Enhancing the Effectiveness of Training through Information Feedback – The Case of Slovenia’s Public Administration

Abstract

After the fall of the Berlin wall, the public administrations in Central and Eastern European countries have had to adapt to an enormous number of changes in a relatively short time. Their civil servants are still facing a constantly changing regulatory framework which needs implementation and enforcement, as well as new demands from the growing private sector and the citizens. These challenges can only be met if the civil servants are highly qualified and constantly updating their qualifications. A sound system of in-service training is therefore crucial to keep the public servants on equal footing with the rapidly changing environment. The research presented in this paper analyzed the practices of training evaluation as an information feedback in a branch of Slovene state administration. We analyzed the attitudes of employees towards evaluation with the assumption that there probably are notable differences between the attitudes of public servants depending on their demographic qualities. The results of the research, that 414 public servants have participated in, show that the position in the hierarchy has the strongest influence on their attitude towards evaluation. Empirical data also show that most of the employees are willing to participate in a continuous and objective training evaluation, but the leading public servants are less involved in the evaluation than expected.