Management
2016-04-30
Introduction
The current paper is devoted to the issue of the public personnel management, its main features and how it can be managed by the environmental agency of the state Michigan. This agency is called Department of Environmental Quality. Its activity is connected with the environment protection (including air, land and water resources), pollution prevention, supporting the sustainable environment and healthy communities in the state (Annual Report of the Agency, 2016).
The structure of the agency includes nine divisions and offices. There is also special environmental assistance center on the agency’s structure that is in charge of the effective communications in the agency (“DEQ. Environmental Assistance Center.”, 2016). In this case, the personnel management plays an important role in the whole agency’s activity.
When we speak about the human resource management in a modern market system, it needs to mark that people management is a crucial component of the management of any organization, along with the management of material and natural resources. However, people are significantly different from any other resources and, therefore, require special management system. Personnel management for any state agency is its decisive function regardless of which system it exists.
Discussion
Main features of PPM
Currently, state agencies in the US feel the need of specialists, who meet certain eligibility requirements that have personal, social and psychological characteristics, which are necessary to perform the functions in government positions. Due to the necessity to bring staffing in line with the relevant requirements of the new reality, the public personnel management is the main tool in order to improve the effectiveness and productivity of the public sector staff.
However, the major obstacle to solve this task is a lack of modern recruitment mechanisms, which are adapted to the new conditions and take into account today’s requirements and features of the dynamically changing social reality.
It should be noted that employees of the state agencies do not produce material values directly, but help the entire state to implement their own functions and tasks. Therefore, public sector employees discharge their functions on a paid basis. In this case, public sector differs by the following features: professional activity for a fee and the presence of the government employees who perform this work.
The peculiarity of the modern personnel management mechanism in state institutions is that only deliberate and conscious use of three main elements can allow realizing the labor and creativity to achieve set objectives. These three levels are the following:
the employee as an individual;
workgroup;
the team as a whole (Ewoh, 2013).
Currently, it should be noted that an ability to combine formal and informal control is particularly important. The rational model that aims to solve emergencies and challenges and particular behavioral patterns are the crucial factor on a way to implement high quality performance and innovative work.
The current model of intra personnel management mechanism can only be effective if it is based on the internal system of work motivation and social values of employees and creates the special conditions for the implementation and development of their abilities and needs. Therefore, one of the priorities of the public personnel management is to improve the quality of working life.
The quality concept of working life is based on the creation of conditions to ensure the optimal use of human labor potential. The quality of working life can be improved by changing for the better any parameters that affect people’s lives. This can include, for example, worker participation in management, their training, management training, the implementation of programs of promotion, improving more effective communication skills among employees and their behavior in the team, improving the organization of labor, and others. As a result, an employment potential gets maximum development and organization gets a high level of productivity and maximum profit.
It should be noted that the main potential of any public organization is a staff. Managing people is critical to all organizations. At the same time, public personnel management as an important resource of the organization is the crucial element of an organization’s management system, which consists in the ability to achieve set goals, using labor, intelligence, motives of other people, managing people in a variety of situations (Cheminais, Bayat, Van der Waldt, & Fox, 1998).
Analyzing the features of PPM, it needs to identify term “governance”. The personnel management of the public agencies is carried out in the process of performing certain deliberate actions and involves the following steps:
defining objectives and main directions of work with the staff;
defining the means, forms and methods of implementation of goals;
the work organization for the implementation of the decisions taken;
coordination and monitoring of the planned activities;
continuous improvement of the personnel system (Ryu, 2015).
In addition, all elements of the personnel management are connected with each other: all its subjects perform the functions of the organization for staff management using a variety of methods and tools. The public personnel management as a relatively independent sphere develops and enriches due to the constant changes of the society and business organizations.
New approaches to personnel management in public agencies provide ongoing training and skills development, careful selection of personnel, provision of job security. In this case, adaptability of the public agency is achieved by the relative stability of the staff that has common values and a common vision.
The personnel management of the standard public agency is actually presented by the human resources department. Properly chosen form of the work organization, scientific style and modern working methods provide a high productivity of the head, his colleagues, maximum reduction of time to solve the main problems and improve the quality of management.
PPM and Public Agency
The object of the current paper is such a public agency as a department of the environmental quality of the state Michigan.
The public personnel management, as an independent operating system, is an integral part of the management system of the whole public agency. Hence the logic emerges that the purpose and content of the activities of the major subjects of the human resource management. The main of them is directly a public agency management. It performs the functions of the personnel department. It also determines the personnel policy in the organization and ensures the functioning of the mechanism of its implementation.
According to the personnel management, there are three main relationships between agency and job, job and people, people and agency. Such relationships can make a job more effective and significant and can increase the role of the people in it.
The main functions of the personnel management department of the chosen public agency include the following:
administrative activities. It includes the practical application of basic legislation in the field of compensation systems and benefits, collective agreements. Prominence practice basic legislation in the field of compensation and benefits, collective bargaining agreements.
hiring process/employment. It includes recruitment, familiarization with the workplace and working conditions, issues of translation to another job within the company, promotion to higher positions, dismissal.
training, retraining and skills development of the staff. This process includes all issues related to the potential identification of the company’s employees and ways of their moving up the career ladder.
financial reward. It assumes the certification of workplaces and positions, salary structure, including the social benefits, the study of the labor market, and the change of some points of the collective agreement.
social issues, including contacts with trade union organizations, the promotion of public events, analysis and identification of the causes of social tension.
providing the working conditions and safety (DEQ of Michigan, 2016).
The personnel management system in the public agency, as a rule, includes the following elements:
human resource planning;
determination of the need for hiring employees;
recruitment process;
selection;
the subsequent hiring of certain personnel;
adaptation of recruiting staff;
training of personnel;
staff evaluation and motivating staff component;
regulation of labor (Official Site of DEQ, 2016).
This is just basic human technology that can represent a range that includes any human resource management system. All elements of the system can be grouped into three large blocks:
the technology for the formation and representation of staff,
staff development techniques;
technologies, which aim the rational use of the resources of the current staff.
The system that is directed at personnel management of an organization is one of the components of the public agency as a whole. Successful development of the public agency depends on its efficiency. Subsystems of personnel management in the chosen public agency structure specialize in the implementation of a number of specific functions. Let’s analyze these subsystems and how they can impact on the whole work of the public agency. The first of them is public and line personnel management subsystem. It aims both at the management of the entire organization as a whole, and on the management of the various functional units. There are enough such structural units in the department of the environmental quality in Michigan.
The next one is the subsystem of planning and marketing policy for staff. This subsystem includes functions related to personnel policy development and management strategies as well as functions, which aim at the analysis of the potential of the personnel and the labor market as a whole, the planning of current personnel, planning and subsequent prediction of existing need for new employees.
Subsystem of accounting an existing staff in the public agency is connected with the organization of the hiring process, providing interviews, qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of selection and admission to the organization of certain staff. This system also includes the professional orientation of employees, management and distribution of personnel by units, employment, promotion, moving or dismissal.
Next subsystem aims of organizational relationship management that is a component without which personnel management of the public agency could not stably exist and develop. In this case, the organizational Relationship Management includes the following functions:
analysis and subsequent regulation of both personal and group employment relationships at the organization,
the analysis of relationship between managers,
conflict management in the workplace and stressful circumstances,
psychological diagnostics in the field of business relations.
The subsystem that provides the normative conditions of employment aims at compliance with certain requirements and rules in the field of occupational safety and health, environmental, technical aesthetics and ergonomics of the labor process. The subsystem that manages the staff training is engaged in the regular evaluation of personnel, implementation of measures aimed at adaptation of new employees, the organization of personnel reserve.
Subsystem that is responsible for the motivational component of the work units is associated with the management of employees’ behavior, rationing and tariffing of the production process, the development of wage systems, forms of their participation in the capital and profits, the organization of the staff morally positive reinforcement in the form of incentives.
The subsystem that manages the social development is engaged in the regular food service, the development of the corporate culture of employees and their physical education, as well as ensures the protection of health and recreation, social security of employees and management of the housing service.
Subsystem that aims at the development of organizational management structure is in charge of the staff schedule. Another subsystem ensures the rights of the staff and resolves all the legal issues, coordinates regulatory and other official documents on human resource management of the public agency.
After analyzing the structure of the human resources department and features of the personnel management of the chosen public agency, one can say that there are enough differences in comparison with other commercial organizations. At the same time, methodological and regulatory support consists of two basic elements:
the documents of different nature (for example, organizational and methodological documents, technical and administrative ones);
additional materials, which are necessary for establishing the regulated rules,
norms and practices that are used to solve a variety of problems of labor relations and human resource management system of the public agency (“DEQ. Policy and Procedures”, 2016).
Problems Related to PPM
Human management problems play a special role among the complex of state and municipal issues of the chosen public agency. The main idea of it is to develop the desire and the ability of each employee to work with maximum efficiency, to motivate him and ensure that he will be in an organizational position where his capabilities and skills are used to the fullest.
It should be noted that human resource management practice of the public agency aims to attract, select, promote, reward, use, develop and keep efficient workers in line with the business strategy, staff needs and the principles of justice. At the same time, current problems of the public agency, which are related to the public personnel management, are the following:
high staff turnover;
job burnout syndrome;
low staff motivation;
non-positive stereotypes, which connect with the public workers.
Modern technologies require the development of a new attitude to work at the department of the human resource management. One of the major reasons for staff turnover at the public agency is psychological distress in the workplace, which naturally cannot a positive effect on their performance.
Involving people in the design and implementation of policies, programs and plans, assessment of opportunities, training, the organization of communication, performance assessment could be the most effective tool to increase the staff commitment to their work at the public agency.
Chosen institution does not pay enough attention to the staff motivation and its evaluation. It is quite difficult to see the results of the public workers as well as evaluate their motivation. In this case, an important role is played by the hiring process and employment the most suitable candidates.
One more problem is connected with the job burnout syndrome, to which public workers are quite highly susceptible. It can be explained by that public workers cannot always observe their work results in a short term. In a term of this problem, it needs to create the special codec
Thus, one can say that proper selection of experts is a necessary condition for a successful controlling the operations of the public agency. The staff adaptation procedures are designed to facilitate the entry of new employees in the life of the public agency. The new employee should get used, to take rules dictated by the labor regime and the specifics of the public agency, the prevailing its traditions and interpersonal relationships. The attitude of the newcomer to the team and the whole organization, his motivation level is laid in the initial period. At the same time, if this process will not successful, the efforts, which are involved in the selection of a specialist, will be lost in vain.
Recommendations
Let’s analyze possible recommendations, which can help to solve identified problems at the public agency. There are two main tools, which can help to solve problems: increased job satisfaction level of employees and improving the use of management practices.
The new reality requires t public agency to reconsider approaches to human resources. It needs to consider staff as the main resource of increasing the efficiency of the public agency to apply modern tools of motivation, selection, adaptation, assessment and staff development, the formation of a stable and efficient team.
As it is shown in the previous paragraph, the public agency does not pay great attention to the staff motivation and its evaluation. To resolve this problem, it proposes to introduce the staff appraisal system. Ranked characteristics can include the following: organizational skills, performance, the attitude to the team, the quantitative indicators of the unit, management of the educational resources. Then, the size of incentive payments for the employee is identified, on the basis of assessment and using the factor model. The main purpose in this case is to increase the individual contribution of each employee in achieving the agreed purpose of the public agency and its employees through continuous development and the fullest possible realization of the labor potential.
It should be noted that the development of the professional code of ethics is the most important task for all organizations. As part of the solution to this problem in our view, it is important to develop a code of ethics of a public agency and to develop a system to adapt new employees and to consider the use of the modern incentive mechanisms. On the basis of the problems identified and the changes implemented, we propose to transform the corporate culture and to consolidate its main elements in the corporate code of the public agency. Thus, the final effect of the implemented measures can positively impact on the employees of the public agency, and efforts of management to maintain and further strengthen the progress made will help create a solid foundation of the institution’s functioning in the future.
References
Annual Report of the Agency. (2016). Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality: Stewardship, Service, Partnership.. Lansing. Retrieved from http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-guide-divisions-offices_376636_7.pdf
Cheminais, J., Bayat,, M., Van der Waldt, G., & Fox, W. (1998). The Fundamentals of Public Personnel Management (p. 277). Juta and Company Ltd.
DEQ of Michigan,. (2016). DEQ. Environmental Assistance Center.. Michigan.gov. Retrieved 26 April 2016, from http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3306_70582-115949--,00.html
DEQ. Environmental Assistance Center.. (2016). Michigan.gov. Retrieved 26 April 2016, from http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3307_36106---,00.html
DEQ. Policy and Procedures. (2016). Michigan.gov. Retrieved 26 April 2016, from http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3306_71085_47338---,00.html
Ewoh, A. (2013). Managing and Valuing Diversity: Challenges to Public Managers in the 21st Century. Public Personnel Management, 42(2), 107-122. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0091026013487048
Official Site of DEQ. (2016). DEQ. Environmental Safety.. Michigan.gov. Retrieved 26 April 2016, from https://www.michigan.gov/som/0,4669,7-192-45414_30588---,00.html
Ryu, G. (2015). Public Employees Well-Being When Having Long Working Hours and Low-Salary Working Conditions. Public Personnel Management, 45(1), 70-89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0091026015601143
