How to attract and retain the best in government

The purpose of this article is to discuss challenges and strategies of attracting and retaining the best in government, particularly from the perspective of government in developing countries or transitional economies. This article will first touch briefly on the technical and practical issues of how to attract and retain the best, followed by an elaboration of current trends in human resource management (HRM). It will also look at a case of the Korean experience on HRM, followed by discussion of the theoretical and policy implications on HRM. Various kinds of best practices and new ideas are available through diverse venues around the world, but it is difficult to determine what really works for whom and how. It is not feasible to apply the same reform strategy to all countries. The challenge is, therefore, to find out what is applicable to the specific country; and how things can be applied while minimizing negative consequences. Points for the practitioners: Under rapidly changing circumstances around the world with increasing pressure on performance and innovation in government, old-fashioned personnel management must be significantly transformed, in order to attract and retain the best in government as well as to win the war for talent. Thus HR managers should initiate far-reaching, much needed change in talent management in terms of how they source, attract, select, train, develop, retain, promote, and move employees through the organization. In order to make government the model employer of choice, HR managers need to make a new Copernican transition in finding a new way of human resource management.