‘Public sector can be exciting for generation Z’ – 7/3/2023 – Market

By offering more flexible and autonomous careers, less exposed to hierarchical issues and with good working environments, governments can be attractive to the work of young people from generation Z, evaluates researcher and professor in public management Gerhard Hammerschmid, 53.

Director of the Center for Digital Governance at the Hertie School, in Berlin, Germany, one of the most renowned schools of public policy in Europe, the Austrian specialist leads debates on innovation, quality and the future in the public sector in various parts of the world.

Hammerschmid discusses the relationship between state sizes and the effects of this on the population, and says that it is not possible to automatically assume that smaller structures led to better results.

According to the professor, in local governments in Europe there is a tendency to reverse the outsourcing of civil service sectors, after realizing that outsourcing is not always the most economical way. In addition, he says, it is important to retain knowledge and expertise within the public sector.

Mr. exposes that countries with high quality of life, like the Scandinavians, they also have a large structure of public services. Isn’t the logic smaller states?
The most important question should be what the State can contribute, what kind of services it can offer. Second, think how big the state needs to be, instead of automatically thinking it needs to be small. That is a very, very dangerous perception.

Does the public service still need people for functions such as cleaning and conservation?
From the 1990s, there was the idea of ​​outsourcing various sectors as a new modern form of public management, but we are experiencing a kind of reversal of this trend. It is not always automatically cheaper to outsource, as once thought. It always depends on the type of service. Before, the order was to outsource everything in the digital area; now, we realize how important it is to maintain and have this knowledge.

Local governments here in Europe are starting to reintegrate activities like waste management and water infrastructure. States are not getting smaller, but staying the same size, if not growing even bigger. The private sector is not automatically the best solution, they have to prove it based on performance. Normally, they want to make a profit, but the government doesn’t need a profit.

Berlin had a large real estate heritage, many buildings and houses. They sold everything, and now we realize that we have a market that is totally out of control. The government is buying back houses to offer public housing at a fair and affordable price again.

Countries that have more government ownership and a greater government stake are doing much better than others. Scandinavian countries are a wonderful example. They have the best quality of life and highest satisfaction from their citizens. They are economically well off and have very large government sectors.

In Brazil, the service and public servants are still viewed with great suspicion. How to change it?
The perception of civil servants is generally not the most positive, but what is also very important is to have more evidence about this. There is often a cliché. The people who have the most negative evaluation are those who do not know the public service directly. People who have direct contact, whether in the hospital or administration, because they need something or receive some kind of support, tend to have a much more positive evaluation.

How will the public sector be able to attract generation Z, who has another way of understanding workfor your paintings?
It’s a big debate and it’s also one of the biggest challenges. We had a specific way of employing that worked for the last 20, 50, 100 years. People held a contest, entered the public service at a very young age and rose through the ranks. But the new demands of the current generation are very different. They expect more flexibility and autonomy. They don’t like hierarchies. They want the freedom to try new things. They don’t value lifetime employment as much. For them, it’s more important to have an impact, to do something meaningful. That’s what we need to offer, non-hierarchical and flexible work formats where people can make an impact and do meaningful work.

But is there anything concrete already being done?
Many governments have taken initiatives to better position themselves with young people and to make the public aware that they are interesting and attractive employers. The classic argument is the balance between work and personal life, job security, a good work environment, which are things that the current generation, as research points out, values ​​more than the previous ones.

Many things still need to change, such as less hierarchical pressure, spaces for debate and experimentation, flexibility to try things out in different areas. Work needs to be exciting and this can happen within the public sector.

What criteria areto the important for measure the efficiency of a public servant?
The interrelationship between supervisor and employee is very important to have a shared understanding of what good work is, good performance. It is necessary to see supervisors as trainers, helping to do a good job, helping to develop skills and providing training.

People may need support at some point, perhaps a task is not suitable for a certain employee and something different must be found for him to develop. It is very complex and difficult to assess individual performance in a government environment. It is clear that if we are dealing with a result-oriented task, it is possible to have parameters to measure success and better evaluate performance. But if we think of a central governmental role of political advisory, how can we assess whether it was good or bad?

Punctuality and attendance are indicators of efficiency?
The absenteeism rate is generally an indicator of satisfaction. If there is no absenteeism, people generally work better. They are more engaged, more committed. If the absenteeism rate is too high, that would be a red flag, but we need more evidence to measure this.

I’ve seen ministries and units in organizations where the leadership was very good and the absenteeism rate dropped significantly. In others, where leadership was poor, absenteeism was much higher. It is something that can be shaped and leadership can influence.

But I would also really like to have more employee satisfaction surveys or engagement surveys like they are done in the US and the UK on a regular basis to understand how we are treating the service and the public servant.

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Gerhard Hammerschmid, 53 years

He is professor of public and financial management and director of the Center for Digital Governance at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany. He researches, among other topics, public management reform, public sector performance management and digitization in governments. He also serves as Academic Director at the Institut für den öffentlichen Sektor eV and is coordinator of EU-funded research projects on public sector innovation and digital transformation. Hammerschmid coordinated a restructuring and administrative reform in the Austrian federal government.

the journalist Jairo Marques traveled to Berlin at the invitation of República.org and Fonacate (Permanent National Forum of Typical State Careers)