To be effective enablers of development and transformation, public employment policies – including those around recruitment, remuneration, learning and development, and succession planning – must be tailored to the specific needs of each central government ministry. Each organisation and its leadership will face different workforce and talent development needs, and challenges unique to their mission, mandate and transformation strategies. At the same time, some degree of central oversight and co-ordination is needed to enable government-wide workforce transformations, address common challenges, ensure minimum standards across government, uphold common principles and statutory obligations (where applicable) of merit and fairness, and avoid uneven pay scales or inter-ministerial competition for employees (see also Section on “Civil service oversight institutions”).
The index on the delegation of public employment in central administrations summarises how far human resources management (HRM) practices have been delegated to line ministries in central government. It assesses the delegation of financial decisions (budget for compensation, pay and benefits); attraction, recruitment and onboarding responsibilities; and workforce planning activities. Although the average delegation index score across OECD countries is 0.55 (on a scale from 0 to 1), the individual results reveal no single model or common standard for delegation in public employment. Countries show significant variation, with individual scores ranging from 0.36 to 0.76 (Figure 14.1), reflecting diverse approaches to balancing ministerial flexibility with common and co-ordinated HR practices.
All countries have dedicated HRM units in individual line ministries (Table 14.1). However, the mandates and roles of these units vary significantly across countries. Activities related to attraction, recruitment and onboarding are the most frequently delegated with an average score of 0.22 out of 0.33. Delegating these functions to line ministries allows for greater flexibility and responsiveness to changes in operational contexts (Figure 14.1).
At the lower end of the scale, financial decisions – such as setting budget envelopes for staffing, compensation and benefits – have an average score of 0.13 out of 0.33 (Figure 14.1). These responsibilities are typically centralised under finance ministries or centres of government. This centralisation helps ensure consistent pay and benefits across ministries, reducing inter-ministerial competition for critical skills.
Denmark and Norway have the highest levels of autonomy over HRM decisions. In both countries, all key decisions are entirely decentralised (Table 14.1). While highly decentralised, HR policies are still regulated by collective agreements and other legislative tools to ensure co-ordination within individual ministries. At the other end of the scale, in countries such as Chile, Greece, Israel and Korea, central institutions have power over a greater number of activities including recruitment of public servants, external branding and communications, and producing workforce plans. Achieving a good balance between delegation and central authority lies in ensuring organisations and their leadership have strong HRM capabilities, effective monitoring and evaluation of HRM policies across government, and ensuring there are co-ordination and communication mechanisms between all levels and institutions.
