Churchill Aguilar I WOULD like to commend the Civil Service Commission for designing a workable program to institutionalize meritocracy and excellence in human resource management for all government agencies both national and local. Simply put, the CSC requires all government agencies to follow a management tool that puts premium on competence, and the program design was very well thought of. This program called Prime-HRM has been in place in all LGUs and NGs since 2014. Yet just like all other systems, it clearly failed to penetrate and make significant change in their outputs and outcomes. You see, there are four main systems that Prime wanted to get institutionalized in all offices. But what usually happens is that only the templates reach the employee and so the clueless department head would usually copy-paste the samples just for compliance while greatly missing out on the potency of how each of the system could greatly help the department produce better outcomes. Let me illustrate how the four systems failed to work in most if not, all government agencies.
  1. Competency-Based Recruitment and Selection – For one, hiring employees in the government has never really been based on how good you are at what you do. It is always based on blood relations or political accommodations. Even if you are the best in your field of expertise, if you were not a supporter of the incumbent official during the election then you will surely be not included in the short list.
  2. Competency-Based Learning and Development – The idea behind learning and development is to upgrade the future outcome of the office. If you only do what you always did, you will only get what you always got. So if you want change and improvements to happen, you are supposed to design plans on how to improve your people such as send them to seminars and trainings, equip them with new skills needed in the company, etc. But what usually happens is that, we send employees to seminars not really to learn and echo their learnings once they get back, but mostly to give them a few days of vacation at the expense of the government. We don’t strategically choose who to send too. Usually if you are close to the chief executive then you are most likely to be sent for official travel (vacations).
Since there is no pressure of echoing new learnings once you get back, employees would only make sure that they get a certificate of appearance for liquidation purposes then skip the seminar to go shopping or visit relatives and friends.
  1. Strategic Performance Management (SPMS) - This is where copy-paste has been greatly mastered simply because they don’t understand the nitty-gritty details of the tool. Their targets would be so kilometric and well worded but surely has no roots on the real issues that they face in their offices. And since there is no mechanism from CSC for monitoring and mentoring similar to the DILG’s MLGOO, then the whole program ends up to be just icing on an old cake.
  2. Rewards and Recognition - Since the head wants everybody to be happy, so they would evaluate everyone’s performance with more than satisfactory grades to get productivity bonuses, even those that are hardly seen in the office. Evaluating an employee is just like looking at the heavens for answers whether to be generous or not. As a result, the management tool holds no water. It’s a toothless law. It perpetuates mediocrity in government offices.
Prime-HRM remains a great tool if properly cascaded. I have handled a couple of LGUs where I fully implemented the program to the latter. It works and I have results to prove it. But it only works if we don’t take shortcuts and if the mayor is committed to put premium on rewards and recognition. And you have to have an outsider either from CSC or a consultant who sees the bigger picture more objectively while walking you and your unit throughout the whole cycle.