DESA's STAFF SPEAK-UP: - MOBILITY

A. Mobility (Summary of the issues raised by DESA Staff)

• Several comments were made regarding the mobility requirement. Staff members were critical of the rules and procedures guiding the mobility exercise. They pointed out shortcomings and problems related to its implementation and suggested a number of recommendations to improve the exercise.

• There was a feeling among staff that the mobility exercise is not taken seriously. Most managers have avoided implementation by reassigning staff before the mobility deadline. As a consequence, some staff members, who did not face mobility, have been "requested" to swap posts with colleagues and felt obliged to do so even though it might not have been an optimal career move for them. Another way of avoiding mobility was to promote general service staff without changing their functions and/or reporting lines in reality.

• Several staff members also felt that rules of mobility were not clear and many of their related questions remained unanswered.

• Career planning becomes challenging in light of the mobility requirement. A staff member felt that it was hard to carry out his/her current annual work plan not knowing where he/she would be by the end of the year. There was also a perception that mobility requirements limit transfer of knowledge between senior and junior staff members in similar positions.

• Many Chiefs/Supervisors do not universally support mobility through lateral or SPA moves. They feel entitled to either favor or block these kinds of moves of staff in their units. The perception is that doing good work gets rewarded with lack of opportunities for career development as it is in managers' interest to keep these staff where they are, and those who perform poorly are often "helped" to leave through mobility or even promotion. There were some cases in which staff members wanting to move were stopped by their managers and had to turn to the Executive Office for help. In other cases they had to perform both jobs in order to be allowed to move while keeping a good relationship with supervisors.

• Managed reassignment and mobility requirements lead to lack of investment in staff by their bosses, including investment for skills development through the offering of challenging assignments, allocating training funds and travel opportunities.

• Staff are discouraged from pursuing mobility options on their own. One of the reasons is that selection rules discourage "shopping around". A case in point is a rule, according to which after an interview, a candidate, if selected, cannot turn down the job unless offered another position. Another reason is that OHRM would not approve a job swapping arrangement agreed to by all involved, if it is outside the managed reassignment exercise.