In many governments, government jobs are cushy in the sense that it’s not likely for them to get fired. In a company where you’re safe from losing your jobs, there will be a part of the population who decides that working hard is not for them, which means that productivity goes down.
In China, they have a specific term for government jobs, “体制内”, meaning, “within the system”. Because these jobs are safe regardless of the market, even if the salary is lower, they are considered desirable jobs. Often times, to get a government job, you need to first pass an exam before you can get a position. Then, you will have opportunities to gradually climb up.
The good thing about this system is that anybody who makes it into higher levels of leadership all started from the bottom. Because only a certain amount of people can be promoted each time, you’re filtering out people from each level as they make their way higher. This means that anybody who has made it up to national level leadership positions have been in politics for a long time and outclassed all their co-workers to climb up to this position.
But what about all the others who stop climbing at some point? Is there a way to incentivice them to do good work?
If there isn’t a promotion opportunity, then there can only be exploration into other incentivizing areas, namely money, time, or recognition.
Government jobs don’t pay very well, so setting KPIs for bonuses might be a way to increase productivity. Another one might be to offer additional holidays as a bonus, as flex holidays are also extremely limited for government jobs. Lastly, recognition and awards might be interesting as well, but this might lean more towards the promotion path, as the goal of the recognition would be to use it as a stepping stone to get to wherever you want to go next.
Largely, basic incentives are very similar to normal jobs. The main difference is that you’re working mostly with carrots, and the main stick of firing people is not as readily available anymore.
Alternatively, if we think outside the box a bit, there might be opportunities to build in incentives through gamification, including providing scores, leaderboards, and mini prizes to showcase and reward efforts.