Public Human Resource Management

Strategies and Practices in the 21st Century

Randy Paul Battaglio

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781483322193
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Public Human Resource Management: Strategies and Practices in the 21st Century offers a novel take on public human resource management (PHRM) by providing practical guidance for practitioners operating in a drastically reformed HR environment. A comprehensive introduction to contemporary public HR management, this text incorporates analysis of the impact of the private sector-oriented reforms over the last few decades that have aimed to bring greater efficiency and productivity to the public sector. Reviewing foundational topics like recruitment and retention, pay and benefits, equal employment opportunity, and performance appraisal in light of five key reforms (decentralization, deregulation, declassification, privatization, and performance-based pay), author R. Paul Battaglio assesses how the traditional practice of public HR has changed—and not necessarily for the better. New material on human resource information systems, managing motivation in the public sector, and public HR management education is included — a topic rarely found in contemporary PHRM texts. Public Human Resource Management is an essential guide to public HR management and navigating the challenges and opportunities posed in the changing landscape of HR reform.

PART I

Foundations

1

Introduction

Public Human Resource Management in the 21st Century

Human resource management is an essential part of any organization, encompassing a wide range of activities and functions, including staffing and recruiting, administration of benefits and payroll, workforce planning, training and development, performance appraisal, discipline, labor-management relations, and overall employee well-being. In fact, most employer-employee relations in any organization involve some aspect of human resources. This is true regardless of whether the organization is in the public sector (government), the private sector (for-profit companies), or the nonprofit sector. However, public human resource management (PHRM)—human resource activities at the federal, state, and local levels of government—can be particularly challenging, as it often entails complex legal guidelines that apply exclusively to public sector employees and public organizations; guidelines that human resource managers must understand, abide by, and enforce. It is the policies, regulations, and practices of PHRM that are the focus of this book.

Furthermore, this text takes a contemporary approach in its coverage of PHRM, recognizing that over the last few decades, traditional PHRM has given way to quite a different landscape, one that looks increasingly like the private sector. Beginning in the late 1970s, a series of reforms has aimed at improving the efficiency of public services. The impetus for these reforms has been a critical view of traditional public management practices, especially of human resource practices. These have often been depicted as archaic and rule bound and as epitomizing the convoluted practices typical of bureaucracy. Traditional PHRM espoused democratic ideals and values, emphasized fair and equitable treatment of all public employees, and protected public employees’ rights. However, traditional PHRM also conformed rigidly to rules and regulations and was based on a hierarchical structure, wherein a central personnel office set policy and made decisions that then filtered down to divisions or subordinate offices. Thus, making hiring and termination decisions in the public sector was widely viewed as unnecessarily time-consuming. A classic example of the byzantine human resource process was the rules and procedures governing federal government hiring outlined in the ten-thousand-plus page Federal Personnel Manual (Mesch, Perry, and Wise 1995).

The reforms that have been implemented over the last few decades have been referred to as “managerialist” in their focus or as “new public management.” The influence of private sector practices aimed at improving productivity is a persistent theme throughout these public sector reform efforts. These reforms were meant to increase efficiency and productivity, and—in contrast to to traditional PHRM, which was more concerned with rules and proper bureaucratic process—they were results driven. Reformers advocated adopting greater flexibility in approaching tasks so as to be more efficient, using more managerial discretion, and embracing a “whatever gets the job done” philosophy. Such reformers have become increasingly commonplace in the public sector.

Given the extent of reform efforts over the last few decades, managing human resources in the public sector has become increasingly difficult to navigate. Changes to civil service laws at the local, state, and federal levels of government have also created confusion among those trying to implement human resource changes in their jurisdictions. Practitioners and scholars are in need of some clarification regarding the current state of PHRM to identify just what are best practices in public human resource management today.

The aim of this text is to provide readers with a foundational knowledge of how PHRM operates and functions, while also highlighting the changes that have been proposed and implemented in PHRM, the scholarly debate surrounding those changes, and the impact they’ve had on practice. The hope is that by considering the difficulties of navigating the new landscape of PHRM at federal, state, and local levels, scholars and practitioners will have a better road map to guide their work and a toolkit for implementing it.

The chapters that follow will develop a concise analysis of the impact reforms have had on routine practices, addressing changes to pay, benefits, employee rights and labor relations, diversity planning and affirmative action, and performance appraisal. To achieve this goal, the text has distilled these changes down to five specific types of reform that have been implemented in some form or another throughout the public sector: (1) decentralization, (2) deregulation, (3) performance-based pay, (4) declassification, and (5) privatization. We will use these five common reform types, which will each be explained and discussed in turn in the following section of this chapter, as a framework for appreciating the day-to-day impact these changes have had on PHRM operations. Each following chapter will then utilize the framework in light of the topic being reviewed; the final section of each chapter will offer insight into how these reforms have modified practices in the specific human resource area under discussion.

Each chapter will also provide information applicable to nonprofit human resource practices through a “Nonprofits in Focus” box. While not a specific focus of the text, nonprofit organizations are often considered in the broader PHRM discussion, and many readers will appreciate the challenges that managers in these organizations face—challenges that have intensified since the economic collapse of 2008. Finally, the book will address the future of PHRM education in graduate and undergraduate programs in light of recent reforms. Llorens and Battaglio’s (2010) assessment of PHRM education in master’s of public affairs/administration programs highlighted the shortcomings of graduate programs, which do not always teach the skills necessary to manage in a reform environment. A continued focus on more traditional human resource practices portends a future workforce ill-equipped for taking on future public service challenges. This text takes on these challenges head on.

Public HRM Reform: An Overview

The civil service system—the regulations, processes, and institutions that govern public employment—is the foundation of public service. Chapter 2 provides a more detailed account of the evolution of the American civil service system, but here we briefly discuss two landmark pieces of legislation that have been fundamental in shaping our civil service system—the Pendleton Act of 1883 and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Both of the acts marked key points in history when civil service was redefined.

Historically, civil service systems based on professional merit were considered an essential element for government performance (Kellough and Nigro 2006b; Selden 2006). This practice was formally put into law with the Pendleton Act of 1883, which established a civil service system that separated routine work from policy and administrative process and that was based on merit, with open recruitment and competitive examinations (as opposed to the patronage and nepotism that was pervasive at the time) and political neutrality. These principles, which emulated the British tradition that had emerged in the mid-19th century, were deemed essential for effective governance.

These principles held for roughly the next century. In recent decades, however, the traditional association of civil service systems with effective governance has been challenged as being too focused on rules and not focused enough on finding the right person for the job. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 marked the beginning of the current reform era of PHRM, effecting a reorganization of the civil service system and increased managerial flexibility. Civil service reformers insist that reforming PHRM is crucial for enhancing government efficiency (Elling and Thompson 2007; Kettl et al. 1996). Functions such as planning, hiring, development, and discipline—typically centralized processes common to most levels of government—have been challenged by the current wave of reforms; they are now seen as civil service practices emblematic of bureaucratic inflexibility, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness. Greater managerial latitude has been afforded politicians and managers alike over personnel decisions and functions. As mentioned above, five distinct reform themes have emerged over the last three decades: decentralization, performance-based pay, declassification, deregulation, and privatization, and all have all challenged the traditional core of PHRM. Table 1.1 provides a summary of the five reform themes. In the following sections, we review the contemporary reform environment and its potential impact on the traditional core functions of PHRM.

Table 1.1 Public Human Resource Management Reform Types

Decentralization

Traditionally, all staffing decisions for a jurisdiction were typically made by a central personnel office. This process could be time-consuming, as all decisions needed to be sent up and down the organizational hierarchy for approval. Decentralization entails HR functions being demoted to the lower agency (i.e., division or department). Turning over personnel decisions to agency-level HR directors and political appointees is seen as making government more responsive and effective. Decentralization strategies provide managers at the agency level greater latitude over management issues; they can make decisions more quickly and independently and do not need to wait for approval. This downward transfer of responsibility increases managerial flexibility where it is needed most—at the front line. Decentralization strategies, with their focus on improving innovation and accountability for personnel decisions at lower agency levels, have been a hallmark of public management reform in recent decades (Brudney, Hebert, and Wright 1999; Coggburn 2001; Kettl 2000; Thompson 2001).

At the federal level, decentralization has involved the transition of many programs to lower levels of government, replacing centralized, rule-bound systems with more agency-specific, manager-centered systems. Decentralization of PHRM functions has been advocated by reform proponents since the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. This act abolished the Central Personnel Office, which had previously overseen the civil service, in favor of a streamlined, management-centered agency—the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—under the president’s purview. Since the creation of OPM, the federal decentralization trend has continued, with greater authority over staffing decisions moving to individual federal agencies while broader, higher-level planning issues remain with OPM.

In the 1990s, reform was spearheaded by the Clinton administration’s efforts under the National Performance Review (NPR). Spearheaded by then vice president Al Gore, the NPR was a task force of intellectuals and practitioners of public management whose purpose was to offer recommendations for improving government performance. Initially, the agenda was ambitious, recommending the delegation of recruitment, examinations, position classification, salary adjustments, performance management, due process procedure modifications, and changes to the dismissal process to federal agencies (Gore 1993; Thompson 2001). However, political opposition—led by members of Congress sympathetic to civil service and labor—prevented any widespread change and resulted in more modest changes, coming primarily from reductions in the OPM and the elimination of the Federal Personnel Manual (Naff and Newman 2004).

During the George W. Bush presidency, initiatives at the federal level continued the push for decentralization. Legislative exemption from Title V of the US Code—the federal legislation governing civil service protections for federal employees—provided many agencies with the ability to develop more flexible systems, which in some instances resemble private sector practices (Woodard 2005, 113). For instance, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 significantly increased personnel flexibility within the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense (DOD), giving the secretaries of both agencies greater latitude in managing labor relations and staffing (Brook and King 2008).

A number of state governments have also decentralized HRM decision making, with variations in which functions (e.g., classification, recruitment, selection, training, labor-management relations) have been targeted and to what extent (Selden, Ingraham, and Jacobson 2001). Voter sentiment for improved accountability in government has been a key component in the demand for greater decentralization, although this force has been tempered by the political environment and the degree of unionization in the respective states (Hou et al. 2000).

Decentralization is not without its drawbacks. Hou et al. (2000) asserted that decentralization at the state level has increased the support, planning, and supervision responsibilities of state personnel offices, overburdening them. Recently, Hays and Sowa (2006) surveyed all fifty states to determine to what extent the HR function was decentralizing. The authors found that a majority of states reported some degree of decentralization, often coupled with additional reform efforts. Given the extent of decentralization reform, it seems prudent to take stock of its ramifications for practice. Each chapter of this book will review the merits of decentralization in light of the topic under discussion.

Performance-Based Pay

Traditionally, PHRM pay structures were based on longevity or time-in-service, focusing on career management and advancement instead of employee performance. High-performing civil servants were not rewarded, and underperforming employees were not given incentives to improve. Since the 1980s, the push for greater accountability has resulted in a greater focus on performance management by rewarding superior performers with pay increases. Performance-based pay structures have proven to be an attractive alternative to traditional PHRM practices. Appealing to the logic of market-like mechanisms, proponents of compensation reform suggest that performance-based pay systems have the potential to increase employee performance and therefore organizational productivity. A number of performance-based pay schemes have been implemented by linking individ...