Skills and people capability in the future state: Needs, barriers and opportunities

Abstract

The initial paper in the Future State Project (IPS Working paper 10/08) describes several powerful new trends beginning to impact on public sector management including limited funding, rising public expectations, and more complex problems. But what are the implications of these trends on human resource management (HRM) within the New Zealand public sector? What ideas are emerging within the HRM literature, and how do these relate to the perspectives of practitioners - human resource managers, CEOs and senior executives, and staff - in New Zealand’s public sector organisations?

The formal system in New Zealand, focused on improvement of pre-specified and auditable outputs monitored through detailed agency performance plans, may no longer be sufficient for the public sector environment of the future. Instead, new individual and collective capabilities may be needed. Current state servants have been selected, developed and rewarded in an environment which has emphasised stability, control, linear accountability and outputs. In contrast, we will argue that the emerging environment requires adaptability and the ability to work across public, private and non-profit public sector boundaries, locally and internationally. Bottom line accountability for the efficient operations of a tightly defined functional task is fundamentally different from the messiness of managing public sector responses to shifting social and economic challenges which have no easily defined finish lines.

We begin this paper with an overview of the current state of skills and people capability in the New Zealand public sector, including employee commitment and engagement, and the impact of the new wave of reforms over the last decade. We then identify several emerging ideas about the future of public sector HRM, including the need to develop better leaders, encourage innovation and collaboration, and take a longer term, more intense effort in capability development. These ideas were explored with practitioners in a series of focus groups in April and May 2011. In this paper, we discuss the results of the focus groups, in which we found general agreement with many of the ideas tabled for discussion but some key differences in perspective between human resource managers, CEOs and senior executives, and staff. We conclude this paper with a discussion of the future of public sector HRM in New Zealand.