Is the Professionalisation of Civil Service in Local and Regional Government a Priority? Evidence from the Polish Case
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15678/PG.2025.74.4.01Keywords:
civil service training, the professionalisation of public administration, local governmentAbstract
Objective: This paper aims to check if and to what extent the financial resources allocated for civil servants’ training in self-government in Poland reflect both the priorities of the authorities and the specific nature of the tasks performed by them.
Research Design & Methods: The authors used two main research methods. The first one was a survey sent to the representative sample of local and regional authorities. The second one involved semi-structured interviews with randomly chosen permanent secretaries from local governments.
Findings: Based on the gathered data, it is clear that local and regional governments focus mainly on daily upgrading trainings and do not provide a long-term strategy on human resources development. Most popular trainings could be characterised as short-term executive courses focused on management and legal issues.
Implications / Recommendations: Local governments are recommended to change their approach to training civil servants in terms of both financial commitment and the long-term attitude to building the competence of their employees.
Contribution / Value Added: The paper presents an up-to-date outlook of civil servants’ training policies in Poland. Based on this picture, it is possible to conduct discussion on how local and regional governments conduct human resources development strategies and provide recommendations to them.
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