Key messages

5

County Human Resource Management

KEY MESSAGES

Overall

• Devolution has resulted in a significant increase in frontline service delivery staff, especially in the harder-to-reach and historically underserved areas across the country. • Weaknesses in the institutions, policy, and systems for human resource management (HRM) pervasively undermine capacity building, morale, and performance of personnel in many county governments. • The national government should adopt a strategic, results-oriented, and coordinated approach to delivering capacity-building support to county governments.

Priority Interventions

• Introduce a national institutional framework and a comprehensive and sector-oriented set of principles, policies, norms, and standard procedures in pursuit of meritocratic, efficient, and effective HRM in county governments. • Provide mechanisms (such as targeted conditional grants) to incentivize counties to establish nationally agreed-upon HRM standards and procedures. • Install an institutional framework and program for coordinated, strategic, and practical capacity-building support to county governments by national institutions.