Greek Civil Servants –A Unique Human Resource

This article recognizes that not all of the individuals employed by the public sector are the same but assumes that the image emerging of a “civil servant“ today is directly linked to the situation that the country finds itself in. It aims at raising awareness of an opportunity not to be missed stemming from current catastrophe through a simple message.


The Wednesday, Mai 5, demonstrations with their tragic consequences in loss of life, led by militant extremist violent elements, followed by leftist groups and banners of public servants’ unions are only a façade of the “civil servant” challenge of Greek society. In these demonstrations and behind their banners there was a mass of peaceful deeply worried and confused people. And these were only a very small part of a much larger group blamed for the Modern Greek drama. They are part of the social body and rightly in my view very anxious about options offered to them for the future. They feel society absent of any kind of peaceful involvement following events passively through media with their own tenor or political interests; as if they are disconnected from the social body and left to their own predicament. And yet I would think that the “public servant”, with the despised image by all and sometimes between themselves, is perhaps the part of society that is more resistant to moral degradation, more educated and culturally developed as well as owner of technical knowledge well above the average. This is essentially a consequence of the fact that most of the members of public service come from families that have with means to exert “political influence” to ensure the entrance of their offspring into this service as well as the capacity to provide well above average education for their children. This fact must not be missed as a real opportunity that requires great attention and comprehensive plan for optimum implementation of the potential.

The public administration human capital needs to be looked at two distinct dimensions. On the first individuals are classified by their qualifications and vary from very high to extremely poor. The other dimension relates to performance. There exist very active and performing individuals on one extreme with lazy and unproductive on the other that we usually relate to the “public servant” image. What clouds such a view is the fact that very often individuals are clearly overqualified for their post. The administration requires individuals with qualifications to match the requirements of their posts and is prepared to work for the job. It does not require excessively qualified people in posts as they are a waste of human capital and source of deep frustration.

Consequently looking at a future reshaping of the public service, as its size will be coming down, one has to ensure that this will happen in a way that the real requirements of the public service would be met without excesses. The redundant part would contain individuals of various qualifications with high potential that have been an excess in public service but invaluable pool of human capital. A common attribute in this part would be the current culture of the “public servant”.

On this basis people leaving the public service must not be abandoned through useless announcements. They need to be assured of social cohesion measures and supported with great care via comprehensive programmes of professional re-orientation and work-culture adjustment to reassert their self-confidence. This way they would be offered the opportunity to enter the labour market of the private sector and make important contributions in areas such as upgrading administrative structures, human resources management and innovation all crucial to productivity increase. The private sector must play a pivotal role in this process with initiatives co-ordinated with Government.

I hope that ministries responsible for dealing with the issue will not look at this challenge as a side job but very seriously as a major opportunity. I am certain other countries in the European family have encountered this problem, in most cases not in a crisis but in an evolutionary manner, and have experience of how to channel through to the private sector human capital losses from public administration. I hope Greece will decide to approach these countries, draw from their experiences and apply them into the specific case of the Greek society with its peculiarities.

Utilisation of such a resource coming into the private sector labour market soon will prove a positive and critical boost in the efforts to draw development plans for the economy of the future. It will go beyond fiscal discipline and provide growth thus begin tackling the real problem of public debt by increasing gross national product.