Assessment of Singapore Public Servants is to place greater weight on skills and competencies, rather than academic qualifications, following a review of human resource (HR) systems and policies.
Minister-in-charge of the Public Service, Chan Chun Sing (pictured) said the Currently Estimated Potential (CEP) system now used to estimate the largest job responsibility level an officer could undertake during their career, would be overhauled.
“The CEP system was reviewed last year to support public sector transformation,” Mr Chan said.
“We concluded that while the CEP is still a useful tool to identify and develop officers with leadership potential, we need to adapt its application in a few ways,” he said.
Mr Chan gave as an example that leaders must have the cognitive ability but must also be able to build systems for the future, lead people well and have a good sense of the ground on which they were working.
“These qualities will be consistently observed through job rotations as well as through new channels such as 360 feedback,” he said.
The CEP itself will be used “more lightly in our HR decisions.”
Instead, greater weight would be placed on “assessing officers’ demonstrated skills and competencies as part of performance management, progression, and talent identification and management”.
Public Servants welcomed the refinements, and said they hoped it would usher in a more holistic and transparent assessment to help people move up the ladder.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because their employment barred them from speaking to the media without authorisation, officers said they hoped the changes would level the playing field between scholars [people with high-level academic qualifications] and non-scholars.
An Assistant Director said those with higher CEPs were often given more opportunities to shine.
“I have seen instances of under-performing scholars given greater opportunities by virtue of the fact that they have higher CEP, compared to those who are not scholars that have performed well,” they said.
While individual CEPs were “not set in stone”, they said it was “actually quite difficult for anyone’s CEP to be changed”.
Singapore, 9 October 2020
