Thursday 26 / December / 2024
MUSCAT: The appraisal system for public sector employees, now in the second year of running, has borne fruit with the Ministry of Labour declaring 17,000 government employees eligible for monetary benefits after achieving excellent grades in Ejada system
Rolled out by the Ministry of Labour (MoL) in January 2022, the Individual Performance Measurement and Institutional Proficiency System, also known as Ejada, covers more than 175,000 employees in 57 units of the state administrative apparatus.
Speaking to to Al Shabiba Radio, Mohammed bin Al Waleed Al Hinai, Director of the Ejada System Project at the labour ministry, said, “The system has been one of the key projects in line with Oman Vision 2040, and it aims to improve the quality of services provided to citizens, enhance the community’s confidence in government performance, in addition to clarifying the employee’s duties and responsibilities. Following the completion of the first year, our first results found 17,000 employees with excellent grades. They will be awarded with a bonus of half of their basic salary for their excellent performance.”
Ejada is helping units to complete their annual operational plans, enhancing employee affiliation with the unit, and maintaining competencies.
The system is further enhancing the return on investment for human capital. It is also evaluating the performance of employees, defining their tasks clearly, and establishing harmony between the organisation’s plan and the employee’s plan.
Furthermore, the system enhances the level of transparency in employees’ distribution of tasks as well linking the entitlement of incentives and rewards to the level of productivity.
Al Hinai said that the Ejada system combines three projects in one to measure ‘individual performance, annual plans, and institutional proficiency’.
“It is a system for human capital governance, improving performance evaluation systems and linking productivity with incentives,” he said.
Al Hinai said:“The cycle of the individual performance measurement system and institutional proficiency has to go through several stages, namely: Determining the annual goals of the unit or institution, setting goals for employees, direct supervision by managers, reviewing the results of the end-of-year evaluation for all employees and determining the employee’s rank, approving and publishing the results of performance evaluation.”
He said the new system will not punish underperforming employees but will work to raise their efficiency, develop their capabilities, and addressthe challenges facing them.
Various measures were taken to implement Ejada and among them were preparing hundreds of trainers for building job plans in government institutions to achieve the goals of the system and raising the performance of employees.
Over 2,500 training workshops have been organised, benefiting more than 130,000 employees.
As for measuring institutional proficiency, the criteria are leadership, strategic planning, human capital, institutional culture, partnership, resources, innovation, customer satisfaction,governance, environment, and society. Many factors are taken into account and those include job satisfaction survey, beneficiary satisfaction assessment platform and reports of other government units.
Talal bin Abdullah Al Balushi, Head of the Training and Change Management Team at Ejada said:“The feedback on Ejada has been positive. There has been a change and a qualitative shift at the government level on how to evaluate the performance of employees. The announcement of cash awards comes in the context of providing incentives and drawing attention of other employees to pay more attention to the appraisal system.”
Al Hinai said: The 17,000 employees eligible for financial awards are 10 percent of the employees in the Ejada system. To have 10 percent qualify for the awards is good progress after a year. This is bound to increase in the times ahead as work culture and environment in the government sector will get better and better.”
He added: “At the end of each year, the average performance of each employee is collected for all individual performance measurement courses specified in the government unit for evaluation.”
The top ministry official said: “At the end of 2022, 45 percent of the total government sector employees obtained a good rank based on their efforts throughout the year. The 45 percent of employees then went for further evaluation before the final 17,000 with excellent grades were shortlisted for financial awards.
Al Hinai added: “If an employee feels that there has been an unfair assessment, he could approach senior officials for clarification thus ensuring a good and transparent process. If the employee is still unsatisfied, he could approach the Administrative Court within 30 days of the announcement of results from the labour ministry.”
The appraisal system is also expected to determine promotions, bonuses and incentives for employees.
Ejada is expected to serve as a model for governance performance with the Ministry of Labour working tirelessly to invest optimally in the development of human capital in order to optimise the government performance.
