Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 13
13
Accepted
Sharing internal and external recruitment best practices is vital for improving civil service performance.
Conclusion
Improving recruitment performance will also involve learning from the experience of others and from external best practice. We heard several examples of efficiency and good recruitment practice within the civil service, such as HMRC on recruitment costs and centralised recruitment, and the Ministry of Justice on ensuring the diversity of staff 17 Qq10–11 18 Cabinet Office, Civil Service People Plan 2024–2027, 10 January 2024 19 Qq 27–28; C&AG’s Report, para 12 20 Q30 21 Qq29, 31–32, 53 22 Cabinet Office, Civil Service People Plan 2024–2027, 10 January 2024 23 Qq30–33 24 Q50 Civil service workforce: Recruitment, pay and performance management 11 recruited.25 The Cabinet Office acknowledged it has a clear role to share best practice and promote learning across departments, given its oversight and coordination role for the civil service workforce. It said it was already working hard to share best practice across departments, for example what departments are doing to reduce time to hire, and undertook to share learning from departmental exemplars on recruitment costs.26 25 Qq16, 52 26 Qq34, 53 12 Civil service workforce: Recruitment, pay and performance management 2 Pay and performance management Civil service pay
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and commits to setting benchmarks, identifying best practices, researching external recruitment practices, and defining recruitment standards by Autumn 2024 (with a three-month extension), supported by ongoing discovery pilots.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
3.6 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: Autumn 2024 3.7 Six months from the date of the report is insufficient to ensure that full quality research is provided to drive the required improvements. An additional three months (maximum) is needed to complete the recommendation. 3.8 The Cabinet Office will set benchmarks and identify areas of best practice across the recruitment process through the analysis of the recruitment metrics data and researching recruitment practice with external organisations. This will support and encourage departments to identify and make improvements in their own recruitment practice. 3.9 As the metrics are reported on and best practice is identified, the Cabinet Office will define a set of recruitment standards to set expectations of how recruitment should be enacted in the Civil Service, to encourage improvements and ensure recruitment is carried out to the highest standard. 3.10 The Cabinet Office has initiated several ‘discovery pilots’ to test different approaches to Civil Service recruitment. Having different departments, functions and professions testing new approaches will support the development of a more effective recruitment system, with an ambition to reduce time to hire and improve recruitment outcomes.