Cadres are the key!

At  ICN Conference on 29 April 2016, an assistant to the Head of FAS, Vladimir Kachalin, was a speaker at the Section Presidium of the Working Group on competition agencies efficiency. The theme of the discussions was “Hiring personnel by the antimonopoly bodies: challenges and opportunities”. Representatives of Brazil, Hong Kong, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Russia shared experience of their respective antimonopoly bodies on such issues as:

-         Policy of vacant post competition at junior and senior levels

-         Training and advancing qualification of the staff of antimonopoly bodies

-         Measures regarding staff members that fail to duly perform their official duties

-         Measures to retain the moist valuable personnel as antimonopoly officers

-         Positive aspects of the personnel policy of an antimonopoly body and areas for improvement.

Referring to FAS regulations, Vladimir Kachalin highlighted all five of the listed aspects. In particular, he pointed out that FAS personnel policy is guided by the current law (the Law “On Public Civil Service in the Russian Federation” and the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On qualifying requirements to  the length of public civil service (other types of public service) or relevant employment experience  for federal public civil servants").

Based on these normative documents, FAS builds up its personnel policy, taking into account specifics of the antimonopoly body, particularly, that FAS size is considerably  bigger that other antimonopoly bodies and, accordingly, there are more staff at the Central Office and regional Offices. It requires transparent and efficient hiring procedures and career advancement of the personnel. For example, information about vacancies is published on FAS web-site; staff is selected by a special Commission, formed in view of the need to prevent conflict of interests. The Antimonopoly Services widely uses a rotation programme, when well-reputed Heads of regional Offices are assigned to relevant positions at the Central Office.

The audience was very much interested in the information about the process of selecting personnel for executive positions and establishing a candidate pool to this purpose, as well as about the work of FAS top executives with this skill pool, engaging these staff memers in solving the most important issues for FAS under the frame of the “My useful initiative” project.

Considerable attention is also paid to the information on the measures undertaken by FAS in the field of training and advancing qualification of FAS staff.  For instance, appointing members for young specialists under the mentorship programme, using capabilities of FAS Centre for Education and Methodics in Kazan, and organizing regional workshops with the Heads and employees of FAS regional offices, judges and representatives of the authorities of the subjects of the Russian Federation on a regular basis.   

Overall the Section participants evaluated FAS experience of personnel management as best practices, quite valuable for implementing in both young and experienced antimonopoly bodies.

Andrey Tsyganov evaluated Russian experience: “It is a meticulous work to make sure that more than 3000 people in 85 decision-making centres, when the law is constantly improving and their power are expanded, think and act similarly in similar situations and make competent, high-quality decisions (which is confirmed by judicial practice). FAS has a lot to be proud of”.