Territorial Review Copenhagen - Region Hovedstaden

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mayors; permitting only the economy committee the power to be involved in
implementation decisions; and a proposal to guarantee the minority (or
opposition) two salaried positions, as head of the accounts committee and of
the ombudsman-committee. In Oslo‘s government model, the City Council
appoints an executive council leader who appoints a city cabinet, and City
Council committees do not play a role in policy implementation. Some
political consensus has emerged on the need to reform the system. In the
recent agreement on the municipalities‘ economy for 2009, it was agreed
that an expert group should investigate whether the governance
arrangements for the municipalities should be updated, particularly for
Denmark‘s larger cities.
3.5 Local capacity
The City of Copenhagen and the Capital Region are very large
employers, with more than 40 000 employees each. 10 A large percentage are
employees in the social sectors (health and education), in particular hospital
and school workers. Some sector-specific challenges affect these staff that
can only be addressed in a global manner, as well as other challenges that
affect the management of staff running the city and the region.
Overall, a high level of consistency appears to prevail in the
management of the different sectoral groups employed both in the region
and in the municipality, and much emphasis is put on maintaining a
common culture and shared values. This is of course a consequence of the
multi-level dialogue and negotiation process with unions (see below), but
also that of the management structure. In the City of Copenhagen, the seven
main administrations each have their own human relations (HR) department,
but a central HR unit in the Department of Finance generates ideas and
proposals for the budget negotiations for the city, develops managers‘ skills,
proposes policies regarding gender and diversity, and prepares and
implements the negotiations with unions. Departments generally do their
own recruitment. As for the region, over the 18 months since its creation, a
lot of efforts have been made to create ―a common HR foundation for the
entire region.‖ 11
This level of consistency and shared values are strong assets for both
administrations, in addition to the noticeably strong emphasis both
administrations place on implementing state-of-the-art HR practices,
especially in developing staff and improving satisfaction in the workplace.
Part of these efforts reflect wider trends in Denmark, which has traditionally
attached a lot of importance to developing employees over the long term.
These efforts also provide solutions to what both administrations see as their
major challenges in human resources management, i.e. difficulties in