Chairman With MDASThe Commission held a one day consultative meeting with Heads of Human Resource Management and Development in Ministries and State Departments, and their deputies on Thursday 21st March 2019 at the Kenya School of Government – Nairobi Campus.

The one day meeting was attended by 79 participants. It sought to take stock of successes and challenges in the delivery of the Commission’s mandate; provide participants with an opportunity to interact with the new Commissioners; share experiences on best practices and emerging issues in human resource management; and chart the way forward regarding human resource management challenges.

In his opening remarks the Commission Chairman, Mr. Stephen Kirogo noted that the service had not performed to the expected standards in various areas as confirmed by increased complaints from service seekers.

Notable areas included discipline and pension matters and ethical conduct of public officers. He emphasized that the Commission was keen to restore the culture of performance management through effective supervision of staff and consistent and timely appraisal process.

Mr. Kirogo stressed that the Commission’s rallying call for improved performance was “Reform, Perform and Transform” and singled out the HR directors and their deputies as key drivers of the transformation agenda.

He termed them as the front office for the Commission and the nerve centre of service delivery, urging them to remain professional and humane while discharging their duties in accordance with the laid down regulations, policies and guidelines.

The Chairman was optimistic that close partnership with the Heads of Human Resource will help the Commission realize a productive and highly performing public service.

 

“Transforming the public service would be realized through a change of mindset, leveraging on ICT, indoctrinating the service on public service ethos and ensuring common standards and norms” said Kirogo.

He reiterated that to serve in the public service was a privilege and the first priority for any public officer was to provide quality service to the citizen. He therefore called on public officers to stop the culture of lamentation and giving excuses but instead move from their comfort zones, embrace attitudinal change and serve with humility.

Some of the main issues that emerged from the workshop included, the need to provide a platform for officers to continuously learn the ethos of public service; ensure that public service is fit for purpose; and the need to re-engineer performance management in order to instill a culture of performance and productivity and develop a national performance management framework.

Further, there was need to develop innovative modules for training and skills development and link training to the country’s development goals; need to introduce competency based training that is geared towards improved performance and productivity; and need to review and improve the character of the public service to make it credible, trustworthy and responsive to the needs of Kenyans.

Other issues that emerged were the need to develop a career management system that is based on performance; need for officers to be proactive, analytical and self-motivated to deliver quality services; need to put citizens at the centre of public service delivery; and the need to upgrade GHRIS bandwidth to make it efficient and effective.

In his closing remarks the chairman thanked the participants for attending and actively engaging during the workshop. He called for close collaboration with Heads of HRM and urged them to ensure a moral and ethical public service.

He assured the participants that the Commission will: forge a close working relationship with them as key agents of the Commission, and develop a performance monitoring framework that will lay emphasis on performance and productivity.