The rapid transformation of municipalities has placed renewed emphasis on employees in municipalities to be capacitated with the required competencies to meet the increasing demands of citizens.
But many municipalities have a poor human resource development (HRD) record as illustrated in my recent doctoral study that evaluated the management of HRD activities of two South African municipalities with that of four municipalities in the Netherlands.
First, the SA municipalities operate from a low skills base with general workers being the most affected. As many as 50% of the workforce can be considered low-skilled. In the Netherlands it is the opposite, more than 50% of the workforce are tertiary qualified.
Municipalities have a poor resource investment and general workers in particular bear the brunt of what they regard as management's inability to create conditions for them to be developed.
The line managers are not sufficiently committed to manage their HRD responsibilities and often show little interest in the competency improvement of their subordinates. HRD is considered a cost instead of an investment.
The result is that lower skilled employees are denied HRD opportunities that lead to qualifications and are instead kept busy. The HRD practice of the two municipalities are not responsive to the aspirational needs of the employees without recognised competencies (blue-collar employees).
Instead, employees with recognised competencies (mostly white-collar employees) continue to advance in their careers and are granted more HRD opportunities to develop further. Thus, the inequality gap widens between those with recognised competence and those without, the development elite.
Second, the HRD policies are in place. However, there is a mismatch between policy and practice that is evidenced by managerial conduct. Municipalities do not have a long-term HRD plan aligned to IDP (strategy). Not enough is being done to ensure that policies are explained to the general populace, which leads to non-ownership of the policies.
Even though the workplace skills plan policy have been in operation for the past
15 years, it is not effective. The plan recognises only training, despite research confirming training to be the least effective way by which HRD takes place, thus failing to consider that HRD takes place formally and informally.
Third, there is a problem with how the HRD function is organised. The HRD function is typically delegated to the HR department with a training manager within the HR department, who fulfils the statutory function of the skills development facilitator. This can be considered a centralised approach.
The fact that both municipalities employ only one skills development facilitator to service the entire organisation is problematic, as emphasised by one-line manager respondent: all departments have different needs, thus every department should articulate their needs and this need to be taken up by HR for improvement of the department and staff.
In most instances the facilitator is solely responsible for determining the specific HRD needs of a department and for the completion of the workplace skills plan. Although facilitators are the central drivers in HRD, they do not enjoy the same status as what can be considered as their counterpart, the strategy manager.
Because of the junior position of the facilitators, they are not included in the management team and hence are not included in the operational strategy development processes. The line manager is also not sufficiently supported by their senior managers to perform their HRD roles. The centralised approach to HRD is not working.
Fourth, internal democracy (the way in which employees have a say in their development) is not practised well. Employees have no or little say in development, the statutory consultative committees are not effective as a watchdog for HRD, because of a lack of management support and sufficient levels of managerial and political will. The employees elected onto the consultative committees do not understand their roles and responsibilities, and are not
capacitated to perform their roles.
Finally, stakeholders support is problematic. Although the LG sector education and training authority has developed a skills development handbook and the SA Local Government Association plays a supportive role to municipalities, the HRD strategies and plans do not consider the collaborative demands placed on organisational actors (the HRD department, line managers and employees) to be able to execute.
What is to be done? Who should do it? How? And why should it be done? My doctoral thesis answered these questions by introducing the concept of collaborative HRD that is defined as an all-encompassing approach to HRD, a process and structure of management that is based on the active collaboration between organisational actors at all levels of the organisation to meet and monitor set organisational HRD objectives. It is a facilitative partnership approach that is co-owned and premised on mutual trust, dialogue and shared learning, adding greater internal and external value.
HRD in municipalities should thus be practised through an Integrated Management Framework for Human Resource Development (IMF-HRD) that is dependent on the municipality having human resource development policies that support the strategic objectives (IDP) of the municipality, and the implementation of the policies through considering formal and informal development options.
The policy should clarify the coalition of stakeholders, ethical values and a shared vision. This in turn is dependent on how the HRD function is organised through the delegation of the HRD functions to operational directorates and specifically line managers. This will allow for effective monitoring and evaluation of the specific directorate's HRD programme. HRD practice is decentralised and recognises the character and mandate of each directorate.
In the Netherlands, line managers are involved with the skills audit and the personal development plan of the employees through the performance management feedback conversations referred to as the “funksioneeringsgesprek” and the “beoordeelingsgesprek”. This practice is ingrained in the culture and ethos of the municipalities, and compels the line manager to address the development aspirations of subordinates. This cannot be delegated to the skills development facilitators. The employees are not passive recipients, but participate actively in the HRD process, thereby entrenching internal democracy.
The workplace skills plan should be replaced by a five-year HRD plan that forms an integral part of the IDP. The municipality should recognise and implement formal (training, coaching, mentoring) and informal (on the job development, learn by doing). At the centre of the IMF-HRD is a set of ethical values that is defined by the conduct of the management.
A fundamental assumption of the IMF-HRD is that the organisational actors should have the functional and collaborative competence to enable them to commit to achieving measurable HRD outcomes for municipalities. These HRD outcomes will lead to renewed organisational competence to deliver superior human resource development performance that results in a change in the overall management culture of human resource development in municipalities.
The collaborative management of HRD activities and processes have the potential to ensure that the municipalities continue to deliver services to their communities in an efficient and effective way. Municipal actors are competent through defined HRD competence.
Municipalities have moved beyond compliance (outputs) to conviction (outcomes, results, impact). The results are applied, adapted and sustained (learning organisation).
Cloete is an Extraordinary lecturer at the School of Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University. This article is based on his recent doctorate in public and development management at Stellenbosch University.