SALALAH: A Ministry of Labour paper has outlined a five-pillar pathway to redesign government careers around demonstrated skills, results and measurable impact, reducing the weight of job titles, academic qualifications and length of service in recruitment, development, promotion and mobility decisions.
The proposal was presented by Dr Mohammed bin Mustafa al Najar, Director-General of Training at the Ministry of Labour, during the 25th Annual General Conference on ‘Government Readiness for a Sustainable Future’, held in Salalah from August 11 to 13.
Although the paper does not announce new employment or promotion rules, the same direction was included in the conference’s closing recommendations. These called for government career paths to be redesigned around competencies and skills, with training needs tied more closely to institutional transformation and performance outcomes.
“The real challenge is not delivering training, but ensuring that learning translates into performance and performance into added value for the government entity”, Al Najar said in the paper.
The case for change rests on forces already reshaping government work, including artificial intelligence, smart automation, paperless public services, remote and hybrid work, demographic shifts and the transition towards a green economy.
The paper identified five weaknesses limiting the impact of conventional training: the absence of assessments before training, generic programmes that do not address individual skills gaps, weak links between training and operational targets, reliance on attendance and certificates as measures of success and insufficient workplace learning and follow-up.
Under the proposed model, the focus would shift from training to skills, courses to competence, certificates to the ability to deliver, attendance to impact and an individual job to a continuing career path.
The conventional linear ladder of a job, promotion and then a higher post would give way to a more flexible route built on acquired skills, applied experience, professional credentials, project results and leadership capability.
The paper said this would open multiple routes for progression and give government entities greater scope to assemble inter-agency teams around priority national projects, rather than limiting employees to vacancies within fixed organisational structures.
The Omani pathway presented in the paper is organised around five pillars: the National Framework for Occupational Competence, the Masar Professional Qualifications Initiative, the Ejada Human Resources Management Matrix, the Ejada Human Resources Development Platform and the Government Training Development Project.
The presentation described the national framework itself as containing 300 competencies across 44 categories and 14 groups, comprising core, specialised and leadership competencies.
Those figures differ in purpose from the data announced when the framework was launched in December 2024. At the time, the ministry said 44 technical teams and more than 300 specialists had contributed to a framework covering 2,000 job titles across the State’s Administrative Apparatus.
Masar is intended to help government employees obtain internationally recognised professional qualifications by supporting qualification costs and reimbursing examination fees after successful certification.
The Ejada matrix, meanwhile, plots actual performance against potential. Its nine-box structure is designed to identify talent, measure capacity for growth, analyse skills gaps and produce individual development plans, rather than assigning the same training programme to every employee.
The proposed Ejada Human Resources Development Platform would combine e-learning, short learning units, AI-enabled personalised pathways, learning analytics and digital certificates.
The presentation places the platform at a 2027 stage and the Government Training Development Project at a 2030 horizon. It does not state whether those dates mark launch, full rollout or completion.
The government training project would introduce a unified operating model for training departments, update their functions and job roles, qualify training specialists and develop tools to measure the effect of training on employee and institutional performance.
The recommendations also call for national digital skills-management platforms featuring a skills profile for each employee, alongside predictive analytics to identify future capability requirements.
Further proposals include national indicators for skills maturity and productivity, measurement of the return on training investment and stronger partnerships between government, universities, the private sector and international professional bodies.
The paper did not specify the regulatory changes, funding requirements or division of responsibilities needed to implement the model.
Taken together, the proposals would shift the measure of successful government training from the number of courses delivered and certificates issued to demonstrable improvements in employee performance, institutional productivity and public-service outcomes.
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