Server of the future works with pleasure and has a vocation – 03/10/2023 – Market

Vocation and public spirit are not skills measured in public tenders, but are fundamental characteristics to offer the population a quality, agile and humanized service. The 21st century server must be diverse, empathetic and committed to functionalism.

This is the 6th report in the series The Public Professional of the Future, a partnership between Sheet and República.org, which debates eight topics around the modernization of the public service in Brazil.

Feeling happiness and pleasure in a public career are other inclinations pointed out by Gustavo Fernandes, professor of public administration at FGV Eaesp (São Paulo Business Administration School of the Getulio Vargas Foundation). There is a discussion, he says, that questions whether we were born or acquired the vocation to be a server.

“If the aspiring civil servant intends to work with actions that impact the lives of many people, whether directly or indirectly, he will be at the back of a public policy that changes lives.”

Teacher Cintia Bizon, 38, was summoned by the City of São Paulo in April 2021 to work with babies at CEI (Childhood Education Center) Jardim Nove de Julho, in Parque do Carmo, east side. For her, the teacher’s word can change the course of a student’s life.

“We work with the prospect of the future. We cannot fail with the children. The civil servant of education respects the different family configurations. He embraces, listens and understands, without judgments, regardless of whether he has been working for a long time or a short time. difference in these people’s lives.”

For Cintia, the servant of the future is one who is willing to learn every day. “We need to update ourselves to reinvent ourselves.”

According to the specialist from FGV, many candidates choose the public service to have stability and a good salary precisely to escape what he calls the precariousness of the private sector.

Fernandes claims that in Brazil “the bulk of the population” lives with informality and low wages, many without a formal contract, which leaves these people vulnerable, leading to insecurity in labor relations.

“In the country, public service often becomes a refuge for those looking for better working conditions. There is, unfortunately, a movement of people who seek public employment not because they like it, have a public spirit or are interested, but to have a safe haven”, says the professor.

Workers enter public service through a competitive examination, which measures the general knowledge of these candidates, who are well prepared for the test, but who are often not linked to the purpose of public service, according to Renata Vilhena, president of the council of the Republic .org and associate professor at Fundação Dom Cabral.

“It’s something we look for a lot, having people aligned with the purpose of providing services to citizens and generating public value”, says Renata, who was a civil servant for 40 years.

The associate professor says that far beyond being committed, the public sector is looking for ways to make civil servants more productive, a characteristic that, according to her, is linked to the courage to execute, seek alternatives, innovate and make things happen.

That’s what Luana Silveira de Faria, 42, did. An effective federal public servant for ten years, she created a program that provided new models of work in government, LA-BORA! gov, as projects whose purpose is to improve the experience for public servants.

The management program, which impacted 140,000 professionals, is aimed at civil servants interested in working at the laboratory — which addresses topics such as innovation and creativity in the public sector, psychological safety and female leadership, of hybrid or remote teams.

“Employees from different agencies [são quase 300] they do not need to be assigned by your boss. For a period, they can work with us twice a week in a non-bureaucratic way [atividades também ficam disponíveis no YouTube]. Everyone wins, because this employee will take new ideas to apply in his routine.”

For Luana, it is important to update the server with a mental and behavioral model focused on the future. “This worker must be more flexible, malleable and adaptable to the realities of this world that changes all the time. It is the citizen who benefits. Innovation is transforming reality.”

Finding civil servants with a vocation is not an obvious task, however, since in Brazil the test via competitive examination prevails as a way to enter the civil service. Interviews and resume analysis, for example, are considered subjective.

In order to discover these ideal profiles, Professor Fernandes says that it is necessary to work more and more to improve the selection process, since the contests have limitations.

“They are very good for measuring people who have the ability to take a test. But they do not measure the public spirit. We do not know how much that individual is engaged and manages to feel happy for being in that position. If he is happy, he will be engaged and will have empathy, it’s a self-fulfilling thing.”

The expert claims that most of the management systems in the world already try to incorporate a selection process to find out if the candidate is really interested in that position through oral tests and interviews.

Representativeness is also fundamental to determine the public professional of the future, according to Renata. “It is no longer possible to imagine that the public area will not look at diversity.”

Renata says that several pieces of evidence demonstrate that the greater the variety of profiles, the better the public policy proposals will be. This, says Renata, makes functionalism more resilient.

“It is not [ter diversidade] for fashion or just for inclusion, but to have this broader and more diversified look, since public policies are for everyone, not just for white people. They are for black people, for indigenous people, for LGBTQIA+, for everyone.”

For Fernandes, the civil servant of the 21st century needs to be able to respond to the new. “Because we know old answers don’t work.”