Digital Trends and Strategic HR Transformation: Two Sides of the Same Coin
When experts meet in Maastricht on 25 and 26 November 2025 for the EIPA seminar ‘Revolutionising HR Services: Digital Trends and Innovations from EU to Local Level‘, two core questions take centre stage: (1) how can digital innovations secure public administration functionality, and (2) how must human resources (HR) evolve from administrative manager to strategic partner?
The answer lies in dual transformation: digital tools revolutionise efficiency while HR assumes strategic responsibility for organisational viability. Both are linked as being without strategic reorientation; digital tools remain ineffective. Without digital support, HR cannot fulfil its strategic role.
While citizens expect seamless digital services, many administrations work with paper files and reactive processes. Demographic change intensifies this: baby boomers leave with experience while Generation Z approaches with new expectations.
The Dual Transformation as a Foundation of State Functionality
A recent Fraunhofer Institute and Capgemini Invent study identifies the problem: HR’s administrative role has become a systemic risk. While private companies developed HR into strategic partners, public administrations operate within complex regulatory frameworks and democratic accountability structures that have traditionally constrained HR’s strategic evolution.
This creates critical gaps: (1) manual processes taking weeks versus 48-hour private responses; (2) personnel decisions without benefitting from business intelligence tools; (3) missing HR analytics preventing effective strategic planning. The result: rising turnover, unfilled positions, declining employment attractiveness. Ultimately, non-functioning administration threatens democratic stability.
The Paradigm Shift: Empowerment Instead of Administration
HR must become the driving force of transformation. As outlined in ‘Personalmanagement in der öffentlichen Verwaltung’, successful personnel development improves communication, collaboration, and leadership behaviour. Thereby, it promotes satisfaction and retention —crucial in addressing successfully skills shortages. HR must bridge public administration’s strengths with new generational expectations.
Younger generations bring not only digital fluency, but also new priorities that redefine the employer-employee relationship. According to ‘Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey’, flexibility, meaningful work, and well-being are no longer ‘nice to have’ but baseline expectations. Nowadays, young professionals look for organisations that offer hybrid or remote work options, respect boundaries between work and personal life, and provide clear career development opportunities. Therefore, public administrations must respond by offering structured yet flexible career pathways and mobility frameworks.
The survey also indicates that mentoring, coaching, and artificial intelligence (AI)-responsible learning platforms are sought after, as they open up opportunities for growth and continuous development. The younger workforce expects that fairness, transparency, purpose, and inclusion are part of the organisational culture, where performance is being recognised and the societal relevance of the work is visible.
Young professionals are eager to learn and contribute to environments that support their development. In this context, systematic onboarding and knowledge transfer – especially when experienced staff retire – are essential to keep teams strong and skills in place.
For public service to remain attractive, it must be a space where people learn, contribute with purpose, and take pride in what they do.
Concrete Action Areas: The HR Transformation Map in Practice
Successful HR transformation follows systematic patterns along key action areas. Strategic decisions at leadership level and formal HR strategies form the foundation. Without resource allocation, transformation remains piecemeal. Modern public administration must redefine employer attractiveness by supplementing traditional strengths, such as job security and social relevance, with flexibility and digital workplace equipment. Simultaneously, automated applicant management and AI-supported pre-selection can reduce hiring time from weeks to days, while competency management systems identify qualification needs automatically.
The greatest lever lies in digitalisation: HR analytics replacing gut feeling, automated processes instead of manual work, and digital performance management tools. As AI becomes integral to daily work, organisations must establish clear usage rules and protect citizen data from misuse due to low digital skills.
Cultural change towards agile, learning organisations requires new leadership competencies where change management becomes core for leaders. Continuous learning, flexible career paths, and systematic knowledge transfer – especially when experienced employees retire — prepare administrations for demographic change, the AI revolution, and hybrid work models.
From Strategy to Practice: HR Transformation Across Europe
Several cases of HR transformation across European public administrations showcase innovative approaches and successful practices.
In Romania, the National Agency for Civil Servants (NACS), in collaboration with the General Secretariat of the Government and the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, led a national project to build a unitary human resource management system across public administration. Recognised in 2021 by the European Public Sector Award (EPSA, organised by EIPA) as a Good Practice the initiative is a strong example of how targeted reform can support professionalisation and better align public human resources management with long-term EU objectives.
In Spain, the National Institute of Public Administration (INAP) is reshaping civil service careers through its 2025–2028 Learning Strategy, which focuses on digital skills, talent development, innovation, and making recruitment processes more effective and inclusive. Joint work with regional and local administrations is also helping to open up public sector opportunities to a broader range of people.
These examples – which will be featured at the upcoming EIPA seminar in Maastricht – show how national efforts can create more responsive and forward-looking administrations that better reflect the expectations of today’s and tomorrow’s public servants.
Jointly Shaping the Future of Public Administration
HR transformation is not only a national but also a European issue. Administrations can and must learn from each other – from innovative recruiting strategies of Scandinavian countries to digital HR services of Southern European municipalities.
The EIPA seminar in Maastricht offers exactly this platform for cross-border experience exchange. Here, not only best practices are presented, but concrete action plans for individual organisations are developed. Because ultimately, transforming public sector employment is about more than just HR processes – it’s about the future viability of our democratic institutions.
Only if public administration succeeds in positioning itself as an attractive, modern employer while credibly communicating its social mission, will it continue to attract and retain the most talented employees for shaping the common good.
More information about the seminar ‘Revolutionising HR Services: Digital Trends and Innovations from EU to Local Level’ can be found here.
About the authors: Michael Ahr is Managing Director of Gesellschaft für Verwaltungsberatung and author of ‘Personalmanagement in der öffentlichen Verwaltung’ (Haufe, 2025).
Giovanna Belisário is a Research Officer at the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA).
Declaration of AI Assistance: generative artificial intelligence tools have been used to review and correct wording and potential spelling errors in this blog post. The final analysis, arguments, critical insights, and conclusions are the result of the author’s work and remain under their sole responsibility.
