How to attract and hold the best persons employed in the civil service, was the topic of the Third regional workshop on public administration reform in the area of human resources management in west Balkans, which was held on November 4 and 5 this year in Zagreb.  

Civil service can be attractive with application of an adequate manner of hiring newly employed, and elimination of political and family ties, which is sometimes a decisive factor on the occasion of reception of newly employed. This was a standpoint of civil servants from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania who attended the conference.

The Civil Service Agency of BiH, and the Central State Office for Administration of the Republic of Croatia are trying to improve the work of the commissions for reception of new civil servants. The Government of the Republic of Macedonia identified the problem of keeping the young employees, so in 2007, they issued a special document which was targeted to deal with these problems: “Policy of Attraction and Keeping the Young and Highly Educated Employees in the Civil Service”. Service for Human Resources Management in the Republic of Serbia introduced as obligatory the competency framework which is being applied when selecting new employees. The Service has seven psychologists, who are specialised for different segments of human resources management.

Researches of Prof Ivana Koprića, PhD, expert in public administration reform from Croatia have shown that advantage of work in civil service for 58 % of the questioned was security of employment, for 28 % it was a regular salary, and for 8 % it was a professional development.

Organisers of the conference, which was attended by the representative of the Public Administration Reform Coordinator’s Office in BiH as well, were the Community of Practitioners for Human Resources Management in the west Balkans and the Central State Office for Administration of the Republic of Croatia.