Short Essay on the Training of Civil Servants (India)

Whatever the system of recruitment may be there is a need to improve the capability of civil servants through training. Training means the act or process of making a person fit to perform certain tasks.

Training is necessary because no matter how well qualified person may be at the time of recruitment (whether carried out through competitive examination or through other means), he still has certain inadequacies and therefore much to learn before becoming a really effective civil servant.

In view of the urgency of the work of national development, the traditional method of on the job learning of apprenticeship is often very slow. Sometimes, learning by doing or by trial and error is not only time consuming but also costly.

A firm training programme often speeds up the learning process and thus brings the civil servants, including new recruits, to a satisfactory standard of performance in a relatively short time. The economy of this method is one of the reasons why formal training has become important in development administration.

Both conventional and modern techniques are used in education and training of personnel. Conventional training methods include information presentation techniques, such as instructional talks of lectures; the Socratic question and answer method, discussion, conference, seminars and study syndicates, and the case method “programme learning or correspondence course, training with audio­visual aids and so on.

There are many training techniques. Among them simulation exercise in which the trainee is expected to act as if he were in a real life situation, compose one important category. This category includes management games, a role-playing in basket exercises, certain new case methods and the like.

These entail more than a sampling of real life, as in the conventional case method and discussion method. Such simulation exercises are especially useful for training in decision-making and problem solving skills.

The major need of simulation exercise for developing countries is that their usefulness relates directly to the relevance of their content to the realities of the jobs of the trainees, their roles and their environment.

They must be tailored to fit the particular training situation. Experience shows that simulation exercises are prepared in a highly developed country and to use materials irrelevant to the developing environment burns no good for developing countries.

In training the system approach is important. Training cannot be considered in isolation from other aspects of personnel administration or from other aspects of performance improvement.

In fact, training programmes becomes a wasted effort if it is not harmonized with career development or other personnel activities or if it is not integrated with programmes of administrative improvement and or reforms.

Training can be effective only if the knowledge and skills acquired by the trainees can be and actually are used for performance improvement and also if successful training is really helping the development.

Material incentives constitute another key factor in improving the quality and performance of government employees. While education and training, together with intelligence and inborn capacity, determine the ability of individuals to perform, an individual public employee is able to contribute his very best (i.e., to perform to the best of his ability only if he is highly motivated.

The most basic component of a system of material incentives for government employees is their pay. Pay scales, in a country where persons are free to choose their jobs and move from one job to another are normally governed by the principle that the remuneration offered to government employees should be sufficient to attract and retain persons who are qualified for the tasks entrusted to them.

Closely related to salary and pay are conditions of service. Working hours, holidays and leave, working methods, discipline and punishment, and the right of government employees to form associations, to bargain or be consulted on salary and related problems, to appeal, on certain personnel actions and the like are among the conditions of service which form part of the system of material incentives for government employees.

The question of security of lower is another important element in a system of material incentives.

The security of an office is often as important as, if not important, than its remuneration, especially in developing countries where employment opportunities are limited. The career service with tenure until retirement is the most important security feature of the civil services in the industrialized countries of the West.

Promotion or advancement is another important element in a system of material incentives in all civil services especially those with a career system, there must be a system of promotion or advancements in rank, pay and in responsibilities.

Perhaps the most important intangible incentive is to make the job challenging and stimulating by linking it with broad national objectives and goals. This encourages a deep sense of commitment and enthusiasm, a sense of mission which often enables men and women to achieve the “improbable”.

To put it in another way, one important way to motivate government employees is through the identification of their own objectives with national objectives so that they can find great personal satisfaction in achieving and can often go far beyond the call of duty and normal expectation.

A system to increase the efficiency and productivity of government employees would be incomplete without adequate measures for evaluation and control and for rewarding those who make outstanding contributions.

Punishing those whose performance and conduct are significantly below established standard and disciplining those who fail to follow rules and instructions. Motivation through a negative form of inducement (i.e. inducement to avoid being punished or disciplined) is often as important as a positive form of inducement through rewards.

It should be noted, however, that it is easier to make evaluation and exercise control in dealing with manual workers than in dealing with those, such as public administrators, whose work entails a less concrete kind of knowledge and ability.

One can easily evaluate the performance and efficiency of a machine and can build controls into it. For manual work one can set quantitative standards for measuring performance and can exercise control objectively, meaningfully, economically and efficiently. For public administration, however, one often has to rely on qualitative rather than quantitative, subjective and complicated means of evaluation and control.

Much controversy, however, exist, as to the methods and policies that will provide effective evaluation of performance. In some countries, reliance is placed on a confidential system comprising numerous abstract judgments.

Other have found more concrete results from an appraisal system based on encouragement of two-way communication between supervisor and supervised and on linkage of aggregate judgment of appraisal with a system of reward and or penalties concerning the level and quality of actual performances as related to specific official duties.

In order to obtain qualified persons to fill posts in public service, to ensure their career development, enhance their administrative capability, motivate them to contribute their very best, increase the productivity and efficiency of the Public Administration system it is important for the government to have a properly designed central machinery for personnel administration.

Such a central personnel organization, which may be called a Commission or Agency, should possess adequate powers, responsibilities and resources. As an ideal objective, it should have control over the range of integrated functions comprising personnel management and have an independent decision making body, authority of such a central machinery differ considerably from one country to another, in some countries (for example, the United Kingdom), there is a civil service department headed by a cabinet minister.

In others there is a unit responsible for personnel administration attached to the ministry of finance, the ministry of labour or the “ministry of the interior. In a large number of countries, there is a civil service commission with considerable autonomous authority created by the constitution or by law.

It should be noted that even in a government with a department or commission to take charge of the civil service, the making and implementation of personnel policies are not normally concentrated in one single unit but are often the co-operative effort of determination.

The proportion of national resource to be devoted to the administrative arm of government, for example, are often shared by the legislature, the chief executive, the ministry of finance the planners and the central unit in charge of the civil service. Nevertheless it is still important to have a strong central unit, which is responsible for the personnel administration of the administrative arm o government. There should also be appropriate institutional arrangement for the training of civil servant. A public administration system can perform well only if it has an efficient and effective central unit ensures that personnel and training policies are implemented and human resources are properly managed.