I do raise a concern about the area of turnover. I have to say that it's turnover within the public service. Overall, we see an increase in departures from the public service more at the senior levels and the executive levels than at the lower levels, but nothing that is unusually alarming to any other workforce. It's just that we're not used to it in the public service, so it's something one has to pay attention to.
I do raise the issue of the overall level of movement I'm seeing within the public service. That is a concern. We took a rather rough estimate because we use the Hay system. We looked at the job that people had at the beginning of the year and the job they held at the end of the year and we asked if there was a change. It could be a lateral movement, it could be the same level, it could be up or it could be down. We've seen a steady increase in this movement.
This year, 2006-07, we saw it at 40%. The year before it was at 35%, and the year before that it was at 30%. So we've seen a steady increase. We've seen some of the occupational groups much higher. The human resources group, personnel group, is 76%. The executives are sitting there at 58%. For us, this is a lot of movement. As a manager of an organization myself, I really feel this, because you always worry about training your staff and making sure you have the complement of people to be there to do the work. When you have a lot of rotation it builds in inefficiencies for you.