Staff Performance

Creating conditions for successfully hiring, training and retaining a skilled workforce

Reliable provision of water services depends to a large extent on the employees in the utilities, on their competences and knowledge, on the organizational and managerial setting in which they are working, and on the facilities, equipment and instruments at their disposal. Water services providers are generally publicly owned monopolistic organisations that must provide a basic service and guarantee to deliver an adequate quantity of hygienically reliable water at a reasonable price for which (in most cases) there is no alternative supplier. This context has provided in the past for rather static, risk aversive organisations with predominantly routine work. However, changes have taken place. Over the last decades utilities are transforming from relatively static engineering, technology and subsidised organisations to a more dynamic, customer oriented, efficiency and sustainability orientation. This transformation depends to a large extent on the type of ownership of the utility, the national and local political setting, the regulatory regime, the size and services scope of the utility and its degree of operational autonomy. Simultaneously, the level of expertise required for operation and maintenance keeps increasing as water technologies become more complex and the industry turns to more automated processes.

Five major characteristics of water utilities are mentioned below that determine business model, organisational structure, staffing profile and size of the labour force.

Single service or multi-service provider: a water utility can be only a supplier of drinking water, or it can also provide sewerage services and wastewater treatment, stormwater drainage, bulk water supply, industrial water, agricultural water, and other municipal services including solid waste collection, street lighting etc.

Full water chain services delivery or only operator of facilities: a utility can be only responsible for the operation and maintenance of facilities and delivering water services to the citizens, or it can be also responsible for planning, financing and implementing new infrastructure.

Municipal or Regional utility: serving the population of just one municipality, serving multiple cities up to an entire province or region.

Degree of operational autonomy: a utility can have no autonomy at all, for example when it is functioning like a municipal department, or it can have full autonomy when it has the status of a public company also responsible for asset ownership, or it can even be fully privatized.

Degree of outsourcing: a utility could only focus on managing its primary technical and commercial processes and outsource all other ancillary work. This determines to a great deal the number of staff and the expertise required in house.

Frequent occurring staff related problems of water utilities in developing countries include the following:

Overstaffing: public water utilities which are used by local politicians to provide jobs for party loyalists, friends and family members. This creates utilities with staffing costs of up to 60% of operational costs, overcrowded offices with lack of facilities, ghost workers who never appear in the office etc.

Frequent change of management: after every election when there is a new party delivering the mayor, the management of a water utility may be changed, without considering suitability for the job. This leads to discontinuity in planning and development, weak leadership, lack of vision, poor efficiency and frustration with operational staff.

Lack of professional qualifications of the staff, large numbers of unskilled labour, poor technical and transport facilities, low level of ICT facilities. No internal training facilities, no or very limited career perspectives, low payment, little incentive. The Human Resources Management function is not developed.

The above problems are mostly related to a low level of operational autonomy of the utility.

Staff productivity in water services provision is an important KPI. The indicator is measured in several ways, the most important ones in use are: number of staff per 1000 connections, number of staff per 1000 population served, and/or staff costs as percentage of operating costs.

Staff costs of water operators may be as high as 60% in overstaffed utilities or as low as 20% in more efficient utilities, but it should be kept in mind that there are wide varieties in types of systems to be operated, scale and size of utilities, outsourced work etc.

Service providers and the regulator should monitor staff productivity and benchmark with other utilities to identify areas for improvement in staffing policies to avoid any additional costs passed on to the customers. Service providers can use a more detailed index that reflects staff productivity at the different units within the service provider.