Increasingly complex policies and increasingly differentiated needs characterize the action of the PA which finds itself operating within an increasingly complex network of public and private entities. The ability to govern the local area tends to develop around the skills and behavior of personnel, which become strategic elements in human resource management and development policies.
by Niccolò Mattia – Formez PA
The path of experimentation and accompaniment, created as part of the project The participation of citizens and users in the process of measuring organizational performance and enhancing individual performance as a tool for managing human resourcesunder the direction of Formez PA Performance and Public Valuehas allowed the implementation of behavioral interventions in order to enhance individual performance, as well as to support, through applied research, the updating of professional profile systems, shared and adhering to the specificities of the Entities.
Formez PA has supported INAPP, ASI, ICE, the Revenue Agency and ENEA in the implementation of innovative methodologies and solutions for improving individual performance.
The individual evaluation process
Attention has been paid to process of individual assessment placing it in the context of human capital management and development tools, linking it to the various organizational reflections, to identify skills gaps, define training courses, assign positions of responsibility.
Across the Pact meeting built with the Revenue Agency it was possible to assign the objectives, in a prevailing logic of growth and development, allowing the administration to work, not only for the phase of the evaluation cycle (the agreement interview is the first phase of the performance cycle), but also for the further definition and experimentation of the specificities that emerged. It was, in fact, possible to review the role and the management aspect of a pilot professional category, acting in a “surgical” way with more targeted actions. A useful work to undertake subsequent paths, even in a much broader logic than the initial one.
Beyond performance appraisal
You have chosen to pay attention to assessment of the performance, in order not to remain hooked only to the accessory treatment, but making sure that the Measurement and Evaluation System serves the administration and personnel managers to acquire those information elements necessary for a correct management of the human resources assigned to the management, to build training and professional growth paths, assign responsibilities or build a non-monetary salary.
The experience achieved with ICE and MEF led to the definition of Catalog of Competences, a tool to support the evaluation of the individual performance of employees, defined starting from what is expressed by the employees and declined according to the characteristics of the different systems for measuring and evaluating individual performance, the specific organizational realities and the different needs for innovation expressed. Seeing this tool, not only in an evaluation logic, can be very useful for recruitment, when describing a professional profile, or for defining the training path for the employee. The MEF’s Catalog of Skills, adopted together with their new measurement system, has made it possible to define the various knowledge and skills within each professional family, even if they are very different from each other.
Behaviors to increase performance
The project also paid attention to the behaviors of the people who work in a complex environment such as the PA. The behavioral analysis in ASI, ENEA, ICE, INAPP, Agenzia delle Entrate made it possible to implement small interventions for a few weeks in order to guide the behavior of managers and public officials to increase the efficiency of the administration.
This experience has served:
to ENEA to improve the mutual perception of the work between the experimental components and to make them interact in a concrete way, at the same time creating the conditions that have allowed the introduction of small spin-offs; to the Revenue Agency to pay attention to the person and the relational cluster and in particular to the internal relationship between colleagues, to be re-established after the pandemic; to ASI for limiting the time of work group meetings and meetings dedicated to the organisation.
The goal is to support administrations in providing increasingly effective services to citizens and businesses, working above all on the quality of performance to increase the quality of public work. We therefore worked to identify innovative tools and approaches to improve the performance of the public administration, starting from the employee’s skills and behaviour.
The practical contribution of behavioral sciences and the strategic use of individual performance evaluation systems to enhance performance and well-being in public administrations, together with guidelines for the implementation of behavioral interventions within the PA, will soon be online.