Human strategy and management in the AFs

- the Hungarian experience -

Dr. Ferenc Molnár

ZMNDU Center for Strategic and Defense Studies

Aim of the presentation

Spreading information about principles, norms, and practice concerning human resources

Topics

• Democratic foundations of the human strategy• The human strategy and its implementation• Providing personnel: recruitment, promotion and

evaluation

Democratic foundations of the human strategy• Parliament decides: size, composition, structure, medium and long term development of the AFs

• Parliament adopts acts: Constitution, Defence Act, The Act on Legal Status of the Professional and Contracted Soldiers

The Act on Legal Status

It defines:• Service–related principles (avoiding power abuses,

discrimination etc.)• Rules of practising fundamental rights (suffrage, religious

freedom, individual freedom etc.)• Union-like organisations• Rules of setting up service relation (recruitment, probation

periode, the system of applications for higher positions, „unattached” status, etc.)

• Rules ending the service relations (resignation, demobilisation and related payments etc.)

• Rules during the service (promotion, education, evaluation of perfomance, etc.)

• Incomes and additional benefits• Etc.

The human strategy and its implementation

The MoD works out the human strategy, which is based on: • National security, defence, military strategies • Constitution, Defence Act, • Existing conditions of the military organisationThe implementation ensured by :• Laws • Regulating and commanding activity of the MoD/GS

The guiding principles of the human strategy• Supporting harmony between changing tasks, conditions and

human resources;

• Supporting professional development and capacity of the military personnel;

• Improving the humanisation of the leadership and working mechanisms of the military organisation;

• Continuously redefining the organisational goals according to the changing environment and integrating the related proper solutions into the military.

The pillars of the human strategy and the strtuctures• The human resource planning• The human resource management

• The human resource development

Providing personnel: recruitment

Strategic objective of recruitment: fulfilling human resource needs of the armed forces from young age groups, in close cooperation with other actors of the labor market.

Providing personnel: recruitment

The declared, general requirements of selection are widely published and available:

- at recruitment offices (every county)

- in the newspapers

- on the internet

- in MoD brochures

Providing personnel: promotion

• Preconditions for promotion have to be laid down in documents.

• These documents well-known for both the employer and the military personnel.

• Important preconditions: level of education (degree); military-professional training; practice in a certain military assignment; high-quality service in the actual assignment; psychological, physical, and medical requirements; and other optional conditions regulated by law.

Providing personnel: evaluation

Objective of evaluation: • supporting the objectivity of promotion, selection

for higher positions, • supporting individual development,• increasing personal output, • shaping organisational (working) culture, • ensuring information for identification of training

requests, and for the correction of assignment request profiles.

Providing personnel: evaluation

Basic principles of evaluation system: • The evaluation includes the entire personnel of the

Ministry of Defence and the HDF.• The evaluation is regular and recorded in writing. • The evaluation is to be carried out annually. • The evaluation should be rational, objective, and

cannot be general.

Summary In Hungary, the human strategy is based on

declared, transparent laws and regulations.The system consists of three pillars: planning,

management, development.

The human resource-related challenges:- long lasting ones due to financial reasons and lack

of political will;- building the “esprit de corps”.