Relative balanced measurement of trainee civil servants: a case example from Greece

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the concept of relative balanced measurement as benchmarking tool for public training centers and public services. Design/methodology/approach – Borrowing the concept of balanced scorecard we have modified the perspectives to reflect the special circumstances of Civil Service. Each perspective is assigned a number of key performance indicators, which are ranked in a Linker scale, in order to create rankings for each perspective. Then the rankings of each perspective are averaged in order to create a unique final ranking, which sets the performance frontier. Findings – The real case example for Civil Servants Trainee's Work Unit (TWU) validates the relative balanced measurement conceptual framework. Research limitations/implications – One of the limitations of this paper is that the conclusion is drawn from a single Training Center at Greek Ministry of Economy and Finance and a limited number of TWUs. A linked research should follow, with field researches for trainees and supervisors of the trainees (Heads of Trainee Work Units) in order to enrich and validate further the concept. Practical implications – In the proposed concept the establishment of performance frontier, consisting of the best performing TWUs, could be used as a guide of inefficient TWU compare to the other in order to undertake their own improvements. Originality/value – This paper provides a new concept for relative balance measurement of TWU of Public Services Training Centers. No such concept or method has been proposed and implemented to date.