Young Officers Are Most Important Asset In Organisation - Singapore Civil Service Chief

PUTRAJAYA, Dec 2 (Bernama) -- A leader who does not spend up to 30 per cent of his time on mentoring, developing and nurturing younger officers is not doing justice to the most important asset in an organisation. This, according to Singapore's Head of Civil Service Peter Ong, is his rule of thumb. He said leaders were identified among the island republic's public officers, based on the assessment of their potential and appraising their performance at all stages in their careers. "In Singapore, we are using a system where we identify the Current Estimated Potential or the estimated grade that an officer is deemed to be able to reach at the point of retirement. "This system allows us to identify those officers whom we believe have the potential to fulfill senior positions early on in their career, so as to give us sufficient opportunity to plan for their development. "The importance of the public service will be more significant if the population is much bigger and has a complex system of administration, such as Malaysia. "Certainly, some of our experiences in our city state would not be directly transferable to the Malaysian context of federal, state and local government systems," he noted. Ong was speaking at a lecture, 'Building an Adaptive Public Service', at the Chief Secretary Forum here. The forum is an annual lecture organised by the Razak School of Government for heads of civil service from other countries to share experiences in leading and serving their respective countries. Also present was Malaysia's Chief Secretary to the Government Mohd Sidek Hassan and Razak School of Government Chief Executive Officer Dr Hamidin Abd Hamid. Ong said, there was an urgent need in public service to groom current and future generations of leaders. “A strong and effective public service requires strong and effective leadership. However, in this new era of complexity and uncertainty, the role of leaders at all levels within the public service becomes even more crucial,” he said. As such, he said, the Singapore Public Service promoted developmental relationships and created opportunities for senior public service leaders to mentor or coach junior public service leaders. -- BERNAMA