Getting engaged: Public-service merit and motivation revisited

The concepts of merit and motivation are central to recruiting and retaining high-quality public servants. The meaning of merit has evolved to the more flexible interpretation contained in the 2003 federal Public Service Employment Act (PSEA), and the concept of motivation has become much more central to public management. The PSEA enshrines merit and non-partisanship as the main values to be protected in public-service appointments. It also provides a new definition of merit. Employees with a high level of public-service motivation (PSM) are predisposed to having greater job satisfaction and organizational commitment and, therefore, to performing at a higher level. The challenge is to recruit and retain employees with a high PSM level and to maintain this level while fostering high performance by other employees. This challenge is being pursued in part by fostering employee engagement in the sense of job/organization satisfaction and organizational commitment. Among the major drivers of employee engagement is fair staffing practices, including merit-based hiring. The successful pursuit of a high level of employee engagement can improve public-sector management in general and human resource management in particular.