You know Patricia Kosseim, our general counsel. Exceptionally, the director of human resources, Maureen Munhall, is joining us. As well, we have Raymond D'Aoust, who is the Assistant Privacy Commissioner particularly responsible for the Privacy Act.
Mr. Chairman, you asked us to begin with the issues of human resources, which we discussed at the last meeting, and so we put together this short paper, which we hope illustrates some of the answers to the questions you asked. Perhaps I'll just go through it and bring your attention to some of the major themes of it. We'll go from table to table, because it's easier sometimes to look at this mass movement of population in a graphic way.
First of all, the challenges that we face in recruiting and retaining employees are common to the public service. Table 1 and table 2 are illustrating our movement compared to the movement in the civil service. In table 1, hires and departures, the red columns are the level we're funded to and the blue columns are our actual employee population. However, you will notice that over the years we've been able to increase our actual population at a greater rate than the increase in our budgeted population, so we are making headway. Table 2 shows the evolution of the actual population, which is steadily going up across the years, in spite of the high level of departures.
Table 3 then shows that in two key occupational groups for us, the PMs--these are particularly people who do the investigations--and the ES group, which does a lot of the privacy analysis, the technological analysis, and so on, there are fewer turnovers as compared to the same occupational groups in the rest of the public service.
Table 4 on page 4 illustrates the issue of retirement, about which we had a few questions the last time. In fact, when we look into it, our rate of retirement is slightly below that of the public service, although this aging of the workforce is expected to continue.
So we think that all in all, although things aren't optimal, we are gradually improving, and there are more employees being hired and retained than are leaving.
What are we doing to strengthen our population base? We're recruiting, of course, and we're moving to, in many cases, Canada-wide recruitment, which is very interesting for us, because they're highly specialized jobs. We're taking into consideration the employment equity representation, which has been a concern of this committee in the past. I draw your attention to table 5, which shows that in some areas we are above the average for the public service. For example, for visible minorities and persons with disabilities, we're well above the average for the public service. We're a predominantly female organization.
In terms of retaining our employees, if we look at table 6, there are several reasons for departures, and many of them in fact are normal departures. If you look at page 6 regarding the normal departures, end of term may refer to employees who are simply hired for a certain time, whose term has come up. As you know, we're not supposed to be turning employees over at the end of their term so that they become in effect permanent employees, so much of that—33%—is those who are moving on.
Finally, our challenge to that in terms of retention--as we mentioned at the bottom of page 6--is to have an exit questionnaire in order to try to focus in more specifically on why employees are leaving, if they're valued employees, and what we could have done to retain them.
I'll continue in French.
We're also developing a work place fitness program and an awards and recognition program, in accordance with Treasury Board policies.
The work place fitness program is very much appreciated, particularly by young employees who are very focused on work-life balance.
We've also invested a great deal in dialogue with employee representatives and the various unions in the work place, and in occupational health and safety at all levels.
Lastly, we have learning plans for every employee so that they can develop the personal and linguistic knowledge necessary for promotion in the Public Service of Canada.
I hope this overview has illustrated the dynamics of our work place a little better. If you have any other questions on it, I will be pleased to answer them.
