Government Operations Committee on Feb. 7th, 2008

[Karen Ellis]

In which process do they want to be involved? There are a number of groups and committees that work with the unions. It depends on the issues and departments involved. The way in which various departments approach working with the union varies, but I believe that all deputy ministers... You perhaps have, from time to time, a committee... When I was at National Defence, we set up joint committees with the unions. We had a very good working relationship with them for years. It really depends on the department and the approach it chooses to use.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Ms. Ellis.

The floor is yours, Mr. Kramp.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome, Ms. Ellis.

I have a number of questions, if I have an opportunity to get through them. We had an interesting proposal put forward by the union representatives who were here last week, and I'd like your comment on it.

In order to more fully understand why people are leaving or what the reason for relocation or job transfer would be, a suggestion was brought forward that we should or could consider exit interviews. What are your thoughts on that?

[Karen Ellis]

I would say, generally speaking, that I think exit interviews are an excellent way to find out some of the reasons behind departures of employees. In fact, in many departments those are conducted. Again, it just depends on whether the manager in a particular work unit is using that best practice to find out what's happening with their particular workforce.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Do you believe it should be mandatory throughout all the departments?

[Karen Ellis]

I really couldn't make a recommendation on anything like that. I would simply say that many people use exit interviews and that they're very useful. They should be considered as a best practice and as part of the picture in finding out what's behind some of these issues.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Do you see any downside to them?

[Karen Ellis]

I don't see any particular downside to exit interviews. I think they can be very useful.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'll go on to the next question.

I'm actually looking for a breakdown in four or five areas. Let me just preface my remarks by saying that the turnover we experience in our public sector blows me away. I just cannot imagine how a government can function with the turnover rate we have. From all of our levels of management trying to deliver a job to all of the people in any position trying to fulfill their responsibilities, with the dramatic turnover we have, I literally cannot imagine how poorly run we are or how inefficient we are with this kind of a turnover rate.

I'm seeing the rate at basically around 40% now. Last year it was 35%; the year before that it was 30%; the year before that it was 23%; the year before that it was 18%. My point is that we're not heading in the right direction.

When I see this kind of turnover, I have two areas of concern. I want a comparison to another sector, and I'll get to that.

In terms of all of these transfers taking place, I'll give you four categories. I'm certainly not asking you to come up with numbers, but eventually I'd like some information on this from the department. In terms of all these transfers that are taking place, or the massive turnover, what percentage is the result of retirement, what percentage would be advancement, what percentage would be as a result of all the temporary conditions you've listed—maternity, reservists, etc.—and what percentage would be simply a request for relocation?

If we are able to separate those four components right there, it would give us a little better understanding. Obviously we have one other internal problem that it could be, which is just total job dissatisfaction. I'm hoping that is the smallest category, but if it turned out to be one of the major categories, then we really have some problems.

At some point, I'd like a report back to this committee with some range of discussion on that.

One other point I would like to make is that we found the turnover rate is much smaller in a lot of the smaller communities where we have federal employees than it is in larger urban cores. Why? We need to know why. Does that mean we should take a lot of our federal responsibilities that have accumulated in large urban cores and start to spread them to smaller communities? Is that the solution? I'm not suggesting it is, but if there's a correlation between the low turnover rate in your smaller communities versus your massive, “bloated” bureaucracy, then we have another problem.

I would like your comment on that.

[Karen Ellis]

We'll start with your request for a breakdown, which our statistical expert here says we can provide as a follow-up. We can give you a good breakdown on the various categories. We may even have one or two more.

I don't know that we'd have one on job dissatisfaction, but I take your point that part of good management is trying to make sure people have meaningful work and want to stay for a reasonable amount of time.

With reference to the smaller communities, yes, I believe our numbers do indicate that there is more movement in the national capital area than there are in regions. I don't know that we have a lot of analysis as to why, but in the national capital region one of the reasons for a lot of movement is that we tend to have quite a few of the five largest professional occupational groups in which there's a lot of movement. Human resources, as I mentioned, is constantly moving. The economists and the executives move a lot; that movement is often associated with some career progression and planning. We also have some development programs for executives that would require movement to get them developed to a certain level. The computer scientists often move a lot in this area, and also program managers.

Why do they move a lot? It's because they have more of the generalist or corporate services skills that are in high demand. Those skills are highly transferable between branches in a department, or in fact between departments. It's also because we have, as I said, some basic shortages in the labour market in those areas, so it is going to be more challenging to keep people for a long period of time in some of those areas because there will be opportunities for them to advance and move as a result of the high demand for them.

Because there's a higher population of those folks in the NCR, it's logical that there would be more movement compared to the regions. Often departments will have a lot of their central administration in the national capital region, so those groups naturally would gravitate there.

I don't have information in greater depth as to why people stay longer in the regions. When it comes to issues of relocation, there can be a lot of personal and family reasons as well; people have different reasons and different considerations in every case, in terms of what part of the country they want to work in.

I do agree that diversity of thinking and representation across Canada is really important. When we manage and try to build our teams, we need to really plan for and think about getting a good mix of not only people, backgrounds, education, and employment equity groups, but also of regions of Canada, and build diversity into our thinking, because we make better policies and deliver better service that way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Angus is next.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'll speak from the experience within our region, because it's practical and I know it.

We have two major federal employers in my riding. One is Veterans Affairs in Kirkland Lake. Then we have CPP and old age security; that's handled out of Timmins.

I've always tried to get a clear sense of how departments set their criteria. I often find it's like calling Darth Vader and seeing if he'll go out for a coffee with me to get a clear answer on these decisions.

In the Kirkland Lake office we find a very low turnover of employees—very low. People are committed to it. It's basically a way of life. People, once they're in the federal civil service, stay. In Veterans Affairs they bid on contracts. They're not just doing a regional service; they're actually able to branch out and bid on contracts across Canada, and they're very successful at it.

We find that in our human resources department, on the other hand, we always seem to be taking the overflow work from big centres like Scarborough. If someone retires, the position is not necessarily replaced. I'm trying to get a sense of why it would be more efficient to be continually putting resources into a very large centre like Scarborough, where there is going to be a much higher turnover rate, than into a city like Timmins, where these people are committed to it. We can never get a sense of the criteria for deciding where to apportion the workload.

You said that it's within each department, and I noticed that in one of your statements you said the deputy heads have substantial authority. What criteria must they meet to ensure the public is getting good bang for the buck—that the jobs are going to places where we aren't going to have high turnover? Is that a factor they even have to consider?

[Karen Ellis]

I'm sure it's something they would have to consider when they do their overall planning.

I keep coming back to planning. Frankly, since I've been working in this job, I'm realizing how critical it is to good management and to dealing with all kinds of questions, including the one you ask.

In terms of planning for a department, when a deputy head is leading that process, the first level is that really strategic level--for example, what the business of that particular department is, what the main business lines are, what the needs are that spread across Canada, etc. Then what they really have to do is cascade that down so that every sub-leader.... I would be the next level, the assistant deputy minister. If I'm running old age security or whatever, I have to really do that in depth for my own, and I expect everyone who's underneath me to feed in, so that I can give a really good picture of my business, my people needs, my finance, and everything else. That has to actually form that overall integrated plan for a department.

The bottom line here is that the questions you're asking are big questions for a department that they need to engage in. I'll be very honest with you: integrated planning is evolving and getting better with time, but most departments and deputies who find they're doing it well now have told us that it's taken two to three years of changing the energy and the dialogue in the department to get into planning and that type of open conversation that brings the people piece in, and that when they've spent two to three years really doing it, they start to see excellent results.

I'll give you an example. I can't speak to HRSD, but a few years ago the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, as you know, with food safety becoming a big issue in Canada, got lots of new funding in their budget to deal with big national issues of importance. Their deputy shared the fact that a whole lot of new expectations were put on the department with that. They needed to sit down right away and start talking about what this set of new business needs would mean and how they were going to recruit the people they needed. They needed to look at scientific recruitment--which is challenging in and of itself--and something they called a hyperspecialist, a situation in which there might be one expert in North America to do that type of science.

For me, it was a live example of a management team taking ownership of the business it needed to do for Canadians and then really figuring out what the people stuff was.

I'm just saying that you have to have that kind of dynamic. The deputy has to have a plan, and that plan has to be shared with employees.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

My concern is, first, whether or not your agency actually looks at geographic hot spots to identify high turnover areas.

This isn't pitting one region against another—I think every region of the country should have a balance of federal jobs—but if it comes down to the deputy heads, they could do this in a very holistic manner, or they could continue to do it the way they've always done it. If you are making planning decisions and you're apportioning a workload in regions where you have extremely high turnover, and you have other regional offices that have very low turnover, is there a criterion whereby you actually have to look at the overall bottom line of putting resources into places to train people who are going to leave in two years, as opposed to putting in the same resources and having someone for 25 years? Is that, in any way, mandated above the deputy head?

[Karen Ellis]

I'm not aware of any specific mandate on geographic selection in areas. What I can say to you is that our policies, our guidance, and our advice to departments is to sit down and think holistically about the whole picture, which would encompass such questions as where you're going to train people and where the mix is.

There is certainly a level of reflection and responsibility to decision-making at the departmental level, but we wouldn't have a list of specific criteria. As a central agency we're offering broad policy guidance, and because the regime shift was to give ownership and to get the whole leadership in a department doing this, they really do have the responsibility. They're accountable for how that department runs.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

We've identified here—and we believe it is a very serious problem—the high levels of turnover and the investment that is made in people who then maybe move to other departments or maybe go to the private sector. It is a major cost to the taxpayers and a major impediment to our being able to provide a functional public service. We would certainly like the issue of turnover to be part of any planning process; otherwise, it seems to me that the planning process is going to be functionally irrelevant.

Geographic location is certainly a factor. How do we ensure that we're not just blowing smoke here, and that some deputy department head somewhere along the line looks at a list of seven or eight criteria and says we'd better tick that box off and look at this before making a decision?

[Karen Ellis]

I talked about renewal. Our clerk is really leading deputies, and really expecting much better work year over year on truly holistic planning that looks at all the angles. It would have to include those kinds of considerations. When you have a department with a lot of regional operations, they should be looking at—and I'm sure they do look at— the mix and where they do training.

Something I've noticed about the movement of people—and I've been in eight or nine departments, so this is based on my own experience—is that many people, when they move, usually move largely within the same department, and then there is a certain proportion of movement between departments, so in terms of the investment that's made.... That's why I'm so keen on real discussion around employee development in every work unit, because you help people plan how to invest.

We invest in somebody's training and learning a job. We'd like them to make that contribution for a decent amount of time, and then if they move on to another part of the organization, they're still with us, and their skills and investment are still giving us something good in the system.

We do have movement, but a lot of movement is within the same department; some movement is between departments. You still have trained and formed people to be able to produce good work for the public service. As I said, our departure rate overall is lower than that in the private sector. We actually have quite a high level of retention in the public service.

I would also emphasize that we're aware of the challenges, but I wouldn't say we're in a crisis. This is serious. These are trends we have to pay attention to. What we work on in the agency, which is what the clerk is pushing people to do, is to say, this isn't simply the job of the human resources department anymore; this is your job, line manager. This is your job to take ownership of these questions, and to be paying attention to them, and to be managing them. To have a high-performing public service, you have to make sure you're getting the best out of people, and that they feel they have a career path.

There are two sides, and people have to have the discussion. The worst thing is if you're not having that dialogue and discussion, and somebody feels they're not being utilized fully, and they're dissatisfied and may move on. We still, hopefully, will get them somewhere else in the system, but I go back to that “six-pack”— the good leadership, the good management, the career development. These are the basics. We need to just keep making sure they become more and more systematic through the system.

In my case, I've had good people who have managed me through my career and have helped me figure out what to do, but I've also spent good amounts of time in each place so that I could build my strength as I went. So I'm very grateful for my own experience, and I think there are many who have good experience, and others for whom we need to do better. This is really person-to-person good management. This is how you do it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I'm going to take privilege here and add something to what Mr. Angus was saying.

What role does having most of the decision-makers living in the large centres, with much larger staffs around them, play in putting them in a much better position for promotion? Sometimes I get the sense that that's why some of the decisions are made. They're not looked at, for instance, on turnover. It's more a case of, well, you know, if I have all these people working for me here, I'm going to do much better. So the decisions sometimes are taking in that function.

Coming from the regions—and I've been in politics now for a long time—I can tell you there is always this pressure to remove the jobs from the regions and bring them to the larger centres. I can't tell you the number of times there's been that kind of pressure going on across the country. I think if you talk to anybody who represents the regions, they're going to tell you the same thing.

So I add that, because while you may have a great plan, if your senior person feels that it's better for their future to have all the staff under them in that particular place, you're not going to get the same kind of decision making.

[A voice]

It's empire-building.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

It's empire-building. It's natural. It's human nature. I think we suffer from that in many instances.

[Karen Ellis]

I had never worked in human resources before I came to this job. I had four years at National Defence, where I was practising as a senior manager. I would say that I have come to appreciate how important the leadership is on things such as those you're talking about. The tone is set by the leader for the value-based public service and the values in human resources management staffing.

This new regime I talked about is value based: fairness, access, and transparency are in the preamble to the legislation. So the more leadership in an organization, the more engagement, the more setting of clear expectations about how they want people to make decisions and communicate with employees--that is how we change it.

I'm not giving you a simple, easy answer on a specific, because I'm telling you that this isn't a simple, easy world. It's a world where we have to keep pushing, we have to keep focused, we have to keep expecting our leaders to walk the talk and to basically expect that the leaders at different levels are doing this.

When it comes to the human resources piece and decision-making, for me it's the engagement of the collective. The more you have the team sitting together talking about common challenges and issues, then the more you can get to topics like these: how are we doing this, how are we making decisions, and what do we want to stand for in our organization.

I really believe there is progress being made. I've been immersed in it now for 18 months, and I have to say it's coming. It's not perfect in every place, and people will say we're not where we need to be, but there's a level of engagement and priority that's been put on these issues now by our clerk, on renewal. I have to say that at the agency pretty well all our work is involved in trying to help departments make progress.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I'd like it if you could add that little piece about considering the regions whenever there is a new expansion with a call centre somewhere. I noticed that there's some of that happening, but I don't think there's enough of it.

I'm going to go to Ms. Karetak-Lindell,

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you.

I'm sitting in for someone, but it is a very interesting topic.

We're sometimes confused as to how far some of these policies go into arm's-length agencies. To be more specific, I represent Nunavut, and we have land claims agreements that have specific requirements concerning Inuit hiring. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be a clear policy on how far those policies go, whether it's Parks Canada or Canada Post, for example. The more arm's-length you go from the central part, the more it seems to be a selective or optional interpretation of what that means at the hiring level.

We're aiming for proportional hiring with the Inuit population in our territory, but we sometimes have difficulty with some federal government departments that say that policy doesn't apply to them because they're, let's say, Canada Post, and they're arm's-length, or Parks Canada has its own guidelines.

So I think there needs to be a clearer policy on what you mean by government departments. Are they part of the central group, so that policy applies to them? Yes? What is the policy for Parks Canada, Canada Post, or some of the other agencies that are up there, as we set up more agencies that seem to be a little bit arm's-length?

As far as people up there are concerned, the agencies are still the Government of Canada, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, sometimes it's a very grey area and it's different for each agency. Again, there seems to be selective interpretation.

This is very specific, and I don't mind if you get to back to me later.

Here is another very quick point. I noticed in the information that the Canadian Human Rights Commission ensures equal opportunity for employment of the four designated groups. I'm assuming you have hiring priority policies for those groups. Do you get any complaints when you have hiring priority policies like affirmative action?

[Karen Ellis]

I'll tell you what I do know about the special operating agencies and crown corporations, versus the 70 or so departments and agencies that our policies would cover, and my staff will correct me if I'm wrong. We can certainly provide a follow-up page to the committee.

But you're quite right, things like Canada Post...that's a crown corporation, so it really is governed in and of itself, and our policies would not apply to them. Many of them will have similar things, but they really do run on their own.

You have something like the Canada Revenue Agency, which is a special operating agency. It's still part of the Government of Canada, but it's been set up with a different kind of governance.

I won't get technical, but under a certain schedule of the Financial Administration Act, there's a whole list of departments and agencies that are considered to be part of the employer of the Government of Canada, and run by the Treasury Board as the employer. That's the group to which our policies would apply as the general policies. They have to work with those policies and set up their own processes to support them inside, but our policies would apply to that large group.

We can follow up for you there, but you're quite right, there are some differences.

Just to be clear, any complaints about human rights—whether that has to do with employment equity groups or any of the grounds under the Human Rights Act—those would go to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and not the agency. We do not receive those complaints.

However, in my area, I am responsible for the policy on employment equity for the public service—that large group of departments—as well as for the duty to accommodate, both of which are related in some ways and very, very important, especially in today's increasingly diverse workforce. We do that general policy, we provide some support and guidance, and we monitor departmental performance, but the departments are responsible for their results on how they are doing effective hiring of equity groups, as well as all kinds of other considerations in their recruitment.

So as a public service overall, we are meeting the workforce availability for persons with disabilities, for women, and for aboriginal people. We do not yet meet—well enough—the workforce availability for visible minorities. I did a couple of committees in the last week, talking about some of those issues.

But the bottom line is that we have to look to deputy heads—starting with the planning, and then how do they do their recruiting—to try to make sure they can build their workforce to be representative. One thing I would emphasize is that we've seen that when people do really thoughtful planning, they get very, very good results on the employment equity groups. Some of our percentages on those centrally run management trainee programs are fantastic.

My point is that when you think about it, plan for it, and seek out that talent, you can build a very good representative work unit. I guess what I'm saying is that we just have to keep working on that year after year.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much.

We will now move on to Ms. Faille.