Reinvigorating the Spirit of Strategic Human Resource Management

• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0091026020930768
• Author: Jessica E. Sowa
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Subject Matter: Guest Editorials

https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026020930768

Public Personnel Management

2020, Vol. 49(3) 331 –335

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0091026020930768

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Guest Editorial

Reinvigorating the Spirit of

Strategic Human Resource

Management

Keywords

strategic HRM, performance management, HRM

Government does not work without its people—our public servants. While popu-

lar rhetoric may sell stories of the incompetent and lazy public sector worker

who cannot be fired, countless studies have shown those who choose to work for

government are for the most part highly motivated, dedicated, and skilled

employees who often sacrifice greater extrinsic rewards for the benefit of being

able to make a difference, serve the public, and promote good governance and

public value.

Certain strands of the reform dialogue over the past 40 years worldwide

have argued that if we can free these dedicated public workers up from unnec-

essary bureaucratic constraints, their performance can be highlighted, cele-

brated, and even improved. Nested within this larger performance movement,

federal, state, and local governments have begun connecting the human

resource management (HRM) process to agency performance by talking the

language of strategic human resource management (SHRM)—an overarching

approach to HRM, borrowed from the private sector, that argues for HR poli-

cies and practices that connect human resources to organizational strategies to

improve performance. People matter for performance and, across the world,

governments have passed laws requiring strategic plans, mandated the devel-

opment of associated workforce plans to think about their HR needs in relation

to the strategic plans, appointed “human capital” officers to coordinate people

management strategies, and collected metrics on a number of different human

capital practices and outcomes to “show” the relationship between their people

and their outcomes.

Public sector HRM has made progress in being strategic, but we have more

work to do. I do not want the reader to get me wrong—there have been a number

of success stories in this growth of SHRM and pockets of significant innovation. I

am also a total believer in SHRM—the more public servants can see how what

930768PPMXXX10.1177/0091026020930768Public Personnel ManagementSowa

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