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Human
Resources
Management
What
This Core Competency Is and Why It Is Important
 Curriculum
Guidelines
Vision
and Purpose
Human
Resources Fundamentals Context
and Fairness Management
and Supervision
Courts
need good people, people who are competent, up-to-date, professional,
ethical, and committed. High-performing
courts get the very best from their
judges and employees no matter what their particular assignment or
job. As courts carry out
recruitment, selection, employee relations, job analysis, job evaluation,
and position classification; the administration of pay and benefits; and
performance management, they
demonstrate what the court believes in, its values, and its standards. The aim is not good Human Resources Management in an
otherwise mediocre court. It
is a high-performance court.
Court
leaders set the right tone for Human Resources when their management of
the court is cohesive and strategic.
The connection between caseflow management; education, training,
and development; budgeting and finance; information technology; and human
resources is seamless.
Like
almost every other private and public sector
organization, courts dedicate most of their budget to salaries and benefits.
But the services their judges and employees provide -- on the
telephone, at the counter and the bar of the court, and from the bench --
differ from other organizations. The
courts’ business is equal justice under law, due process, equal access,
and independent and impartial treatment and decisions.
Because
impartiality and independence are core court values, Human Resources
Management must be fair and objective.
The right people are hired, developed, and promoted.
When mistakes are made they are corrected.
Human Resources
staff is professional, accountable, and recognized as vital to the
court’s mission.
Judicial
independence rightly drives court Human Resources
Management philosophy, structure, and decisions. In the words of Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 78: “ … there is no liberty if the power of judging
be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.”
While courts, either independently (primarily locally funded), or
as a state funded system, seek and obtain resources from the other
branches, court Human Resources must be under court control and
independent in philosophy, form, and practice.
Achieving
independence is not easy. Most
courts are small employers relative to employers generally and other
governmental units in particular. Many
trial courts employ fewer than 20 people.
Excluding large metropolitan areas, courts typically employ 100 or
fewer people with most having no more than 300 employees.
Due
to their small size, court human resources staff are often co-located with
other units of government and even included in other’s budgets.
This can cause others to view courts as “just another
department” with court human resources staff,
policies, procedures, and practices that should be the same as “other
departments.” Undue
deference to the executive branch personnel system can have negative
consequences. For example,
court staff must both support and appear to support independent and
impartial processes and decision making.
The court must have flexibility to adjust work schedules of
courtroom personnel who sometimes must work outside normal working hours
due to trials or other court events, without incurring unnecessary
overtime or compensatory time obligations.
Whatever the arrangement designed to recruit, select and hire,
evaluate, pay, reward, develop, and manage judicial staff, the judiciary
must lead and, to a significant extent, control its Human Resources
function or risk its independence, image, and effectiveness.
Changing
environmental factors and a changing labor pool likewise challenge courts
and their leaders. Current
trends include an aging labor force, younger workers with different values
and expectations, more women, more racial and ethnic “minorities,”
more immigrants, and more diverse life styles.
Challenging issues include telecommuting, benefits, work rules, work schedules,
competing with other employers, both public and private, and leadership
practices. Environmental
factors, a changing labor force, and public demands for accountability
challenge courts and their leaders and mandate a sense of urgency about
court Human Resources practices. But
the court culture is usually quite
conservative. The top
court professionals, judges, speak and dress in ways that are staid,
mannered, and unmistakably traditional, but the issues they address are
complex, dynamic, and challenging. Who gets custody?
How do we balance public safety against the presumption of
innocence and reasonable doubt? A
rightly conservative culture need not produce unresponsive judicial
decisions or tired court management and human resources practices.
Waiting for difficult environmental and workforce issues to go away
was never appropriate; now it is untenable.
Court
Human Resources Management must be dignified but not stodgy, proper but
also energetic, and correct but also creative.
The highest quality service providers, whether they are in the
private sector (current examples include Nordstrom and Wal-Mart) or in the
public sector, set the standard by which court services ought to be
measured. Recruitment;
selection; education, training, and development; and fairness must be
equal to or better than all other employers, both public and private. The
court should be a model employer.
Effective
Human Resources Management not only enables performance
but also increases morale, employee perceptions of fairness, and
self-worth. People who work in the courts are special.
Their jobs and the work of the courts are not too small for the
human spirit. With proper
leadership, court Human Resources
Management contributes to meaning and pride over and beyond the
reward of a paycheck. It reflects the enduring purposes and
responsibilities of courts.
View the Summary
of Human Resources Management Curriculum Guidelines or click on
each of the four Curriculum Guidelines to see the associated Knowledge,
Skills and Abilities:
Vision
and Purpose
Human
Resources Fundamentals Context
and Fairness Management
and Supervision
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Resources Management MSWord version for printing.
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Resources Management Adobe Acrobat 5.0 version for printing.
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