The monthly focus of this 30^th issue is dedicated to employer branding and more particularly the ways to boost for better promoting its benefits. As usual, we present you the last trends in several countries on this theme and the inspiring ways in which they are implementing them.
Beyond the news, you will get acquainted with EDF's intiative for working and managing differently and the new open data portal on the public service in Lithuania.

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We wish you a very good reading and a merry Christmas!

The vision RH editorial team

Faced with a wave of retirements, most countries now find themselves in the unavoidable position of having to plan and orchestrate a large-scale renewal of the public sector workforce.

Along with a new set of expectations from the generation now entering the job market, the idea of employer branding – a concept used by private-sector companies to stand out from the competition – has made its way to the public sector. More than just a communications tool, an employer brand is meant to communicate the values behind the messaging.

A 2017 European study conducted by Estonia found that countries with an “employment-based” (as opposed to career-based) public service were more naturally positioned to find the right messaging.

With strategies often characterised by bold slogans – “Make a difference – Jobs that count” (Finland), “You are Latvia – Get involved and do!”, “Commit yourself to the service of the citizen” (Luxemburg), and “Switzerland, our company” – governments are attempting to improve their image, which can still suffer from negative stereotypes (lack of flexibility, overly linear career paths, little recognition for individual qualifications), making them less appealing as employers.

Taking an informative approach to deconstructing some of these preconceptions, Ireland hopes to attract more applicants. Its recruitment portal features a “Mythbuster” series, where clear answers are published to questions about access to jobs, the hiring process and education requirements. Australia has taken a similar approach with its “Cracking the Code” initiative, designed to reach sceptics who might not think they qualify for a job in government.

As part of Sweden’s Jobba statligt (“work for the government”) initiative, public-sector employers have access to a toolbox to help them use a unified voice to promote jobs and careers, with room to customise messaging to meet region- or job-specific needs. The toolbox includes communications kits, graphics and videos.

The Netherlands’ Werkenvoornederland platform, which hosts public sector job listings, also provides an overview of different careers and outlines the advantages enjoyed by civil servants. There is a focus on salary, job flexibility and career development, the three biggest motivators for applicants.

Other initiatives include:

• In Germany, a website highlighting Die Unverzichtbaren (“essential jobs”) includes a search feature designed to inspire people to find their calling. It matches users to suitable careers based on their priorities (location, working conditions, work environment, skills, interests).

• In Belgium, in an effort to lend new life and visibility to public sector recruiting, the government decided to diversify its approach, advertising its job postings across multiple platforms. It’s a customisable strategy that uses social media and “jobmailings” emailed to targeted candidates.

And why not let public servants speak for themselves? As a strategy, it has authenticity going for it, provided the testimonials aren’t overly scripted or edited. By describing what they do and why they’ve chosen a career in the government, public servants can be the most effective ambassadors, even internally. In France, the founders of interview series Sous le bonnet – representing all three branches of the civil service – are doing their part by posting online interviews with government employees about their jobs.

French government departments are being given more flexibility and responsibility for HR decisions. Taking inspiration from the method used to decentralise the budget process, new solutions are being co-designed based on real, on-the-ground experience. From region to region, collaborative workshops are held to define strategies and develop scenarios and action plans.

The German government is offering a tax credit of €5/day (up to 120 days/year and renewable in 2021) for people who have been forced to work from home due to the pandemic. The main purpose of the “non-bureaucratic” flat-rate measure is to allow those who don’t have a dedicated home office – normally required to deduct work expenses – to be compensated for extra expenses they’ve had to incur.

Taking inspiration from the US, Switzerland’s federal government is launching a fellowship program to temporarily recruit experts in IT, design and innovation from the private sector or with other high-potential backgrounds. The idea is to place them in cross-sector roles where they can contribute to projects from strategic development through to execution.

Government employers are increasingly paying more attention to how they onboard new employees – but why wait until their first day on the job? In Denmark’s public service, a Campus account is created for new recruits right away, giving them access to all the administrative aspects of their new job and allowing them to get in touch with their soon-to-be colleagues.

Under the act to transform the French civil service, the scoring system introduced in 1959, which is still in use in hospitals and care facilities, is being replaced by an annual career interview, as is already the case in the other two branches of the civil service. The change will apply to over a million public servants and, once practices are harmonised, is expected to open up more job mobility opportunities.

Spain’s civil service is introducing a mandatory training curriculum on gender equality, similar to training on rights and obligations and service quality, to ensure a common understanding of equality in the workplace. Every civil servant, regardless of job level, will need to take the training over the course of their career, allowing them to accrue a body of knowledge which will be recorded in their personnel file.

In situations where team stability is under strain, leadership is crucial. To help managers handle stressful situations, or “VUCA” situations, Canada’s federal government advises using a proven approach: build an atmosphere of trust and acceptance, listen generously, communicate transparently and help team members plan and set goals.

Stemming from a recommendation adopted in 2019, the OECD has published a document identifying four core leadership capabilities (values-based leadership, open inclusion, organisational stewardship, networked collaboration). It also outlines a model for assessing senior civil service systems and formulates recommendations to help Member States take a systematic approach to the development and management of their public service leaders.

A new digital squad is being put together to lend a hand to government startup-style teams working on developing simple, easy-to-use digital tools with maximum impact. The squad is made up of developers and delivery managers, recruited for six-month terms from the public and private sectors, who will join existing autonomous teams. The project is inspired by the Canadian government’s Free Agent Program.

The Italian government has established a dedicated monitoring committee as it continues its intensive push to introduce agile working arrangements, which it plans to continue developing. It’s a permanent committee made up of experts and representatives from across the government. Its mission is to flag issues that arise and report on objectives, working with a real-time flow of information.

For disabled employees, getting set up with the equipment they need to do their job under the right conditions can be a time-consuming process, with delays caused by funding requests or the need to custom-build equipment. A new platform has been set up to provide short-term equipment loans to bridge the gap – also a good way to test out a new device.

According to surveys of civil servants conducted over the past year, there has been an increase in health issues caused by unconventional working conditions. In response, the government’s human resources have enhanced the support services offered by occupational health advisors. The role of these in-house specialists, who are available in all departments, is to meet with employees and offer confidential support and advice.

TAMA – which stands for “work differently, manage differently” in French – is the name of a new initiative at EDF. After the first lockdown, during which a third of its employees were working from home, the group decided to come up with a new business model for itself moving forward.

An outcome of the back-to-business agreement (1) negotiated in June with labour groups, the initiative aims to “boost employee engagement and team cohesion” and apply lessons learned from the pandemic, such as new collaboration methods.

More than just building on positive experiences, it also involves finding the right balance to maintain team dynamics and meet the different needs of its employees: 70% want to keep working from home, while the same percentage also report missing workplace interactions.

The first step was to expand the criteria for eligibility to a hybrid model, which will eventually be made universal. By encouraging managers to redefine positions, HR hopes to avoid having categories of staff left out of the system.

As for on-site days, which are important for maintaining working relationships, a number of tried and tested approaches (staggering schedules to avoid congestion, working occasional days at other sites) will be considered for more wide-scale use.

¹ Collective agreement on employee protections and social measures for the resumption of business activities.

Like the year-end report published in France, most countries take the opportunity to conduct an in-depth review of their civil service. Some of this data is published to meet specific classification criteria so that it can be used by international organisations (like the EU or OECD) for comparative purposes.

Even as governments make efforts to publish more and more data on their public service, for the benefit of researchers and journalists, the result is merely a snapshot of the situation at a specific point in time.

In response to this problem (1), Lithuania’s ministry of the interior (who heads up the civil service) decided to create a dedicated portal for open data.

Data going back five years, imported from the HR system, can be searched to pinpoint staffing levels to the day. There are also multiple display options (numbers and graphs for now, with map features under development).

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In addition to predefined searches, the main draw of the tool is the ability to easily obtain data for a set of indicators on the public servant population for a given date, and to track changes over time.

For example, you can find a breakdown of the workforce by a number of factors: posting, job category, salary, training history, age group, gender, education or languages spoken.

There is a special section for recruitment data (number of applicants for a position, pass rates for tests and interviews). You can also find data on the geographic location and profile of vacant positions.

The project, which follows the latest standards for public open data, was built around two central principles: to provide more transparency while guaranteeing full privacy protection with regard to personal identifying information.

With intuitive features (predictive entry, filtering and sorting icons, editing assistance for analytic reports), the portal also has a simplified export feature for customised applications.

¹ In January 2020, Vilnius hosted a European conference on open data.