. Performance-based contracts may form an essential HR approach for the Australian public sector to compel its workers to increase level of outputs in relation to declining level of inputs. Integration of IT in the public agencies will also improve collaboration, communication, and exchange of information among the different agencies, making them more capable of serving the customers effectively and efficiently. References Balan, K 1992, Management of public sector, APH Publishing, New Delhi. Berman, EM 2006, Performance and productivity in public and nonprofit organizations, 2nd edn, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY. Berman, EM, Bowman, JS, & West, JP 2006, Human resource management in public service: Paradoxes, processes, and problems, 2nd edn, SAGE, London. Burke, RJ & Cooper, CL 2008, Building more effective organizations: HR management and performance in practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Cohen, S, Eimicke, W, & Heikkila, T 2008, The effective public manager: achieving success in changing government, 4th edn, John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY. 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