HR Management 101 in local governments

For a huge compensation of P1 a year, one city in the Visayas retains my services as senior HR and political adviser. Consultants merely give non-binding advice. They are not responsible nor accountable to the people.

I accepted the challenge for the love of country and for my respect and concern for the mayor. I give my advice freely on hiring, transferring, reshuffling, promoting, disciplining, dismissing, as well as rewarding deserving personnel. But only if I am being asked because he has a well-paid HR director and a highly-competent city administrator.

I understand, he is not renewing hundreds of job orders and consultants. That's good. But I have nothing to do about it. Many of these people are non-performing political underlings. I'm sure there will be a lot of backlash. But the mayor is firm and he is ready to face the consequences.

Most of the time he has other influencers who whisper a thousand suggestions, some with vested interests. He has even engaged the services of a former Senate president, who was also a former DOLE secretary but I am the only one with 28 years of experience in HR in San Miguel, Pepsi, and Petron. Yet, I have no control over him except moral suasion as his former Law professor.

Mine is a remote voice in distant Metro Manila. But whenever he asks me, I tell him straight and I call a spade a spade. I tell him to play politics in all other things but when it comes to leading people and managing their performance, he should be 80% professional and only 20% political.

As HR adviser, I give professional inputs into his decision making but I am not responsible for the consequences of his decisions because he has hundreds of other advisers and consultants. Too many culinary consultants tend to confuse the cooks and the chief cook ends up making decisions largely based on his own discretion.

Be that as it may, I am sharing the travails of a mayor who wants to do good and to make his city excel, but is surrounded by many conflicting pressures emanating from various political allies. The problem with the government is that many of its personnel are political appointees, with problems on competence and professionalism.

This mayor is a former HR manager himself of an Aboitiz-owned company based in Cebu. He is also a brilliant HR professional although, as a politician, he needs a professional like me to give him a second opinion. But he is also hardheaded and when he decides, no one can ever stop him. His city faces a lot of problems internally. There are many competent people in the city government who are assigned the wrong jobs, meaning square pegs in round holes. Every councilor has a number of "bata bata" among the personnel, and when the mayor tries to discipline them, the councilors intervene. That is where the mayor should draw the line. Where does politics end and good governance begin?

What the mayor needs is a professional HR who should be shielded from political pressures. He should assign one who is not only competent and honest but is brave and relentless, one who is prepared to lose his or her job any time. No matter how brilliant the HR director is, if his excellent plans are blocked by the city council by withholding funds or obstructed by jealous department heads by intrigues and schemes, then HR in the city government is bound to fail.

City Hall is like a little Malacañang or a mini White House. There are lots of petty wars on turfs and endless rumor-mongering and backstabbing. People are too focused on defending their asses and have no time to think about public service.

If the mayor does not clean up his cordon sanitaire and his sanctum sanctorum, his own underlings, subalterns, and trusted field commanders are either going to sabotage his marvelous vision and grandiose strategic plans, by sheer ineptitude, plain incompetence or reckless actions. Worse, in another scenario, they themselves stage a coup d'etat to topple him and replace him with another whom these people can easily control and manipulate.

If I am going to deserve my P1 a year, I should tell the mayor to take a draconian measure of defending himself against his own people. That is if he is willing to listen.