This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 17, 2017 - April 23, 2017

TALENT management is commonplace in private sector organisations. But for the public sector, it is a very different game. For ideas on what can be done to improve human capital in the public sector, we reached out to Human Capital Development Sdn Bhd senior partner Dr Rozhan Othman, who has three decades of experience in talent research and consulting for both private and public sector organisations.

Here are some of his key points.

The Edge: What are some ways the civil service can improve efficiency and productivity and deliver better outcomes?

Dr Rozhan Othman: To be fair, some parts of the civil service have shown substantial improvement. This is most evident in the issuance of passports and identity cards.

But future improvement will have to come from more than just efficiency and productivity improvement. The civil service will need to be able to think outside the box and even question whether certain rules and procedures are necessary.

This is not going to be easy to do. By nature, the civil service is a bureaucracy and bureaucracies are oriented towards consistency, predictability and control.

These lead to an emphasis on variation minimisation in processes and mindsets, which create a tunnel vision that is concerned with doing more of the same.

Substantial improvements in the future will have to come in the form of rethinking service delivery models and even rethinking public policies.

The size of the civil service corresponds with the number of ministries, which corresponds with the number of ministers. The larger the cabinet, the more ministries there will be. It is unlikely that the cabinet will downsize itself.

Size in many ways is also a political decision. It is not necessarily concerned with becoming more lean or cost-effective.

It has been said that it is more difficult to change things in the public sector. What is the key difference between talent management in the private and public sectors?

It is partly true that it is difficult to change the public sector.

Change in the public sector can happen quickly when it is triggered by a top-bottom administrative fiat.

What we would like to see is a civil service that is more accountable and responsive to the public. In Singapore, this is achieved by creating boards consisting of representatives of the public and the corporate sectors for various public agencies.

Talent management is still relatively new to many organisations in Malaysia. Even in the private sector, it is still very much a work in progress. Managing talent in the public sector is much more difficult because of its sheer size.

The Malaysian civil service includes the military, statutory bodies and public universities. The requirements of these different entities are different.

The various research and literature on talent management in the civil service show that the term “talent management” has already entered the civil service vocabulary. However, there seems to be considerable differences on what it means and entails.

If you were put in charge of reforming talent and management of the public sector, what would be your immediate areas of priority?

There are a number of things I would do. The first is to appoint a chief talent officer who will primarily be responsible for integrating and managing the end-to-end activities needed to manage talent in the public sector. This includes the responsibilities for talent development and succession planning.

The second is to develop a public sector strategic-level leadership competency model. The chief talent officer should focus his/her talent management programme on developing strategic leaders for the civil service.

Even the private sector considers this a major vacuum in its leadership needs. A major GLC recently commissioned a consulting firm to assess its senior management team. It was found that only 10% of the group have the skills needed to lead at the strategic level.

The third is to consolidate the many training institutes to ensure only the ones with a strong business case and a track record of creating impact are maintained. One of these institutes should then serve the role as the key strategic leadership development centre. The rest can be retired.

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