How can public administrations attract and select talent in an environment of evolving skill needs, technological change and growing labour market competition?
SIGMA’s new paper “Merit-based civil service recruitment and selection in the Western Balkans and EU Eastern Neighbourhood: Evidence, OECD practices and reform directions” offers evidence-based insights and practical reform directions for strengthening civil service recruitment and selection systems.
The paper highlights that recruitment and selection are central to workforce capability, organisational performance and the delivery of effective public services. It also points to persistent challenges faced by many public administrations, including uneven HRM professionalism, limited use of evidence-based assessment methods, insufficient strategic workforce planning and weak public service employer branding.
Key reform priorities include:
- strengthening the professionalisation of HRM functions;
- improving job-relatedness and predictive validity of selection methods;
- enhancing strategic workforce planning;
- developing stronger public service employer branding;
- making better use of data in HR decision-making;
- using digital tools and AI responsibly, with due attention to transparency, privacy and bias risks.
For Ukraine, the findings are particularly relevant in the context of restoring full merit-based competition procedures and further aligning civil service reform with European principles of public administration.
Read the paper: https://lnkd.in/eZvcNRNK