| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The Israeli Civil Service started by analyzing the root cause of a broken evaluation and career growth model, low employee morale, and distrust between management, employees and the bureaucratic system that governed their work environment based on survey of 640 senior managers, focus groups of 61 agency heads, and individual interviews with 45 departmental leaders. The strategic goals were defined by an independent Commission but the project scope was implemented based on very precise and pointed feedback from these professionals within the government and best practices gleaned from private sector companies who completed similar initiatives. Timelines were developed with an aim to methodically implement both the tool and the process with specific milestones for performance of both the technology and the techniques. Both the scope and the rollout were developed with significant input from management and the HR senior officials in each of the pilot agencies. In addition to piloting this initially in just 6 of the 54 government agencies, the Civil Service Commission conducted mini-pilots of subsets within the pilot program to validate in real time that the scope was correct.
Starting with baseline data gathered in 2011, the project aimed to improve performance evaluation and strengthen communication between management and staff. Until the end of 2013 the Civil Service Commission (CSC) needed to develop the model including the pilot to validate the model. The goal of this development was to provide and receive guidance on the model from the key core participants who participated in the goal-setting. By the beginning of 2014, CSC rolled out all the evaluation metrics and tools – 8,043 managers, with the evaluation and communication processes and guidance including the supporting technology tools. During this time, the management was given intensive training in how to administer the new process including digital training, tutorials, and counseling. Over the course of 2014, the communication and performance tool and process were administered to the pilot agencies (six agencies) which covered 4,200 people. The implementation strategy is based on two fundamental basic concepts. The first is 'implementation as a process' and a 'telescopic approach' which begins with small changes and then builds each year to more challenging reforms. Thus, the first stage focuses on the reform of the Nachshon offices (Ministry of Health, economic, religious services and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space). Based on the insights gleaned from this process, the program will be adjusted and applied to ten more offices.
The second fundamental concept is the establishment of a circular and spiral process, reflecting the insights that arise during any stage of the program. This strategy underscores the conviction of the committee members that they have to focus on changing the fundamentals of the civil service including its basic values, organizational culture and language. The committee members recognize that they have to tackle deep-rooted and fundamental problems.
The three-year program consists of the following steps: 1) strategy formulation, 2) ensuring resources for reform, 3) building operations given the needs and resources available and 4) evaluation. Thus, an important component of the implementation is the difference in its focus and efforts during the years of the implementation process (ibid):
• 2013: Most of the efforts are focused on the design of the reform and the formulation of its implementation.
• 2014: Application of the reform in several ministries (Nachshon offices), validation of concepts and policies, and the development of insights from it.
• 2015: Implementation of these insights and updating the plan, as well as implementation of the second round in ten other government ministries.
• 2016: Completion of implementation of the reform in all government offices.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The Israeli government, like many around the world, has a top-down management culture and a very strong union role representing the employees. The Civil Service Commission recognized this dynamic and leveraged it for success in implementation. Publicly demonstrated support from the Prime Minister’s office, and from the leaders of all the Departments was established. Then, senior level managers were recruited to conceptually buy-in to the change. The value proposition was co-created with this group to ensure they understand the benefits to their organization and that the effort is not being forced upon them from another office.
The relationships built from the civil service reform office, with union leadership was critical to success. The unions supported this initiative despite initial misgivings about the role the evaluation results will play in the employees’ career and compensation. Proving to them that this was a benefit for employees was an important milestone for union buy-in. When they saw the tool and the processes, they had no choice but to acknowledge that this innovation solved some of their key constituent complaints. The fact that both the politicians and Ministry of Finance bureaucrats are actively supporting these steps increases the chances of success. However, the Histadrut, Israel’s labour union, will have a great deal of say over the ultimate success or failure of the reform.
Externally, the initiative gained valuable best practices and benchmarking metrics from the private sector. While the initiative was built internally as “a home grown” tool, a lot of the success markers were developed by observing Israel’s industry leaders. Companies such as Intel, Teva, and members of the banking community were interviewed extensively for advice and guidance.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The total sum of the project is $566,000 USD:
Financial resources: the cost of the project is: $395,000 USD for the initial development stage and includes the direct expense on funding consulting companies and other professional agents that helped in creating the new perception, the costs of the development of the new technological and applicative interface system, the costs of development guidance tools (such as short films, simulator, written manuals and printing costs), the costs of assimilation and actual guidance.
In addition, there are internal human resource costs of approximately $132,000 USD. In this costs CSC included the government professionals’ time that are invested in the initiative. This time was spent in the development stage (doctrine and procedures, technology and tools), validating the perception (conducting pilots among the people in the agencies that were about to use the model), trainings to evaluators, launching the initiative, evaluating the results and refining the model.
In addition, there are overhead costs of $39,000 USD that include the costs of the bid processes, outsourcing connection, renting accommodation and overhead costs.
Funding sources: this is a governmental project that is funded fully by the Treasury, as part of the overall budget for the reform of human asset management in the civil service of Israel.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The employee evaluation data in the Civil Service for 2011, the baseline year to initiate the reform, presents the following picture: average performance review was an inflated 9.62 out of 11. The survey conducted regarding the conduct of the feedback conversation points to 44% of the employees in the Civil Service not receiving an annual feedback talk at all. These data reflect a problematic situation, that testifies to a certain extent to a weakness in the managerial system and a lack of awareness of managerial commitment to conduct dialogue and feedback talks with the employees – in the setting of which the annual coordination of expectations takes place, clarity regarding the tasks that must be focused on is created, and the employee is given a space where he is listened to, his feelings, and an expression of his ambition, are acknowledged.
These data and the circumstances of their creation testify both to a weakness on behalf of the Civil Service Commission as the guiding professional body and to a feeling of lack of faith in the importance of conducting feedback and the possibility to realize any practical action arising from it: a lack of real meaning to reward those that were prominent for the better , and the system’s weakness in taking sanctions against those whose performance review points to them being unsuitable.
For the performance evaluation initiative, the central goal was to get all 4,200 to fill the evaluation form. The result of the new initiative was a 98% current response rate, up from 44%, a demonstrable success reflecting a significant closure of the performance gap. Another goal was to allocate a standard deviation model because the manager was very good at determining extremes (good and bad) but not the middle. The interim goal was to just tell 15% of the top performers. The system distributed the rest based on responses. The system was closed after 15% for the rest.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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During the implementation CSC tracked 80 managers doing evaluation for 180 employees of the 4,200 in the six agencies. And created 6 mini-pilots to evaluate ‘real time’ on-going. One goal was to see the potential of the implementation in real time because of the cultural environment in different agencies to see if there are differences in the agencies and what CSC needed to do to implement the best way.
The Civil Service Commission formed and applied a process of benchmarking in the field of human resource management for all government ministries and support units, a process that will make use of a wide range of indicators in the field of human resource management. The benchmarking will enable the Civil Service Commission, the management of the ministries, the senior deputy directors for human resources, and other decision makers, to receive a clear and accurate picture, both quantitative and qualitative, regarding various and important dimensions of human resource management in the Civil Service. Use of a range of indicators will constitute a tool to reflect the gaps between policy, strategy and operational guidelines in the field of human resource management, and the outcomes of human resource management in practice.
The system-wide indicators according to which government ministries will be measured in the field of human resource management will be as follows:
1. Adaptation of the organization to its tasks, goals and purposes.
2. Human capital development.
3. Planning in relation to the populations that constitute the core of the organization’s activity.
4. Quality of management.
5. The system of labor relations.
6. Values, discipline and integrity.
7. Variable indicators per the Civil Service Commissioner’s decision – attainment of annual and perennial system-wide targets.
These indicators will be based on data received from three axes of evaluation: the axis of the management of ministries – directors general and members of management, the axis of regulation by the professional reference unit in the Commission, and the axis of the surveys of the office employees’ positions. The position survey will examine the following indices: organizational climate, working environment, job satisfaction and satisfaction from the team, the quality of management, promotion prospects, the relationships in the organization, levels of identification with the organizations and feelings of relation to it, perceptions of the organization’s influence and the quality of its methods.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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When forming recommendations for reform, there is an inherent tension between the desires to reach utopia and resolving all the areas needed rectify the current situation, and the understanding that the recommendations must be viewed through a responsible and realistic prism. The Committee members viewed their responsibility not only as reporting that which requires reform, but mainly to present a feasibly implementable plan.
The question of feasibility led the Committee’s work in distinguishing innovative processes from evolutionary ones, issues that can be implemented immediately from those that require assimilation stage after stage, issues in relation to which there is full clarity from those that require examination and updating in the setting of implementing the reform and the Commission’s responsibility. In this context, thought was given to the possible difficulties and obstacles, the various vested interests, the sphere of labor relations, and the understanding that implementation of the reform is not done in a vacuum, but rather in a complex environment with many vested interests, some of which conflict.
The evaluation of the pilot just concluded and the CSC learned that they need to go directly to the employees, not just through the managers. Given the practicalities of the roll-out initiative, more intensive training was provided to managers and self-learning instructional kit provided to staff. This led to inconsistent results and varied communication of the roll-out process because our communication was only with the HR team VP and the management. The employees didn’t initially get the message. Some managers did it well but a lot of employees did not understand the value.
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