| ddrumstick
Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 5,721 Gender:  Zodiac Sign:  Country:  Location: Singapore
SGC$: 86.43
Bank: 722.71
Total SGC$: 809.15 |  WHY STAY
As global fight for talent intensifies, what can Govt do to keep & attract the best?
IF you're not being paid what you're worth, would you stick around at your current job?
Would you still stay put if, on top of that, a potential employer offered you $20 million - or about six times your current salary - for a mere three years' work?
Few people would. But top civil servant Philip Yeo did.
Last night, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong revealed the benchmarks against which senior civil servants' pay are matched at the Administrative Service Dinner.
Top officers, such as Mr Yeo, should have received $2.2 million last year. Instead, they received $1.2 million.
This is because top earners in the civil service have had their pay frozen since 2000, while their counterparts in the private sector have seen their pay soar.
How does Singapore ensure that top guns like Mr Yeo stick around to plan, think and work for Singapore?
TOUGH CHALLENGE
It is a tougher challenge today because the race for talent is global. Even bright young Singaporeans, studying at the world's top universities, are being courted with offers from all over the world.
How can the Government gain and retain its share of talent?
One of the steps it has taken is to peg the pay of its top civil servants - those at Staff Grade 1 - to two-thirds of the median income of the eight top earners in six professions, including lawyers, accountants and engineers.
The pay is supposed to move in tandem with only a one- to two-year lag. With the 2001 recession and the 2003 Sars scare, however, the public sector pay was stalled.
Senior civil servants and ministers have taken two pay cuts - once in November 2001 and another in July 2003.
The cuts have since been restored, but now, with the economy booming, and the labour market at its tightest, the Government is likely to finally raise salaries to try and keep officers in the service.
Last night, at a dinner for the Administrative Service in Meritus Mandarin, PM Lee said: 'This is an urgent problem. We have experienced on previous occasions the painful consequences of responding too slowly when the private sector surged ahead.'
He recalled that in the early 1990s, the Admin Service lost 'entire cohorts of good officers'.
'We took many years to recover from the loss. This must not happen again,' he said.
But even as the Government seeks to narrow the salary gap, it recognises that there are other factors at play too.
The working environment is important, PM Lee said, challenging the public sector to match the best of private companies.
'Look at Google - an exciting and innovative organisation, with a distinctive and appealing culture. Rated by Fortune magazine as the best company to work for, Google receives 1,300 resumes a day.
'The public service must have the same cachet,' he said to a room full of men in dark suits and women in black gowns.
SENSE OF MISSION
The civil service should generate a sense of excitement and mission.
'Then, more young people will consider the public service seriously as a career option - a place where they can change Singapore for the better, a place they want to be.'
In the past, Singapore had followed and adapted best practices of other countries. But increasingly, it has been beating its own path.
PM Lee noted that the business of government is as 'entrepreneurial and demanding a mission as running any business'.
'The difference lies in what is at stake - not the financial investments of shareholders, but the lives and future of citizens. The business is about Singapore and it cannot fail.'
In the end, though, success may be less a matter of the mind than heart.
For example, Mr Philip Yeo, who is 60 this year, revealed in a speech last week when stepping down as chairman of A*Star that he had stayed in service because he wanted to finish what he had started in the area of life sciences.
He had first thought of leaving the public sector on his retirement from the Administrative Service in 1999.
ATTRACTIVE OFFER
'A Hong Kong friend, hearing of my retirement, flew to meet me in Boston on Aug 29, 1999. He invited me to be chairman of his Singapore-based holding company which owned his Hong Kong-listed company.
'His terms were attractive: $20million and share options at the issue price for three years' work,' he said.
Just when he was about to sign the contract, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, then Senior Minister, asked him to stay and carry on with his life sciences pursuits.
Mr Yeo said he stayed because he did not want to 'abandon' the EDB life sciences team.
So what makes civil servants stay is not just a matter of pay, but of being able to do what they feel passionately for.
PM Lee put it this way: 'The public service is not about maximising the profit of a firm. Public servants are guardians and stewards... We do not expect them to make unreasonable financial sacrifices to be in the public sector, but they must feel a sense of idealism, of duty and responsibility, and of a larger purpose.'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW TO KEEP THEM:
Inspire them: 'Good people want to work in good organisations... We need leaders who will give their team the confidence to operate in conditions of change and uncertainty, and to find opportunity in every challenge.'
Challenge them: 'Young people joining the service must be given opportunities to learn new skills and be assigned responsibilities that challenge and stretch them.'
Reward them: 'We are reviewing job grades in the Administrative Service. This is both to be fair to the officers themselves, and also to signal to the entire service that if you do well, your efforts will be rewarded.'
- PM LEE |
Linear Mode
