Revolutionarising the public sector: the effect of strategic human resources management on the quality of service delivery in the public sector.

Abstract

The study investigated theeffect of strategic human resources management practices on quality of service delivery by government ministries in Harare with the ministry of home affairs registrar’s office as the case study. In particular, the study sought to determine the extent to which strategic human resource management practices affects the quality of service delivery , evaluate strategic human resources management practices against customer satisfaction and determine the level of commitment of senior management in the adoption of strategic human resource management practices. Furthermore, the study also aimed to establish the association between strategic staffing and recruiting on the performance of government employees. The study’s literature review was based on a copious of strategic human resources management empirical and theoretical literature. In particular, the literature looked at various theories of strategic human resources management including the resource based view which was adopted for the study. Other components of strategic human resources management which were discussed included strategic staffing and recruiting, HR planning, training and development, recruitment and career management, service performance and commitment of management. The literature review also acted as a guideline for the research methodology which was later adopted. The study adopted a survey research strategy since it aimed to generalize the findings to other government ministries.In order to answer the research questions, the study used a quantitative research approach where questionnaires were distributed to both employees and management. These questionnaires were useful in the aggregation of the results. A total of 140 questionnaires were distributed of which 88 were returned fully completed for further analysis. The findings were entered into SPSS software package version 23. The study used descriptive statistics, correlation and multiple regression analysis to find out the relationship between the variables to be measured. The study used service performance as the dependent variable. The statistical findings revealed that there is a positive relationship between HR planning and service performance. It was also concluded that strategic human resource management practices such as training and development, HR planning and recruitment and career management were of profound importance in determining the quality of service delivered. The study also concluded that the government’s recruitment and staffing had some weaknesses as right people were not recruited for the right place depending on specialty, desire and experience. The study recommends for continuous and intensive training and development programs to employees in order to achieve the objectives of the department. Management should ensure that the government department identifies the knowledge and skills required to meet its goals and take steps to hire or outsource qualified trainers with the necessary requisite skills to take these employees through these training and development programs.