Head of the Nigerian Civil Service, Dr. Folosade Omolara Yemi Esan
At the Global Government Summit, civil service leaders cited employee benefits, smart incentives, digital technology and eliminating those who simply refuse to follow the program as keys to boosting government productivity. Matt Ross reports.
“Traditionally, productivity has been thought of as the result of work per unit of input, but in today's world, we don't want to think of productivity that way,” said Dr. Folosade Omolara Yemi-Esan, head of Nigeria's civil service. She argued for a more nuanced, people-centred approach to productivity. “Sometimes we ignore the welfare of our workers and focus only on the quantity of output, but we know that when we actually look after our workers, productivity increases.”
Yemi-Esan argued that by focusing on employees' “self-care, work-life balance and wise use of time,” the civil service can improve its ability to serve the public and boost employee recruitment, morale and retention. This challenge has been boosted by the shift to remote and flexible working during the pandemic, a key aspect of employee wellbeing. Creating a more engaged and flexible workforce will also help drive innovation and further increase productivity, she added.
Speaking at the Civil Service Productivity session at the 2024 Global Government Summit (where top civil service leaders from 16 countries gathered in Singapore for a frank and open discussion on the challenges they commonly face), Yemi Esan explained how the Nigerian civil service is encouraging its employees to be more productive and innovate. “We are serious about value proposition and incentivizing performance,” she said. The government is partnering with the private sector to provide perks such as endowments, land and low-interest mortgages to high-performing individuals. “If you can reward good performance, everyone in the ministry wants to be a star,” she commented.
Performance-based Rewards
Such performance-based pay caught the attention of Alex Chisholm, who was chief executive of the UK civil service at the time of the event but has since resigned. He said that in the UK “we try to incentivise people around the mission of the civil service, but we don't do much to pay people more for initiative and productivity. The more I think about it, the more I think this is something we've got wrong.”
“In other parts of the economy, people are encouraged to be more productive and to come up with ideas, but our pay doesn't really vary based on performance,” he added. “That may be why we're less productive.” It was then announced this summer that the UK government would introduce performance-related pay for senior civil servants.
Yemi Esan agreed: “The 'single pay' system encourages redundancies because people are paid even if they are not doing anything,” she said. “And there are many people who are doing very well but getting the same salary. I think we should shift to paying based on performance.”
Yemi-Esan said another key avenue for productivity growth is digital and data technologies. He particularly highlighted Nigeria's “One Government” initiative, which aims to “put all government services on one platform and ensure inter-agency collaboration.”
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Efficiency through technology
Here, Nigeria is following the well-trodden path blazed by its host country, Singapore. Traditionally, “ministry departments and agencies are organised by function, backed by legislative powers and reporting to ministers,” commented Singapore's civil servant chief Leo Yip. “But if we had the opportunity to redesign our organisation from a more people-centric perspective, we would probably do things quite differently.”
Singapore has restructured its services to be centered around the life events of its citizens, rather than around departmental structures. “When you redesign all the relevant services to be centered around life moments, you can expect efficiency gains,” says Yip. “That means not only increased productivity, but also increased effectiveness of service delivery.”
Yemi-Esan said alongside this challenge of service reform, artificial intelligence (AI) technology holds great potential to boost productivity. “This is an area that we should encourage all civil servants to consider,” he said. “We must encourage them to think outside the box and encourage a culture of innovation and problem-solving. I believe AI is the best way to achieve this.”
Adding artificial intelligence to human intelligence
Yemi-Esan's comments resonated with one of the representatives from EY, the event's knowledge partner, who shared several examples of how AI is improving productivity in government organizations. For example, in workforce development, AI systems are being developed that “learn how you learn and adapt training” to suit each individual's learning style. AI can also provide an interface that makes it easier to interact with government systems, allowing staff to complete procedures such as leave applications without having to stumble through unfamiliar IT systems.
An EY spokesperson added that these innovations can be deployed quickly and cost-effectively, significantly improving the operation and efficiency of underlying systems. “There has been a cultural shift in government since COVID,” they commented, noting that leaders are prioritizing small, practical, technology-led improvements that can be delivered in six to nine months. “We aim to get it deployed, make it work and achieve a payback in one to two years.”
Such small-scale digitization efforts pose less risk and change than previous reform programs, such as shared-services projects, that governments around the world have attempted, with only limited success. Indeed, EY representatives argued that by improving user interfaces and streamlining transactions, AI technologies can finally help these struggling institutions realize their potential.
“We are now at a tipping point for the delivery of shared services and other services in government powered by AI and generative AI,” they said. And as AI makes its presence felt in shared services, the technology could also help retrain staff freed up to work in other areas. “This is not a question of redundancies, it's a question of improved service delivery,” the EY commentator added. “How can we utilise these talents? Departments are looking at shifting talent towards customer service, planning and information management.”
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Stop carrying around unproductive stuff
But former UK Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell insisted that the reform programme would also involve job cuts, particularly if the civil service were to fire its worst performers and least productive staff. When the UK's coalition government came to power in 2010, he recalled, “The coalition government wanted massive redundancies. We ran a voluntary redundancy programme, got reasonable applications, and made sure we only accepted the worst performers.”
The approach “was not particularly popular,” he added, “but it did increase productivity substantially, and quite quickly.” Yemi-Esan agreed. During the pandemic, “about a third of civil servants were working from home, and the bare minimum of services was actually functioning more efficiently,” she recalled. “The consensus was that if a third of people were working from home and work was being done efficiently, we needed to look at productivity and staff numbers.”
There are significant obstacles to a widespread retrenchment programme. Yemi Esan cited government concerns about unemployment rates and the cost of retrenchment packages. But in Leo Yip's view, the civil service needs to do a better job of firing staff who prove unable to adapt to the changing requirements of life in the public sector. “We cannot continue with the approach we've had for decades, which is stability, continuity of employment and continuing to employ people who are no longer delivering and who cannot transition as roles and ways of working are restructured,” he said. “We are in the process of considering what that means specifically.”
Encourage innovation
To adapt its capabilities to today's challenges and opportunities, the civil service must invest heavily in retraining its staff and give them every opportunity to adapt to the new world of work. “We are reskilling and reequipping our staff,” says Yemi-Esan. “We also have a leadership development programme, where we are gradually training and mentoring civil servants to work as consultants.”
The training programmes themselves are built around a “cultural change management process” designed to change staff expectations and ambitions, she added, as civil servants “need to understand that the culture of the service is changing from a bureaucratic nature to a more agile and digital service”.
“We need to prepare for the explosion in technology and close the skills gap so civil servants can adapt to any situation,” Yemi Ehsan concluded. “Optimal productivity can only be achieved if we are flexible, creative and adaptable. Traditional approaches to productivity that focus on efficiency and cost reduction are no longer sufficient in today's world. Instead, civil servants must be willing to think outside the box, embrace change and experiment with new ways of doing things.”
The Global Government Summit is a private event that provides a safe space for civil service leaders to discuss common challenges. We are publishing these reports to share some of their thoughts with our readers. To ensure that participants can speak freely at the summit, we make sure they consent to being quoted before publishing their reports.
The 2024 summit will be covered in four reports covering the four daytime sessions.
– Dealing with today's crises and tomorrow's catastrophes
– Opportunities and risks of AI
– A modern approach to productivity
– Truly Diverse Civil Service Leadership
