ANKARA

TODAIE

14th OCTOBER 2005

« THE MODERNIZATION OF

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

AND TRAINING REFORM»

France is an old country which from time to time (or maybe I should say all the time), brings up the topic of modernization. In a country where the government is regarded as sacred, the perfect example of the need for reform and modernization are government bodies.

Everyone (including civil servants themselves) acknowledges the fact that government bodies should be modernized and agrees too (particularly civil servants but also all those who take advantage of the welfare state). But, everyone refuse any change if it is susceptible to affect their personal interests !!! It's a bit of a NIMBY (not in my back yard) situation applied to government bodies. In other words: yes to the reform for everyone else but not for us !

If there is one area where government bodies really need to be modernized, it is human resource management.I will begin with this aspect before talking about one of the essential parts of this modernization : civil servant training.

PART ONE

Let us now discuss the modernization process and its consequences on human resource management.

The French government, in 2001 (applied as of January 2006), make an initial dramatic changes in its public policy management methods with a new financial constitution. It brings us from a means management reasoning (of money and men) to a results reasoning. In other words, the parliament and the taxpayer will judge State action on its results and the good use of the taxes it raises. The consequence is undoubtedly that, government bodies will be judged upon their results and of course the men who carry them out (in other words the civil servants) too.

This could only be accomplished if the government renewed significantly its human resource management.

I propose firstly to examine together the context of the current reform and more especially the reason for this reform.

Secondly, I will expand upon the answers already provided by the French government and those that are being considered for a more far-reaching reform.

1 – The Human Resource Management in the context of the modernization of administration in France

The modernization of administration (and more especially when it affects the human aspect) is a long drawn out process. It is not merely a question of changing the procedures but rather of a way of thinking. I do assure you, when I entered the French civil service, thirty years ago, there was talk of modernization as an urgent measure then.

In France, we have a career-based civil service. Only the high-ranking positions are filled at the discretion of the government. And even with that this possibility is very strictly supervised as recruiting « outside » or « politically » is only possible for a very limited number of posts.

Moreover, by trying to maintain equal access for all (constitutional principle), our civil service recruits by a competitive exam. In this way we firstly recruit civil servants on the basis of their qualifications and their school and/or university education. And this for the duration of 42 years !!!

Even, « in-house» competitive exams (meaning they are reserved for civil servants already in a post) or “third way” competitive exams (meaning they are reserved for people coming from the private sector or having a great experience as elected responsibles) exist. These are limited and do not enable the real capacities of the candidates to be judged. They are judged along the same lines as those candidates who have just graduated ! When you are 40 years old and have had a career full of experience, it is difficult to go back to your books to study for an exam !!!

We may say, if we add together all these constraints, that French administration has difficulty in facing up to the evolution of time.

It has even more difficulty as few things are done to allow civil servants to evolve. And this is where we lead to the daily management of human resources.

The civil servants general statute dates from 1945 and which, despite some minor reforms, remains identical sixty years on. Numerous obstacles have been put in the way of a dynamic management of civil servants. These are more to be put down to custom rather than to the statute itself.

Things have been gradually blocked not only from pressure from the trade unions (which is their role) but by an abandon of the fonctioning of the human resource management by the administrators : the subject being judged as less noble than one of a legal or financial one.

In order to outline these remarks, here are some examples:

First example : competence, experience, training or performances are not (or very little) taken into consideration in the career of a civil servant. It is the number of years of service which determines 90% of the promotions. Administration has tried to get around this principle, fervently defended by the trade unions (on the grounds that it was the only unquestionable criterion).

It was done by setting up employees allowance schemes (which account for 10 and sometimes 80% of the total pay). But, very quickly, trying to avoid the social climate deteriorating, the administrators chose to give everyone the average amount whereas they had the opportunity.

As regards training, it is important to know that any efforts of training undertaken by a civil servant are never taken into consideration in his career prospects. Worse still, a civil servant who takes the initiative to go on a training programme is sometimes absent from his desk and is criticized for it!

Second example : the planning of workforce management, the number of employees and skills which would enable the State to anticipate its needs and to adjust its recruitments, the training and evolution of careers, has only been a concern in recent years.

And with that it is still only at an experimental stage and hasn't shown much results. Take for example : decentralisation wasn't at all expected and yet people were continually recruited in jobs which had been transfered to the local authorities ! With this we have taken on civil servants for a duration of 42 years and now we don't know what to do with them!

Third example : the fact that our civil service is managed by bodies does not help matters (there are more than 900 including that of the directors of the IRA which has five civil servants !!!). When we talk about different bodies this means different status, different pay, different employees allowance schemes within them. It is thus almost impossible to transfer from one body to another

Here again we have tried to get around this stratification by separating ranks (which are given within the body) from the position occupied but we had to abandon the idea seeing that we could only attain such an such position if we were part of such an such body!

I will stop here as I could go on through these examples for hours .

You will understand why, even today, we talk about modernizing the civil service in order to modernize the State.

However gradually, at the administration's rythme, which has all the time in the world in front of it, things are moving and are evolving in a favourable way . It is this evolution that I wish to expand upon now.

2 – Things are begining to change slowly,

As I have already said, beyond the caricature, things are moving within the French civil service . There have been some marked changes over the last ten years.

These changes come about today under pressure

First, the public demand. The times are over when the member of the public was a simple subject of administration and had to abide by its wishes and say thankyou when he was granted what in fact he was entitled to.

In France today the member of the public is a consumer. So, like he demands from his grocer the best product at the best price, he demands from administration (which he pays through his taxes) a perfect service. It is the administration which must adapt to the demand of the « client » and no longer the former who must adapt to the organisation and to administrative restraints,

Second, the demand of civil servants at both the bottom and the top of the ladder. Civil servants have a higher level of education than in previous years (it is no longer a rare thing to find civil servants at the bottom of the ladder with a university degree or a masters). They are caught betweeen the demand of the public and administrative restraints, wish to understand what they are being asked to do and to give some meaning to their actions. Today they cannot accept those organisations of a military type where they would be asked to follow orders.

Third, the financial constitution, which I already mentioned, also changes the aspect of responsabilities within the administration in the same sense : if I am really responsible for the results, I must take part in the decision-making,

Finally, the demography has also a considerable impact. In ten years time, more than half of our civil servants will retire. The majority of these people will have to be replaced in a context of a decreasing birth rate. Therefore, the civil service is going to enter into direct competition with private companies who have the right arguments to attract the best candidates.

It is not only a question of salary (even though this aspect is an important one) but also job satisfaction, the responsibilities proposed and the career prospects. If nothing changes in the human resource management, we will relive the situation of the « the glittering thirties» : in those days only those who were not good enough to join the private sector joined the civil service!

Things are also changing for training which has, in the French civil service always been a considerable weight.

Whereas, traditionally, the initial training accounts for the biggest part of training expenditure of the civil service. The emphasis is put upon a swift development of training or in-house training. The credits granted have almost doubled in the last three years.

Due to the lack of candidates from the outside, the employees within the structure will have to be promoted, hence, forming the future executives which we will need. A good example of this is the undergoing process of retraining of the employees of France-Télécom or the Post Office or of some military units.

I would like to say a few words on this : some public companies or those in the process of privatization such as France télécom, which were formerly administrations, want to get rid of the civil servants they employ. These civil servants will progressively (as there is a risk of total depletion of other recruitments if the employees concerned are reintegrated rapidly) be dispatched into other administrations. But there is a big difference between selling telephones and becoming a specialized jurist and this could only be resolved by proper training.

finally, initial training in administration schools is today under scrutiny by a lot of administrations. In order to assume their responsabilities, managers can no longer wait, sometimes up to three years, for the trained executives they require. They wish recruitment to be stepped up and the initial training to be reduced to a minimum. This is already the case for the civil servants in local authorities and, and henceforth this will have to be considered for the government civil servants.

These trends have considerable consequences

As you may well have gathered from what I have said, things could not remain as they were and urgent measures had to be taken to accompany these trends and to speed them up. The current reforms must meet these requirements not only at a recruitment level but in training , and further still, for the needs of a real human resources management. How far have we got ?

The first point of the the reform is on recruitment

Firstly the areas of recruitment should be expanded in a civil service which is still too monolithic (jurists chosen in the middle classes). In order to do this several measures have been taken or are in the process :

- we first of all change the contents of competitive exams in order to allow access to other candidate profiles other than jurists (it was somewhat illogical to recruit the auditors of the Treasury on mainly legal exams),

- we also change the type of exam that candidates with professional experience have to sit up (until now they sat the same exam as the students !). The new selection exams will be more adapted to these candidates and will enable the experience acquired to be validated. Moreover, more and more competitive exams will be open « on certificates» meaning that the possession of a qualification is sufficient for recruitment subject to an interview with the jury,

- “third way” competitive exam will be extended at all types of recruitment. Nowadays, only ENA and IRA have this type of exam. Tomorrow; all the administration schools will have it,

- in the same way, other methods of recruitment have been developped other than the traditional competitive exam. Therefore, to take only one example, the PACTE program (access program to the state, local and hospital authorities arriers in the civil service). This program today allows a pre-recruitment for those people who would be usually excluded from the civil service (young people with little or no qualifications, people from deprived families or people from immigration …). For two to three years they will be employed under contract and will have training which will lead to a qualification. They will be given a permanent position if they obtain the required qualification.

The second point focuses on an adaptation of training and a better structuring between inital training and in-house training.

As I pointed out earlier the French civil service has always favoured the initial training of its civil servants leaving very little room to in-house training, which allows for the adapting to changes. For two or three years, we have been heading for better stability –and particularly convergence- between these two aspects of training:

In-house training, whether it is organized directly by each administration in relation to its own requirements (training called Intra) or whether it has an interdepartmental authority (these are training programmes for common issues for several administrations), gradually replaces the initial training.

This gradual reform has three main priorities:

First, the training efforts undertaken by employees in their career contrary to what was the case in previous years. Every member of the civil service, irrespective of his rank in the hierarchy, is now entitled to three days training per year and must have an annual meeting with his superior to discuss the training in order to draw up a training programme to suit the the needs of the department and that of the employee.

Second, setting up training programmes for those taking up posts. Thus, each time a civil servant changes job or position he or she, must have a special training period to enable him or her to adapt swiftly to their new environment.

Third, the changes in the system for preparation of competitive exams enabling the promotion of civil service, in service. By these means internal promotion will be favoured but also in the long term, the effects of the demographical slowdown will be offset as too the competition between the private and public sectors in the recruiting of new graduates

The second aspect : stepping up the vocational focus of the initial training which is dispensed in administration schools. I will not dwell on this here as I will develop upon this in the second part of my speech.

The third point of the current reforms concerns a new process in human resource management. This is by far the biggest and the most promising chapter in the state reform. What are the main points?

First of all, to bring an end to the current corporative system by gradually edging away from civil service management by administrative bodies towards a management of civil servants by professional channels. The aim being to reduce the number of 900 bodies to 7 professional channels (technical, general administration, health and social services, financial, teaching ...) among which there will be five levels of hierarchy.

Secondly, to set up, thanks to the possiblities open to us through information technology, a real workforce management planning for employees and careers. Today, administration recrutes with the flow and in relation to its immediate requirements. For example, there have been mass recruitments, over the last few years, of German or Italian teachers whereas the number of pupils–due to the demographical situation- has been on the decrease and these languages are not chosen as much by pupils. So what do we do with these recruited teachers ?

Thirdly, to draw upon the consequences of the new financial constitution for the payment of civil servants. When we judge the civil servants in relation to their results this means their pay will be variable. Even though today there are employees allowance schemes we have already seen that they are not really put into practice to reward the better employee. In the future (this has already began for the higher ranks of the state), civil servants payments will depend on three elements :

First, payment in relation to the position held. This will be a fixed one in relation to the rank and the index held within this rank, the index depends upon for the most part the number of years of service. Second, additional pay in relation to the tasks carried out by the civil servant and thus his level of responsibility. At least, another payment, but in the form of bonuses which will depend upon the way of fonctionning and the results obtained, results perceived in relation to objectives and performance indicators.

Already at this stage, as if to prepare the way for this new change, assessing civil servants–at least the executive members- is based upon the realization of annual objectives negociated with the head of department and a certain number of administrations today put up these bonuses in relation to the results attained.

Finally, improving the deconcentration of the functions of the human resource management closer to the personnel. Up until recent years, human resource management came under the authority of central administration.

A part of this management has gradually been decentralized and this trend is rapidly being followed. In two years, practically all the management (promotions, mobility, training, sanctions …) will be carried out by the very service where the employee works. In order to do this, the human resources departments services are being set up in all the regional or deparmental management offices of government administrations.

PART TWO

I would now like to tackle the question of the initial training reform in administration schools and more especially, in the Instituts régionaux d’administration which are, together with the Institut national du travail (school for the working inspectors), at the head of innovation and I will thus take them as an example

1 - What are the aims of this reform?

Firstly we need to look into the professionalization of training in depth, for the administrative executives taken on in 2000. This option is based on task sharing between university studies and professional training which is specific to France (the IRA were established by the law of 1971 on professional training not only in the public sector but also in the private).

Thus, we assumed that it was up to the university –and teachers- to transfer knowledge, and then, in the outlook of entering into their working life, it was up to administration schools – and with distinguished teacher particpants who are people of a trade and not professional teachers - to provide their professional know-how and to prepare them for a job.

With the reform, this means, in a few broad teaching guides:

Firstly, by setting up initial positioning measures (assessment of competences : what I know, what I know how to do in relation to the objectives of training) which should enable tomorrow's civil service executives to be aware of the requirements of all professional training and to look for, with our assistance, the way of compensating for their weaknesses.

It is not a question of the administration school providing refresher courses, to complete the knowledge which should have been attained at university but to allow for self-training (through e-learning for example).

Next by the emphasis placed on practical teaching in relation to the professional requirements. This means a change in teaching methods which we call an active method as they imply the trainees participation. In this way we gradually drop the ordinary classes in favour of classes with a limited group in the form of role plays, simulations (for example a crisis such as a forest fire, seizure of hostages) or a case study.

In the IRA's (the IRA in Bastia was the forerunner for this five years ago) we added to this real-life situations in the form of what we call "junior consulting" (administrations order audits, assessments, surveys.... from our students who have to carry out diagnosis and offer operational solutions as a consultants office would do). This particular exercise is judged by administrations and by our students alike as the most formative in their course .

Thus, the traditional training period in an administration (3 months for the students at IRA) is also more professionally orientated. These training periods are now carried out under a projet proposed by the administration and which is undertaken by the trainee.

The IRA also issues some recommendations to the person in charge of the training period so that a certain number of skills (know-how) are acquired or accomplished during the training period (for example : better knowledge of how to manage a school cantine for a student on a training period in a senior high school whereas for another again in a senior high school it would be more the aspect of the schools accounts).

Lastly (it is not an exhaustive list), the emphasis is put on the skills that are not acquired at a university: those concerning management whether it is personnel behaviour, the ability to work in a team, the ability to carry out a projet, to be responsible for team work.

Today, almost a third of the training in the IRA is devoted to this aspect. In the future, with the reform, this volume will increase still and, especially, the tests to check the knowledge upon which the administration bases its judgement when it allocates an executive officer a permanent post (these tests are today very much like school tests) will be revised to enable managerial qualities to be taken into consideration.

For another part, the demands of public employers will have to be met in order to better prepare tomorrows executives when they take up their post. (here there is a very particular demand by the Ministry of National Education for the bursars of junior high schools or senior high schools, a very technical and demanding job given that the bursar is alone in his job and is directly responsible for his establishment).

This was not really possible with the current very general programme. Added to this, there is the exam system and the grading of the students which means we only know the position (among 21 possible) that the young executive will take up on the very last day of his training program.

In order to maintain both the general character of the dispensed training which is a guaranteed adaptability and opening and, in the same time, to prepare the students for their first post in administration, we need to know the job chosen during the training in order to adapt part of this to the requirements of the profession. This thus implies a two-stage training programme, a general part and a more specialized for the « profession».

Finally we need to get around the consequences of the Burbaud judgement of the Court of European Justice which challenges the very Franco-French sharing between universities and administration schools (see the judgement). The main lines of defence of administration (Universities provide knowledge and award diplomas, whereas administration schools prepare for a job and offer one at the schools completion) are difficult to honour. This judgement would imply (there are big differences in its interpretation), in the short term, that either the administration schools would award qualifications such as a masters. On the other side, Universities should make their curriculum more professionnally orientated. Or, and this would be the most likely, Universities and administration schools should work in collaboration. To quote one example the IRA in Bastia of which I am the Director has recently signed a convention with the University of Aix-Marseille for among others a mutual recognition of dispensed training.

2 – What are the methods of this reform ?

The reform of the training dispensed in the IRA, which I might add is only a more pronounced form of the one of June 2000, is not an isolated case. Other administration schools are following the same path and some are even ahead of us (INTEFP for example).

What are the larger methods of this reform (the reform at this time is still being debated), beyond the teaching aspects which I have just mentioned, (I will give a brief outline but I will answer any specific questions later) ?

First of all, the training course – which is still for one year- will now be divided up into two distinct parts :

First part : a common-core syllabus, of approximately 8 months, which covers, more or less, the former programme of the general training but a little lighter. The aim is to provide all the students with the fundamentals of public management and to get them accustomed to work in interdepartmental and in partnership surroundings (thus with the local authorities).

During this period of time, they will also be taught the fundamentals of civil servants management and it is also during this period that the students will give in their report ordered by an administration (« junior consulting »).

This common-core syllabus will comprise a training period within an administrative body for a period of two months.

Second part : a period of preparation for the first executive post of three months. The students will be divided up into three « professional fields ». These professional fields (wtch will be : central administration, Territorial administration and school and university administrations) do not represent elaborate fields of specialization but a way of taking into consideration the technical specifications of the three main groups of profession we meet, in the administrative field. I mean, in the state civil service.

For example, in the central adminisration professional field, the teaching will put more emphasis upon the drawing up of legal texts and the management of public policy rather than on the managing of a work team for example. On the contrary, we will emphasise more on the management of personnel as well as accounting management, in the school and university professional administration.

A further training period of two months is programmed during this period. The training period should take place in an administration associated with the chosen professional field : in a school for the school and university administration, in a ministry for the central administration field or in a préfecture, a regional agricultural division or Board of Works, for example, for the territorial administration field.

Next, the methods of checking the knowledge acquired, of ranking and for the choice of profession that the executive of tomorrow will undertake, will be greatly changed.

Instead of exams and a system of ranking which takes place at the end of the course, there will be two systems of ranking and two choices to be made by the students and this will be according to different methods.

First stage : following the common-core syllabus, a series of professional exams has been programmed, mainly to check the knowledge acquired and the methodology skills. The marks obtained, in addition to the training period marks, will determine the ranking. It is in relation to this ranking that the students will choose the professional field in which they will undertake the remainder of their training.

Second stage : following the training in a professional field, a further series of exams (and a mark for the training period) has been planned. For this period, there will be a more specific system of checking the acquired knowledge (thus different exams according ot the professional fields) and a professionnel project.

Then there will be a new system of ranking (a ranking system which will take into consideration, part of the marks obtained for the common-core syllabus) and it is in relation to this that the executive to-be will choose, in his professional field (I insist upon this point as for L'ENA it will be different), his very first post.

3 – The implementation of innovative teaching methods concerning professionalization

the reform which is more geared towards professionalization, implies the implementation of new teaching methods in the programme. The traditional teaching methods, in a classroom or practical work that we know at University, are no longer sufficient.

Active teaching methods (we call them thus as they imply active participation of the students in their training) should make the teaching closer to professional reality. It, in fact, means putting the students into a real life situation as if they were already in the post they would be in once they left the Institute. However, such methods are limited and cannot entirely substitute for the more traditional methods.

Today (in fact we have already been doing this for around 5 years but on an experimental basis), we are setting up several types of active teaching methods :

The most effective is what we call the « the report ordered by an administration » (the English call this « junior consulting »). In fact, the administrations which come up against a problem place an order of an audit, a study or an assessment of a service or a public program which we entrust to a group of students.

They have to, in a given amount of time and as a team, make some propositions to resolve the problem (the reorganization of a service, redirecting a public policy , setting up a programme …). This exercice is particularly appreciated by administrations and a number of reports drawn up by the students of L'IRA have served as a basis for numerous local public policies.

For example, the regeneration process of the old centre of Bastia, the creation of an eco-museum or the reorganization of a prison to quote only a few examples. The advantage of this is it doesn't cost anything for the administration who ordered it (whereas a consulting firm would be very expensive) and if the report didn't suit it (even if the reports are generally very good there are some that are not so good and others that are even bad) it could put it away in a drawer !!! I will, later on, be ready to answer any of your questions.

Another teaching methods that we use a lot is simulations and role plays. These methods consist of putting the students in a situation based on a real life situation that they could come across in their future job and which others have come across previously. We carry out the simulation where each student plays the role of an administrative manager and must react as he would in reality. The teachers are there to guide them, and at the end, will do the debriefing. I will take two examples:

First example : we elaborated, with the firemen officers school, a simulation of disaster and emergency services crisis (a flood catastrophe, a forest fire, an accident of a lorry transporting hazardous materials … in all there are, 12 different situations). It is so true to life that the students eat sandwichs over the lunchtime 12 to 2 (when they continue working) as if they were working in an emergency committee!

Second example : we elaborated with the Board of Works, a simulation of urban development. In this role play, the students (they are in groups and each has a role to play) simulate, over a five-year period (the role play lasts two days) the development, by the public authorities, of an area to be urbanized. This allows them to understand better the technical, social and financial effects of the decisions they may take and to understand the role of the different people who take part in the development (the local councillors, the civil servants, the property developers, those who finance …).

These simulations and role plays are so productive from a training point of view that we have, since last year, decided to apply them to one of the exams that our students take : the foreign language exam. This exam is now taken in groups on the basis of a real-life professional situation. For example a meeting in a préfecture which they must act out but in the chosen foreign language.

There are other active methods being experimented such as case studies, role plays for management and the conduct of difficult or conflict situations. For example, in the last case, professional actors and psychologists take part in these role plays.

4 – the evaluation of the quality of our training methods

There is no quality in training without an evaluation. These evaluations are set up to permit a measure of our performances and how we reach (or not) the aims in training that the french government gives to us. This measure also permit an adjustment, in real time, of our training plan.

We proceed by two differents ways :

- first, by “warm” evaluations by our students. These evaluations are, in fact, satisfaction enquiries just after a training sequency. I think that you now such evaluations in Turkey so I don’t insist further,

- second, that is more original, by “cold” evaluations. These evaluations, conducted by an independant structure within our students one year after their departure, are set up to measure how (or not) the training sequences have had an utility for their today mission or work. The aim is also to focus on lacks of our training and to repairs its.

More interresting perhaps, these evaluations are also conducted within the administrations who emploie our students !!! The head of services are questionned –as to use a marketing language- about the quality of the product we provide face to their own requirements.

The results of these evaluations are sended to all the trainers and teachers, to the ministery of civil service and are published on our web site.

And now, I will, if I may, finish my monologue. I would like to thank you for your attention and am now ready to answer any questions you may have.