Taking stock of performance, work ethic in public service

Today I examine the health of Kenya’s national and county public service. Over time, I have held conversations with several public servants regarding their jobs. This is what, in paraphrased form, some shared.

One said: “I bribed to get my placement. I don’t owe anybody loyalty or service.”

Another ventilated: “I loathe teaching but I accepted the job offer for livelihood’s sake. I am thrilled when the bell rings at 5pm.”

Finally: “I am employed on a permanent and pensionable basis. Only death or retirement can separate me from service. Politicians will come and go, leaving me behind.”

The million-dollar question is: how many public servants in Kenya harbour similar sentiments?

According to the Economic Survey 2021, carried out by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics in 2020, the 47 county governments had a combined workforce of 204,600 employees. National government employees, including those in state corporations and the Teachers Service Commission, totalled 680,600. Hence the country’s public service staff figure stood at 884,600.

Paradoxically, it is prestigious for many to hold a government office, while simultaneously trivialising the appointment.

The majority of the public servants do not appreciate that their ultimate employer is not the Public Service Commission or County Public Service Boards. These latter bodies are merely agents of the people of Kenya. Article 1 (1) of the Constitution provides that “All sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya…” Those elected or appointed only exercise delegated authority. Therefore, the citizen is the real employer: the boss. If public servants grasped this elementary logic, they would be transformed into servant workers.

Article 232(1) describes the values and principles of public service to include: “high standard of professional ethics; efficient, effective and economic use of resources; responsive, prompt, effective, impartial and equitable provision of services; involvement of the people in the process of policy making; accountability for administrative acts; transparency and provision to the public of timely, accurate information,” as well as meritocracy and inclusiveness.

Certainly, if the above values and principles on work ethic were observed, then Kenya’s public service would, like Botswana’s, be a continental leader.

Work ethic can be described as “belief that work and diligence have a moral benefit and an inherent ability, virtue or value to strengthen character and individual abilities. It is a set of values centred on the importance of work and manifested by determination or desire to work hard.”

Form of worship

The above Wikipedia definition also cites eight examples of work ethic skills as reliability, dedication, discipline, productivity, cooperation, integrity, responsibility and professionalism.

Honest, dedicated and ethically based work is a form of worship or elevation that bestows dignity upon the worker.

In an influential book, Tribal leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organisation, Dave Logan and others  describe a tribe (not ethnic group) as 20-150 workers who relate closely. This can be in a company, government or other organisation. The authors explore how tribes, through committed leadership, confront obstacles and challenges that threaten to torpedo the building of great organisations.

The book unveils five tribal stages. For our purposes we shall relate them to the government and its workforce.

In Stage One “people are desperately hostile, and they bond together to get ahead in a violent and unfair world”. The public service has irretrievably broken down. Pay is often irregular. Even the management often absconds from duty. In the one-party state of the 70s and 80s, under military regimes and other failed states, this was the norm.

In Stage Two workers are “passively antagonistic”. They work without passion; going through the motions of a job. Even when someone hatches a new idea, it is killed promptly. Apathy straddles like a behemoth over the entire public service.

In Stage Three the organisation’s quantum of knowledge has grown but such knowledge resources are largely individualised. The lone warriors or knowledge champions use it to advance themselves first and then the organisation. As a result, collective success is compromised.

In Stage Four the workers begin to become a cohesive community whose joint work confers on the community the tag: “We’re great.” Achievements are multiplied, impactful and widely shared among the workers and clients.

Glass ceiling

In Stage Five, the organisation or unit enters into the innovation and transformation realm. The group has pierced the glass ceiling and entered into history-making and global recognition.

Within government (just like in a company or other organisation) different units can be at varied stages in the one-to-five continuum. At a glance, one could hazard that most Kenyan national and county government units are at stages Two and Three.

Why do I say so?

Kenya’s government departments – like most of Africa’s – do not categorically enumerate the available public services. Public charters, where they exist, merely summarise the services on offer. Service awareness is a necessary component of service delivery. The service consumer needs to be explicitly made aware of the entire range of existing public services, how and where to access them, within what time duration and on what conditions. It must be made crystal clear that public service is not a favour.

In my county government work I have realised developmental efforts may have a skimpy impact due to lack of last-mile service delivery. It is important to ask how many beneficiaries have accessed a service? Are they a critical mass in comparison to the total population to be served? What is the impact? And is it sustainable?

Public services are offered so that they can trigger the fruition of the citizen’s private initiatives. The government provides secondary intervention, while the primary duty for self-sufficiency falls on the citizen. Public services must be offered through one window, not two. Window one should serve all. Window two is the corruption window, which distorts equitable delivery.

Government services must also target special categories such as children, senior citizens, PWDs and other disadvantaged groups through affirmative action.

Certain instruments are often used to spur comprehensive delivery such as performance contracting (culminating in appraisals for individual employees), International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards and the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) system.

Jana Kunicova analyses five drivers of public sector performance. These are political leadership, institutional capacity building, and array of incentives, increased transparency and targeted use of appropriate technology. Innovative deployment of these drivers is key to success.

We have seen that for any organisation to gravitate towards tribal Stage Five of innovation, impact and global recognition, its leadership must inspire the entire group into the realm of greatness. No citizen-centred public service system can thrive without the necessary political will and leadership to support managerial talent.

Let me conclude with the words of Steve Jobs: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be duly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

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