Public sector units must focus on building employee skills. Their quality of service delivery must match the best that the private sector is capable of.

Having worked for nearly 25 years in the private sector, I have witnessed how swiftly we could react to changes in the environment and maintain market leadership position. I now have taken on an advisory role in a public sector enterprise and am faced with the challenge of readying the organisation to take on greater competition, especially against the emerging private sector in the industry we operate in. What are some of the issues I need to be aware of in the PSU domain and how to address them?

Neel Rattan answers:

The forces of globalisation and liberalisation and the consequent changes in the economic environment have created new challenges for government departments and public sector enterprises the world over.

The public expects government services to be comparable with the best services available from the private sector in terms of quality, accuracy, timeliness and user-friendliness. Clients no longer tolerate delays, bureaucratic mistakes or excessively time-consuming and difficult procedures.

To fulfill ever increasing service delivery expectation, it is becoming imperative for and public sector institutions to build capacities of their workforce to effectively provide services. It is equally important to generate an attitude that is receptive to technology-based delivery of services.

To address the capacity building challenges of government and public sector institutions, you must encourage managers to adopt a strategic approach that embeds individual staff skills development in their approach to organisational development.

Managers need to assess and provide the specific skills that are needed to achieve continuous improvement of services, enhance the general capability of staff at all levels and develop local and regional partnership approaches to skills development.

Skills that managers and the workforce need to develop or acquire to ensure they are able to achieve continuously improving, efficient services include:

• Organisational development and change management
• Business process redesign and analysis
• Performance, productivity and people management
• Customer relations management
• Project and financial management
• Client management
• Partnership working and community engagement.
• Maximising use of technology.

The next challenge you will face is of high-quality staff to cope with the demand for changing, high-quality services. To address this you need to use workforce planning and effective people management techniques to harmonise the supply of high-quality staff with the demand for higher quality services.

The author is Executive Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers.