‘A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what’s going on.’
William S. Burroughs
Let’s say you run a department.
You have three employees. Let’s call them A, B, and C.
All 3 have the same tasks and earn the same salary: 600 JODs/month1 (or 1800 JODs in total for all 3 per month)
Employee A and B are super productive, always on time, never causing any issue. Employee C just sits around doing nothing, playing with their phone, always on cigarette breaks or eating. Employee C is not productive or fulfilling their contract.
What would you do in this situation?
Option 1: Fire employee C and give their salaries (or parts thereof) to employees A and B. For e.g. A and B would now get 800 JODs instead of 600 per month. The company in turn will save 200. Win-win.
Option 2: “Reinduct” employee C via special training and seminars at an extra cost.
Option 3: Fire employee C and not give a raise to the other employees. The company will save 600 per month.
Option 4: Hire employee D to supervise employee C.
(other suggestions are welcome)
Real life applications
With the new law in place (Regulation No. (33) of 2024: Human resources management system in the public sector), will the new government be able to exercise options 1 or 3 and reduce the budget?
The total amount of public sector employees is approx. 590,000. Can this number be brought down?
Well, that will depend on the sector/ministry:
-I think we can all agree that matters of security 🚨 (police/army) are off limits.
-~142,000 work with the Ministry of Education 🏫. Teachers are already underpaid and undervalued so also off limits. Every time I think of the MoE I also remember this Japanese video for no reason:
-~30,000 work for the Ministry of Health 🏥. Unless we have another Basheer Hospital scandal2, also off limits.
On the other hand we have some ministries that seem way understaffed:
-Ministry of Tourism 🐪, which cares for one of the biggest sectors of the economy at around $5 billion, only has 350 employees
-Ministry of Culture with 360 employees and a budget of 6 mil JODs (~1/2 for salaries) to handle all matters pertaining to literature, calligraphy, poetry, theatre, film, the arts, festivals, music, etc.
-Ministry of Environment: 360 to tackle the challenges of climate change…
So what’s left? Are there really any “C” employees in the public sector?
Well there’s the Mixed public/private sector like Royal Jordanian3 and Jordan Phosphate that could use a bit of trimming. (There’s also one government body I have in mind that needs a complete overhaul that you can find in Game 1).
In the end, this is going to be the task for the Minister and secretary general. Let’s see which options they go with.
I personally think we could do with getting rid of a few “C” employees in the public or private sector, but I’m sure there are countless other ways to cut expenses without cutting livelihoods and affecting productivity.
According to the Annual report of 2022 for the social security in Jordan, the weighted mean salary in Jordan was 570 JODs/month. N.B. Although stipends might seem low on paper, employees, especially in the public sector, get extra add ons (transportations costs, raise, bonus, cost of living allowance, per diem, family allowance etc.) so their take home is much higher.
There was a scandal in one of the public hospitals a few years ago: https://www.ammonnews.net/article/403200
The Ministry of Health has implemented a new HR system to start confronting this issue to avoid reoccurrence: https://www.khaberni.com/news/الأطباء-تبحث-ملف-البصمة-في-وزارة-الصحة-645656
The ex-ceo of RJ and bankrupt airline Air Berlin, Stefan ‘Feigling’ Pischler, famously claimed that RJ can operate with 1/4 of its total 3800 employees: https://alrai.com/article/10446551/محليات/بيشلر-يمكن-إدارة-الملكية-الأردنية-بربع-عدد-الموظفين-الحاليين