Only 15 per cent of staff in the Civil Service believe that poor performance is being tackled, according to a major new survey of personnel.
The 2017 Civil Service employment engagement survey, which was published on Wednesday, found that almost 60 per cent of civil servants maintained that poor performance was not being effectively addressed in their department.
Those aged between 30 – 34 years of age had significantly more positive views with regard to the management of performance in the Civil Service.
Over 21,300 Civil Service personnel or 56 per cent of the total participated in the survey.
Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe, who launched the survey findings, said overall they showed an improvement in 22 out of the 24 areas assessed which he said was both "positive and encouraging".
The study said a key aim survey was to measure levels of engagement.
It said that engagement levels across the civil service continued to be high (at 72 per cent) and showed that civil servants have a strong sense of connection with their work. Staff also believed that their work had value, meaning and purpose.
The survey found that civil servants continued to feel more positive about their own work and areas over which they had individual control.
However the study also found that although staff were increasingly aware of the impact of their work on the general public, despite some improvement, they believed that this contribution was not valued by the wider public.
“There is evidence of a disparity in relation to the extent to which civil servants feel that their work has an impact on the public and their perception of the value placed by the public on their work. This challenging finding is also in stark contrast to the results of the Civil Service Customer Service Survey 2017 and previous iterations, which consistently showed that citizens are satisfied with the Civil Service.”
Equal value
Mr Donohoe said there was a very complex dichotomy between the survey findings and the results of the customer service studies.
“The report says civil servants who perform their work feel their work is of value. They then feel the public at large does not place equal value on it. But when we then ask the public what they think of the value of work carried out by civil servants, by and large we get a good response.
“The reason why I think there is a contradiction that we have to unpick is that for many of our citizens the individual experience they have in engaging with our services can be quite good, but at time the general perception of how these services perform is not good.
"What we have to do is either in public life and also for our public servants to work with everyone to explain the quality of work that goes on in our Civil Service. That is why the recent documentary on RTÉ on the work of the Department of Foreign Affairs is good. I think the series of programmes involving the HSE on what happens in our hospitals is good and even the recent book on the history of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform – although that is more academic – is all part of the different things we need to do to explain to people about the work that happens."
Asked about the findings on the management of poor performance, the Minster replied the survey showed “that those who work in our Civil Service feel as strongly about poor performance as those who depend on the Civil Service”.
He added: “That is why the changes we have made in relation to the PMDS (performance management development system) and how we evaluate the performance of our civil servants is important and we are going to keep at that type of work.”
