Olaopa Seeks Reform in Civil Service Staff Performance Appraisal System

The Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission ( FCSC), Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has urged a reform of the staff performance appraisal system in civil service.

Olaopa spoke on Wednesday during the 44th Annual National Council of the Civil Service Commissions of the Federation holding in Umuahia, Abia State.

To Olaopa, fundamentally significant to the reprofessionalisation of the civil service is the deepening of the performance management system “which underscores the need for a paradigmatic shift away from the annual performance appraisal reports (APER) instrument (which is unfortunately non-value adding) to a more performance-based system that connects promotions and career progression to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), performance contracts, peer reviews, and training-based assessment reports.”

According to Olaopa who decried the existing performance system, no country can achieve significant results for its citizens without clear performance indicators, nor can any government reach its objectives without mechanisms that identify what is succeeding, what is failing, and what needs to be changed.

He said: “In this context, instituting and deepening of performance management system in the public service which goes hand in hand with the professionalization of both the HR function and the department of planning, research and statistics (DPRS) with a robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) backend is not merely a technical task but the core of effective governance”.

According to him, performance management speaks to a lot of other crucial reform issues, one of which is how best to deal with career management through the deployment of best practices and innovative administrative tools in human resource management.

“For example, the system urgently needs to go digital by relying on the best that digital and media technologies can offer in making the system AI-compliant and transparent. This would automatically impact on enabling the secretariats and their various procedures and processes. It will, for instance, facilitate more competitive examinations, structured interviews and transparent digital recruitment platforms.

“Recruitment comes with its own unique problematic which cannot escape the critical scrutiny of this august Council. The CSCs are confronted with acute destabilization of the status of the government as the employer of choice. Many young and talented people prefer to cast their lot with the private sector. This development therefore burdens the civil and public service with an aging workforce that undermines the efficiency of productivity. There is also the need to see the connection between the embargoes on recruitment and the resort to waivers as the basis for recruitment as symptomatic of deep structural and systemic problems relating to breakdown of manpower and succession planning responsible for the over-bloating of some cadres and staff shortages and capacity deficits in others. This Council therefore needs to investigate the operational role of regular annual recruitment as an instrument that aids service rejuvenation.This further enables us to interrogate the system’s talent management protocols, human resource management, the nature of the workplace (in terms of digital and innovative technologies and work ethic), and so on, in ways that facilitate the entry of successor generations, especially the Gen Z and Gen Alpha. This also raises concerns on the structure of the senior executive service vis-à-vis the workforce and efficient management of the civil service”, he noted .

For Olaopa, rejuvenating the system forces the CSCs to confront the significance of merit-based and transparent recruitment, and especially the questions and dynamics of competitive compensation and pay package as fundamental requirement to implement the merit system and to deepen competency-based human resource management in the course of building a new generation of public managers and the critical workforce that has the responsibility to entrench the civil service into the knowledge age and the necessity of enhancing the efficiency of democratic governance.

In his guest lecture, Prof. Tijjani Bande urged public servants to serve the real public and not parochial interests . He said that civil servants must have integrity to deliver their mandate. He urged civil servants to deal with the challenge of cynicism that everything is bad in Nigeria. According to him, civil servants are central in fighting the challenges of poverty, energy and security in the country. He noted that civil servants must be politically neutral to properly advise government. He spoke about equipping civil servants that would make them know what is expected from them. According to him, training is not a waste of money. He urged a reinterpretation of merit and competence as leadership, courage, prudence also need to be considered in the assessment of the qualifications of civil servants. He tasked civil servants on fidelity to rules guiding the civil service. He urged them to live by example. He also tasked them on getting knowledge as they should update their skills through conferences and training, and embrace partnership and understanding of industrial relations .

On his part, Amb. Mustapha Suleiman in his keynote address stressed the necessity of collaboration and synergy between civil service commissions and heads of service for effective civil service.