Course Module

in
PUBLIC
PERSONNEL
ADMINISTRATION

Compiled by:

MELCHOR P. DIOSO, MPA

The compiler does not own any of the contents of this learning module. Due credits
and acknowledgment are given to the authors, internet sources, and researchers
listed on the reference page. Such sources are reserved to further explain concepts
and cannot be credited to the compiler and the school. All diagrams, charts, and
images are used for educational purposes only. The sole objective of this
instructional material is to facilitate independent learning and not for monetary
gains because this is NOT FOR SALE.

2021 Revision
 PREFACE

The primary purpose of this course module is to assist future public

servants on the importance of studying human resource or public personnel
administration in the government service.

Public Personnel Administration as one of the core subjects of Public

Administration focuses on the management of all agency's human resources in
a manner that assures the best output with the least costly input, while
protecting and enhancing the welfare of the workers.

With the emergence of democratic institutions and the welfare state,

government as well as corporates’ tasks are on a steep increase and so there is
an increased demand for personnel at every level in terms of efficient discharge
of their duties, and it is the job of the Public Personnel Administration
department to assure that this demand is met at the right time with the
suitable candidates.

- Mr. Dioso
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LESSONS PAGE NO.

Overview on Personnel Administration 13
The Aims of Public Personnel Administration 13
The Philippine Government 14
Executive Department 15
Legislative Department 15
Judiciary Department 16
The Civil Service Commission 17
Career Service 17
Non-Career Service 19
Public vs. Private Personnel Administration 20

Recruitment, Selection, and Placement 21

Recruitment 21
Selection 25
Appointment/Hiring 28
Promotion 29
Demotion 30
Separation/Termination of Employment 30

Employee and Career Development 33

Methods of Employee Development 33
New Employee Orientation 34
Training Programs 35
Training Needs 36
Methods of Training 37
Evaluation of Training 38

Performance Appraisal 39
Performance Appraisal in The Organization 39
Formal and Informal Appraisals 40
Most Common Methods of Performance Appraisals 41
Rewards and Recognition 42

Employee Benefits and Compensation 44

Common Employee Compensation Package 45
Employee Compensation 45
Benefits and Motivation
Reasons for Granting Benefits 47
Other Benefits 47
Voluntary Benefits 49
Salary Standardization Law 49

Complaints and Grievance 53

Complaints and Grievances: An Overview 53
Common Grievance Conditions 54
Nature of Grievances 54
Causes of Grievances 56
Classification of Grievances 57
Common Grievance Procedures 58

Public Conduct and Ethics 60

Norms of Conduct of Public Officials and Employees 60
Prohibited Acts and Transactions 61

References 64
 Introduction to Personnel
Lesson 1
Administration

TOPICS

• Overview of the Public Personnel Administration

• The Aims of Public Personnel Administration
• The Philippine Government
o Executive Department
o Legislative Department
o Judiciary Department
• The Civil Service Commission
o Career Service
o Non-Career Service
• Public vs. Private Personnel Administration

LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:

✓ Be familiarized with the Public Personnel Management in

general, including its nature and aims;
✓ Determine the equal branches of the government;
✓ Determine the role of the Civil Service Commission in public
personnel administration; and
✓ Identify the differences between public and private personnel
administration.

OVERVIEW OF THE PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION

Throughout the world, Public Personnel Management (also known as

human resource management, HRM, or human capital management) is widely
recognized as essential for effective government. Increasingly, as we come to
view the shared role of governments, private corporations, and international
development organizations (governance) as the key to sustainable
development, we recognize that, throughout the world, human resources are
potentially available yet, in practice, wasted. Interrelated global conditions—
economic, political, social, and environmental—define the new millennium.

Personnel administration is the totality of concern with human

resources of an organization. This concern consists of the act of selecting new
employees and of utilizing the earlier employed to gain the maximum of quality
and quantity in output and services from the working force.
According to Evar Louie H Magamay,
personnel is always the most important asset being
the core and the backbone of any organization. The
success of bureaucracy mainly relies on its very
important asset. People would always be vital for any
organization to function, mostly in the government
where selfless service is an essential attribute and
dedication to duty is an utmost requirement. As
William Mosher and J. Donald Kingsley said, “the
key to better governance lies in effective personnel
management”.

The Aims of Public Personnel Administration

Public personnel administration, otherwise known as the human
resources management, generally aims to study about how manpower is
managed in an organization. Specifically, it aims to study the following:
1. Recruiting, selecting, and advancing employees on the basis of their
relative ability, knowledge and skills;
2. Equitable and adequate compensation;
3. Training employees as needed to assure high quality performance;
4. Retaining employees on the basis of the adequacy of their
performance, correcting inadequate performance, and separating
employees, whose poor performance cannot be corrected;
5. Assuring fair treatment of applicants and employees in all aspects of
personnel administration without regard to political affiliation, race,
color, national origin, sex or religious creed; and
6. Assuring that employees are protected against coercion for partisan
political purposes and are prohibited from using their official
authority for the purpose of interfering with an election.

THE PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT

One basic corollary in a presidential system of government is the principle
of separation of powers wherein legislation belongs to Congress, execution to
the Executive, and settlement of legal controversies to the Judiciary.

• The Legislative branch is authorized to make laws, alter, and repeal

them through the power vested in the Philippine Congress. This
institution is divided into the Senate and the House of Representatives.
 • The Executive branch carries out laws. It is composed of the President
and the Vice President who are elected by direct popular vote and serve
a term of six years. The Constitution grants the President authority to
appoint his Cabinet. These departments form a large portion of the
country’s bureaucracy.

• The Judicial branch evaluates laws. It holds the power to settle

controversies involving rights that are legally demandable and
enforceable. This branch determines whether or not there has been a
grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on
the part and instrumentality of the government. It is made up of a
Supreme Court and lower courts.

Each branch of government can change acts of the other branches as follows:

• The President can veto laws passed by Congress.

• Congress confirms or rejects the President's appointments and can
remove the President from office in exceptional circumstances.
• The Justices of the Supreme Court, who can overturn unconstitutional
laws, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

The Philippine government seeks to act in the best interests of its citizens
through this system of checks and balances.

The Constitution expressly grants the Supreme Court the power of Judicial
Review as the power to declare a treaty, international or executive agreement,
law, presidential decree, proclamation, order, instruction, ordinance or
regulation unconstitutional.
 Legislative Department

The Legislative Branch enacts legislation, confirms or rejects

Presidential appointments, and has the authority to declare war. This branch
includes Congress (the Senate and House of Representatives) and several
agencies that provide support services to Congress.

• Senate – The Senate shall be composed of twenty-four Senators who

shall be elected at large by the qualified voters of the Philippines, as
may be provided by law.

• House of Representatives – The House of Representatives shall be

composed of not more than two hundred and fifty members, unless
otherwise fixed by law, who shall be elected from legislative districts
apportioned among the provinces, cities, and the Metropolitan Manila
area in accordance with the number of their respective inhabitants, and
on the basis of a uniform and progressive ratio, and those who, as
provided by law, shall be elected through a party-list system of
registered national, regional, and sectoral parties or organizations.

• The party-list representatives shall constitute twenty per cent of the

total number of representatives including those under the party list. For
three consecutive terms after the ratification of this Constitution, one-
half of the seats allocated to party-list representatives shall be filled, as
provided by law, by selection or election from the labor, peasant, urban
poor, indigenous cultural communities, women, youth, and such other
sectors as may be provided by law, except the religious sector.

Executive Department

The executive branch carries out and enforces laws. It includes the
President, Vice President, the Cabinet, executive departments, independent
agencies, and other boards, commissions, and committees.

Key roles of the executive branch include:

• President – The President leads the country. He/she is the head of state,
leader of the national government, and Commander in Chief of all armed
forces of the Philippines. The President serves a six-year term and
cannot be re-elected.

• Vice President – The Vice President supports the President. If the

President is unable to serve, the Vice President becomes President.
He/she serves a six-year term.

• The Cabinet – Cabinet members serve as advisors to the President. They

include the Vice President and the heads of executive departments.
 Cabinet members are nominated by the President and must be
confirmed by the Commission of Appointments.

Judicial Department

The judicial branch interprets the meaning of laws, applies laws to

individual cases, and decides if laws violate the Constitution. The judicial
power shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such lower courts as may
be established by law.

Judicial power includes the duty of the courts of justice to settle actual
controversies involving rights which are legally demandable and enforceable,
and to determine whether or not there has been a grave abuse of discretion
amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of any branch or
instrumentality of the Government. The judicial branch interprets the
meaning of laws, applies laws to individual cases, and decides if laws violate
the Constitution.

THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION

The Civil Service Commission was conferred the status of a department

by Republic Act No. 2260 as amended and elevated to a constitutional body by
the 1973 Constitution. With the new Administrative Code of 1987 (EO 292),
the Commission is constitutionally mandated to promote morale, efficiency,
integrity, responsiveness, progressiveness, and courtesy in the Civil Service.

The Civil Service Commission is one of the three independent

constitutional commissions (Civil Service Commission, the Commission on
Elections, and the Commission on Audit) with adjudicate responsibility in the
national government structure created by the 1987 Constitution of the
Republic of the Philippines.

As the central personnel agency of the Philippine government, "it is

chiefly responsible for the recruitment, building, maintenance and retention of
a competent, professional and highly motivated government workforce truly
responsive to the needs of the Filipino people.”

Career Service. The Career Service is characterized by:

1. Entrance based on merit and fitness determined as far as practicable

by competitive examination, or based on highly technical
qualifications;
2. Opportunity for advancement to higher positions; and
3. Security of tenure.
The Career Service shall include:

a. Open Career positions for appointment to which prior qualification

in an appropriate examination is required;
b. Closed Career positions which are scientific, or highly technical in
nature; these include the faculty and academic staff of state colleges
and universities, and scientific and technical positions in scientific or
research institutions which shall establish and maintain their own
merit systems;
c. Positions in the Career Executive Service; namely, Undersecretary,
Assistant Secretary, Bureau Director, Assistant Bureau Director,
Regional Director, Assistant Regional Director, Chief of Department
Service and other officers of equivalent rank as may be identified by
the Career Executive Service Board, all of whom are appointed by
the President;
d. Career officers, other than those in the Career Executive Service,
who are appointed by the President, such as the Foreign Service
Officers in the Department of Foreign Affairs;
e. Commissioned officers and enlisted men of the Armed Forces which
shall maintain a separate merit system;
f. Personnel of government-owned or controlled corporations, whether
performing governmental or proprietary functions, who do not fall
under the non-career service; and
g. Permanent laborers, whether skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled.

Classes of Positions in the Career Service.

a. Classes of positions in the career service appointment to which

requires examinations shall be grouped into three major levels as
follows:

i. The first level shall include clerical, trades, crafts, and

custodial service positions which involve non-professional or
subprofessional work in a non-supervisory or supervisory
capacity requiring less than four years of collegiate studies;
ii. The second level shall include professional, technical, and
scientific positions which involve professional, technical, or
scientific work in a non-supervisory or supervisory capacity
requiring at least four years of college work up to Division
Chief level; and
iii. The third level shall cover positions in the Career Executive
Service.

b. Except as herein otherwise provided, entrance to the first two levels

shall be through competitive examinations, which shall be open to
those inside and outside the service who meet the minimum
qualification requirements. Entrance to a higher level does not
require previous qualification in the lower level. Entrance to the
third level shall be prescribed by the Career Executive Service Board.
c. Within the same level, no civil service examination shall be required
for promotion to a higher position in one or more related occupational
groups. A candidate for promotion should, however, have previously
passed the examination for that level.
Non-Career Service. The Non-Career Service shall be characterized by:

1. Entrance on bases other than those of the usual tests of merit and
fitness utilized for the career service; and
2. Tenure which is limited to a period specified by law, or which is
coterminous with that of the appointing authority or subject to his
pleasure, or which is limited to the duration of a particular project
for which purpose employment was made.

The Non-Career Service shall include:

a. Elective officials and their personal or confidential staff;

b. Secretaries and other officials of Cabinet rank who hold their
positions at the pleasure of the President and their personal or
confidential staff(s);
c. Chairman and members of commissions and boards with fixed terms
of office and their personal or confidential staff;
d. Contractual personnel or those whose employment in the
government is in accordance with a special contract to undertake a
specific work or job, requiring special or technical skills not available
in the employing agency, to be accomplished within a specific period,
which in no case shall exceed one year, and performs or accomplishes
the specific work or job, under his own responsibility with a
minimum of direction and supervision from the hiring agency; and
e. Emergency and seasonal personnel.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE SECTOR PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION

Public and private sector personnel administration have much in

common. For instance, the technical processes used for selecting, interviewing,
evaluating, and training employees can be the same in both public and private
organizations. However, the administration of personnel in the public sector
differs from that in the private sector in four important ways:

1. Public employees operate in a different legal environment, especially

concerning discipline and termination.
2. Lines of authority are less clear in the private sector since in the
government service, specific duties and responsibilities or each
personnel is carefully formulated.
3. Employer-employee relations have followed different paths.
4. The political environment affects public personnel to a greater extent
than it does in the private sector.