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Overview
The key objective of this regional capacity building seminar held in Amman on 20-21 September 2006 was to support policy makers from Arab countries in designing and implementing their reform approaches towards public sector pay and grading reform. Pay and grading reforms are a core element of Arab countries’ action plans presented at the GfD Steering Group meeting at ministerial level in Sharm-el-Sheikh on 19-20 May 2006.
The seminar was the first of a series of focused regional capacity building events on core common challenges in the field of civil service reform and integrity that have been identified by Arab delegates at the second GfD Working Group meeting 1 held in Rabat, Morocco on 19-20 April 2006.
Participants
The seminar took place thanks to the initiative and hospitality of the government of Jordan under the patronage of H.E. Salem Al-Khazaleh, Minister of Public Sector Development, Jordan. It was attended by high-level delegations from 13 Arab countries including Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia and West Bank/Gaza. Furthermore, experts from OECD countries and from the World Bank were present.
The seminar was opened by H.E. Salem Al-Kawaldeh, Minister of Public Sector Development, Jordan, who described public sector pay and grading reforms as a priority concern for the government of Jordan and by Dr. Yaseen Khayyat, Director of the Jordan Institution for Standards and Metrology (JISM), who accentuated the importance of HR reforms for JISM, which contributed to the preparation of the seminar. On behalf of Morocco, chair country of GfD Working Group 1, Mr. Mohamed Aliat, Director of Civil Service, Ministry for Public Sectors Modernisation, Morocco, welcomed the initiative of the government of Jordan to hold this seminar.
Agenda Topics
Delegations from Arab countries provided extensive information on the technical and political challenges their countries face in reforming pay and grading and the reform approaches they have chosen. They actively engaged in an open and constructive exchange of experiences on the design of pay systems and the implementation of pay reforms around the following themes: Pay flexibility and fragmentation of pay systems, performance-related rewards, pay and grading review and pay scale design and implementation of pay reforms.
Following the 1 ½-day main regional capacity-building seminar, two 2 hour special sessions were held for intensive peer-discussion on pay and grading reform in Jordan and on civil service reform in West Bank / Gaza. These special sessions were scheduled in response to the requests of the government of Jordan and of Birzeit University, West Bank / Gaza.
Outcomes: Future regional capacity-building activities of the GfD Human Resources Network
Delegations from Arab countries highly welcomed the format of this regional capacity building seminar which was conducive to focused peer-exchange. They suggested that this success model should be applied in a similar format to related common HR challenges in the future within in the framework of the GfD Human Resources Network shaped at the seminar. The regional seminars and peer-to-peer learning activities within the GfD HR network will be complemented and supported through an online exchange forum. The following four regional focus themes for future regional capacity building emerged during the discussions at the seminar:
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Pay strategies for better public sector performance: pay and grading reform (follow-up to the Jordan seminar);
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Assessing staff: recruitment, assessment centres and performance appraisal;
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Overall Human Resources planning and management;
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The role of central human resources agencies and HR units in central, regional and local line-bodies.
Several suggestions on how to pursue the work on these four regional focus themes emerged during the seminar:
With regards to regional focus theme 1, Jordan and Lebanon proposed to set up a study visit on the Belgian experience with reviewing the federal job classification system in Belgium in November 2006. Tunisia and Morocco showed particular interest in contributing to future regional work on performance appraisal (including performance related pay) and on results-based management (regional focus theme 2) and would explore possibilities to potentially host a regional seminar.
With regards to theme 3, Bahrain suggested to host a regional capacity building seminar on manpower planning and development in March 2008. Among other countries, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and accentuated the relevance of regional focus theme 4 for their national reform agenda and regional sharing of lessons-learnt.
Documentation
General
Centralised versus decentralised wage setting / unified pay scales versus diverse pay scales
Performance-related rewards
Pay & grading reviews & pay scale design
Implementing pay reforms
Special session 1: Peer discussion on pay and grading reform in Jordan
Special session 2: Peer discussion on civil service reform in the Palestinian Authority
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