ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the current environment of public personnel management in the United States, with a focus on how human resource management (HRM) is integrally tied to the performance of government. It begins by briefly reemphasizing the need to remember the strategic importance of employees in terms of achieving the goals of government and how public personnel management should embody a strategic approach. The chapter concludes by highlighting some of the changes facing governments that require attention on the part of HR managers and public personnel systems to ensure continued and effective government performance. Therefore, especially considering the challenges faced by government employees since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, public personnel management in practice and HR researchers cannot rest on their laurels about the value of a strategic approach to HRM. Public personnel systems evolved over time in the United States, with different values reflected in these systems at different periods of history.
