Residency Requirements for Public Employees

Residency Requirements for Public Employees

Abstract

The paper describes pros and cons of residency requirements of public employees. Public employees include people who work in government agencies and authorities. Many companies are adopting this approach in order to retain large number of employees and qualified personnel in the department. It has greater benefits than non-resident employees. This is a controversial debatable topic that has no conclusion drawn so far. Some non-resident employees take it as challenge but others take it as a threat to their profession. On other hand, people living in same city are more motivated and empowered in a manner that they are directly in link with their employers and work in a same culture and geographic area which make them more productive.

This paper consists of introduction of the public companies and residency requirements and some researches done on this topic. In discussion, pros and cons of residency requirements are being discussed and in the end, the conclusion part which entails the end result of the whole research paper.

Research statement

Many companies are retaining employees living in the same city.

Introduction

From many years, public sector organizations have been making considerable changes in managing their HR system. With the decreasing barriers of communication through partnerships information, and telecommunication, public sector has realized globalization of human resource management activities. Reforms, obsessed by administrative, technical and political reasons, have changed some public human resource management systems from authoritarian and reactive into proactive and strategic. Whereas public sector reforms have been called by various labels, but has similar challenge.

Several countries, local and states governments become involved in decentralized human resource activities in order to provide managers with more duties and responsibilities, accepted new innovations for efficiency and providing quality human resource services and also have rearranged the role of human resource management (OECD, 2001a; Selden et al., 2001). In spite of new changes showed worldwide, there are no such solutions to the challenges that many governments are facing these days. Many reformers are trying to determine approaches that are best for their national or local context and their reform objectives as well. Whereas the general basic objective of reform may be similar, policy makers and citizens want public employees that fulfill citizen needs more efficiently.

Some of the governments want to motivate their workforce while others want to reduce costs (World Bank, 2001a). According to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 'The public's needs are rapidly changing as societies become more diverse, complex and fragmented. Technological advances and more knowledgeable citizenry create new opportunities and expectations. The pace of change is faster than ever.' Therefore, the management of public workforce is dependent on the capability of government to meet the changing demands of environment and citizens and attain the effective human resource management objectives and goals accordingly (World Bank, 2001c).

Residency requirements order public employees to live within a particular geographic region is approved by state, local or departmental regulations. According to International City Management Association Survey of Police Personnel Practices, ...