Brussels, 27/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - The Commission does not have sufficient consolidated information on the existing skills of its staff or the skills they need. The Commission also fails to provide a learning environment appropriate for taking full advantage of the benefits contained within its enormous range of training courses. These are the main conclusions of a European Court of Auditors' report published on Friday 27 July. This report assesses Commission policy on staff development.
The Commission's 33,000 officials are the key to its achieving its objectives. If they are to carry out their tasks efficiently, they need to update and maintain skill levels by means of training, informal learning and vocational mobility. This is particularly important to the Commission, due to the length of careers and the low turnover amongst its permanent staff.
The Court notes that the Commission provides a wide range of opportunities for staff to develop through training, informal learning and job moves. In 2010, staff attended an average of 6.9 days of formal training and spent an estimated four days on informal learning. Every year, between 2005 and 2009, an average of 6% of staff moved to another DG. Staff also had considerable opportunities to change jobs within the same DG.
The report says that in 2010, staff attended only 35% of the training courses available. The Court added that although the Commission as a whole provided an average of 6.9 training days in 2010, 30% of its agents had had less than two days training. Older officials and those in senior grades take part in fewer training programmes than younger agents in lower grades. There is also a high absentee and drop-out rate from language courses. Staff participation in programme training is not subject to close monitoring and the Commission does not measure intra-DG mobility. The Commission's own staff and managers deliver some training courses (16% of general and IT training) but not enough to demonstrate that the organisation attaches a high value to staff development. In general, the report says that, “There is only limited support to apply new skills in the workplace”.
The report also demonstrates that: - the Commission's top-down strategy “for developing staff does not convincingly demonstrate how development actions will contribute to achieving the objectives of the organisation”; - the appraisal and promotion system in place until 2011 not sufficiently distinguish between good performers who developed their skills and poor performers who did not. The Court points out that this inability to recognise merit heightens the risks of demotivating staff from using the different development possibilities provided. The court also notes that the new system put in place in 2012, aims to distinguish more clearly between good and poor performers and prevent the promotion of officials whose performance is below average. (LC/transl.fl)