Encarnacion, Monique Angelica P.

2014-32389 PA 122 Reflection Paper #1

August 25, 2016

Lingkod ng Bayan, Anong Ganap?: An Overview to the Status of the

Philippine Civil Service
The article is about an assessment of the state of the Human Resource
Management in the public service. This was lead and done by the Civil Service
Commission to fulfill their mandate as the central personnel agency of the Philippine
government - to provide an overall picture of HRM in the public service; to
check the HRM practices of the government agencies and their conformity with the
policies and standards of the Civil Service; to measure the competency levels of the
governments Human Resource Management Officers (HRMOs) and satisfaction
levels of government employees in terms of HR systems of their respective
agencies; to evaluate the commissions performance in policy-implementation and
service delivery; to determine HR challenges in the public sector and how they
should be addressed; and to gather the best HRM practices in the civil service. Even
though the government agencies fairly met the standards and the basic policies, it
was recommended that they still have to vision in improving their internal rules and
their own HR systems and programs, highlighting the importance of coaching,
mentoring learning and development. The assessment shows low percentages of
agency compliance with Civil Service policies and standards in performance review
and coaching, employees competencies assessment and identification of
development needs, career development, evaluation of learning and development
programs, and the implementation of policies on grievance machinery and PRAISE.
On the other hand, respondents see the agency HRMOs at the Advanced level of
competency in Human Resources. This must be maintained or better yet be more
improved as the CSC is aiming to be the Asias leading center of excellence in the
public personnel administration by the year 2030. Through these anticipations, it
will eventually meet a higher employee satisfaction that will transcend into a better
public service delivery to the constituents.
Based from the given data, the most number of agencies surveyed comes
from the local government units, which is not surprising since our country is an
archipelago and it constitutes a number of subdivided governments. However, the
biggest employers among the government agencies are the National Government
Agencies, having the most number of filled career positions.
In terms of the career service employees based from the level, it is true that
it isnt anymore represented as a pyramid, having the highest number of employees
at the first level while having the least number of employees at the third level. Even
though it is still applicable for the LGUs, other government agencies have the most
number of employees at the second level, followed by the first level and lastly, the
third level. In my opinion, the reason why LGUs still have that pyramid model is
because their offices need lots of employees that will function as the administrative
support. By just going to the nearest municipal halls, barangay halls or city halls,
you will see that there are many employees in the civil registry and cashiers than of
the professional or technical employees in the planning and development division

for instance. There is no doubt that the least number of employees in the LGUs are
from the third level, having the executive and managerial functions. They are
mostly found in the core and special departments of the LG office. Their knowledge
and skills are much needed to capacitate good working conditions and effective
government service to their constituents.
When it comes to the non-career employees by sex, males tend to dominate
than of females. I believe that it is because most non-career positions being
occupied requires physical activities that are believed to be more fit in physiological
aspects of men than of women. However, females tend to dominate career positions
in the government because we consider the gender distribution that there are more
females than males. For instance, the male-female ratio in Western Visayas region is
said to be 80: 100 as of 2014, according to Dr. Darius Salaum in one of our lectures
in his Soc Sci 1 class in UP Visayas (personal communication, 2015).
If we are to see the political world, the assessment shows that it is maledominated, having 81.5% compared to women which constitutes 18.5% of the total
number of political officials in the country. Why is there a huge gap between the
number of male politicians and the female ones? Is patriarchy still prevalent in the
modern society? I believe that it has to do with the politics of personality. The
branding of male politicians is more strategic than of the females; and we consider
the fact that men have an effective way of convincing people through their
charisma. The machismo culture adds to such factors thats why I think there are
more men in the political scene than women.
More than 82% of the surveyed employees stated that their agencys policies
on recruitment, selection and promotion are based on merit and fitness, the
Promotion and Selection Board has clear screening criteria and procedures, the
decision of the PSB are uniformed and consistent, and the appointing authority
selects qualified candidates to career positions from among the top 5 ranking
candidates evaluated by the PSB. This is a good indicator that government
agencies across the country truly want to standardize the quality of work through
pooling the potential public service employees and filtering them in order to have
the best and most qualified in the government post. On the other hand, there are
still some offices that malpractice this at some point. Theres this anecdote of a
public school teacher who asked a certain mayor from a municipality in Antique
province to give a recommendation to her so that the division director of the public
elementary schools at their area will know that the she, aspiring for a higher
position, will get promoted. Little did she know, that even though the mayor signed
the memo, there are slight chances of her getting promoted since the mayor didnt
place a symbol that only him and the Dep Ed division director would only know that the mayor did really favor someone for a higher position for that post (J.C. Ponan, personal communication, March 2015).
75% claimed that there is an accredited employees association and 70%
validated that there is an existing Collective Negotiating Agreement between the
Management and the accredited union. 64% of the total number of respondents
stated that their agency encourages dialogues between officials and employees. For
me, these figures are already good because we know that agencies must also
consider the welfare of employees in their offices. However, based from the
satisfaction level of employees, there are respondents who are Very Dissatisfied in

the area of Agency Support to Employee Unions Activities. I may not know the
reason behind but in my opinion, there is a conflict in the interest of the employees
or the union itself and with the agencies in which they belong to. However, these
agencies must take into account the essence of these employees as they are the
ones running the bureaucracy. If their basic concerns cannot be addressed by the
agency, how will they become motivated to be productive if their working conditions
in the first place are being ignored?
As for the conclusion, I would like to commend the CSC for putting their
efforts into making this assessment possible and transparent to the citizens, like
me. This only shows that this constitutional commission is determined to build high
calibrated civil servants that will set high standards in the public service. More
importantly, this assessment will help the participating agencies to locate their
strengths, in order for them to be empowered; and their weaknesses, in order for
them to be improved. Lastly, this assessment helps to remove the negative
connotation to the bureaucracy as something that is entailed with corruption, red
tape and politicizing; and rather seen as something that is service oriented.

Reference:
Civil Service Commission. (n.d.). CSC 2012 State of HR in Civil Service.
Retrieved from
https://www.dropbox.com/s/y4f5kcxkqm2uhns/CSC
%202012%20StateHRinCivilService.pdf?dl=0