Question – Analyze that ethos, ethics, equity and efficiency are the main criteria for assessing the working efficiency of civil servants. – 4 April
Answer –
Competencies are a set of inherent characteristics such as motivation, qualities, skills, aspect of a person’s social image, social role or knowledge accumulation in an employee, which can result in effective and excellent performance in a job or their role.The performance capabilities of a civil servant can be analyzed based on the following criteria:
Ethos:
- People First: Passion for serving people with special care for the marginalized and disadvantaged. Being approachable, welcoming, caring and rising above bias while interacting with people. Understands the needs of the people and constantly strives to improve the services.
- Strategic Thinking: Ability to understand dynamic internal and external environment and its impact. Responds to the opportunities and challenges for the betterment of society.
- Organizational Awareness: Understanding of the organization’s mandate, structure, policies, processes, norms and its interface with other organizations. It also includes an understanding of the organization’s informal structures, power dynamics and constraints.
- Commitment to the organization: Aligns behaviors and interests with the needs and goals of the organizations.
- Leading Others: Ability to engage, energies, and enable the team to excel.
Ethics:
- Integrity: Consistently behaves in an open, fair, and transparent manner; honors one’s commitments; and works to uphold the Public Service Values.
- Self-Confidence: Belief in own capability to accomplish a task and being able to express confidence in dealing with challenging circumstances, without being arrogant or boastful.
- Attention to Detail: Having an underlying drive to being thorough and meticulous and to comply with procedures, rules, guidelines, and standards. Digs deeper and strives to reduce uncertainties and errors.
- Taking Accountability: Takes ownership for outcomes (successes or failures) while addressing performance issues fairly and promptly.
Equity:
- Consultation and Consensus Building: Ability to identify the stakeholders and influencers, seek their views and concerns through formal and informal channels. Build consensus through dialogue, persuasion, reconciliation of diverse views/interests and trusting relationships.
- Decision Making: Makes timely decisions that take into account relevant facts, tasks, goals, constraints, risks and conflicting points of view.
- Empathy: Empathy is about being able to accurately hear out and understand the thoughts, feelings and concerns of others, even when these are not made explicit.
- Delegation: Delegates responsibility with the appropriate level of autonomy so that others are free to innovate and take the lead.
Efficiency:
- Result Orientation: High Drive for achieving targets and competing against a standard of excellence.
- Conceptual Thinking: Understanding a situation or environment by putting the pieces together and identifying patterns that may not be obviously related. Connecting the dots while resisting stereotyping.
- Initiative and Drive: Contributing more than what is expected in the job, refusing to give up when faced with challenges, and finding or creating new opportunities.
- Seeking Information: An underlying curiosity to know more about things, people, or issues. This includes ‘digging’ for exact information and keeping up-to-date with relevant knowledge.
- Planning and Coordination: Ability to plan, organize and monitor work with effective utilization of resources such as time, money, and people.
- Desire for Knowledge: Keeps up-to-date with relevant knowledge and technology, shares latest developments with others, and advocates the application of acquired knowledge.
- Innovative Thinking: Open to change, approaches issues differently, offers alternate/out of the box solutions and strives for efficiency by working smartly.
- Problem Solving: Understanding a situation by breaking it into smaller parts, organizing information systematically, and setting priorities.
- Developing Others: Genuinely believes in others’ capabilities to develop and takes personal responsibility for their development. Creates a positive environment for learning and provides developmental opportunities for individuals and teams.
- Self-Awareness and Self Control: Identifies one’s own emotional triggers and controls one’s emotional responses. Maintains a sense of professionalism and emotional restraint when provoked, faced with hostility or working under increased stress. It includes resilience and stamina despite prolonged adversities.
