Recruitment experts have criticised the centre of government for weakness in recruiting and managing talented senior civil servants, and welcomed proposals by the commissioner for public appointments to create a ‘centre of expertise’ in government which would support and encourage talented people to apply for public appointments.

Giving evidence to the public administration select committee last week, Peter Smith, director of public sector consulting at management consultancy the Hay Group, said departments have “done themselves no favours in separating themselves off from each other” – both in terms of recruiting for public appointments, and in recruiting and developing senior civil servants. There “needs to be some central role for managing talent and recruiting people,” he said.

Deborah Loudon, a consultant at headhunting firm Saxton Bampfylde, also said departments should do more to share expertise, and agreed that senior talent management and succession planning needs to be taken more seriously. She said it is “astonishing that the Cabinet Office has abolished a director general role effectively [dealing with] senior HR and talent management,” describing the decision not to fill a post which became vacant several months ago as “a great loss”.

Meanwhile, earlier this week the liaison committee – comprising select committee chairs and chaired by Sir Alan Beith (pictured above) – published a report calling for greater parliamentary involvement in the choice of key public appointments such as the information commissioner.

The report welcomed moves to give select committees a role in public appointments, but said that about a dozen top posts should “be effectively joint appointments between Parliament and the executive, confirmed by a vote of the House of Commons and with a parliamentary lock on dismissal”.

During its evidence session PASC also heard from Will Hutton, chair of the Work Foundation, who carried out a review of senior salaries in the public sector for the coalition government.

Hutton said he understands that the Treasury has asked departments to outline how they will implement his proposals. He added that he believes the Cabinet Office and the senior salaries review board “are going to really go to town this winter and spring to work on the earn-back idea”. Under this system, senior public sector staff would put a proportion of their salary at risk, only earning the full amount if they meet certain performance indicators.

Hutton said it is important to tie pay to performance, because “taken as a whole, we do not have a public sector that is sufficiently performance -oriented”.

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Written by CSW