Civil service in Spain: Productivity

I wrote yesterday about why job security is a good mechanism to protect civil service from corruption. But I also explained that it’s a mechanism that makes difficult to punish slackers. That wouldn’t be a serious problem if there were mechanism to reward people who do right. And the truth is that there aren’t. The salary has a variable part but could be more or less explained as “if you come to work twice a week in the afternoon, you get it”. Not very rewarding to productivity. If you come to work but don’t do anything, you get paid. If you come to work in the afternoon, but don’t do anything, you get paid more. Of course money isn’t everything. At least in my case, a challenging environment is a great part of the deal. But here again civil service is difficult. It’s slow and innovations are difficult to pass through. It’s surprising that people do anything. But, truth to be told, there are lots of people who work. There are all sort of tricks, but in general, people work. Tomorrow, I’ll try to explain additional ideas.