Government Operations Committee on Sept. 20th, 2018

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

I'm going to come to the question I'm about to ask.

Much of the recommendation that I heard is very system-focused and very technology-focused. You're hoping to be able to reduce the wait time by about 10%.

Can you help me understand how implementing this system would reduce time for defining assessment criteria, which is taking a long time right now?

[Patrick Borbey]

Again, imagine we're thinking about what the users have told us they would want. Imagine that the manager has just gone and cut all kinds of steps because he or she was able to create and post the job through the common construct language in the system. That manager would actually be guided towards the assessment tools that are available online. Again, rather than calling their HR adviser and asking what kind of test to administer to bring this 350 down, the system would actually guide them towards existing tests. These are tests already in place that the Public Service Commission, through our Personnel Psychology Centre, keeps updating and delivering. That would immediately....

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

You are going to build a repository of assessment criteria by type of job. When you post the job, by default the assessment criteria are going to be there. Okay. That cuts it.

I have another question. I know it doesn't have anything to do with hiring, but I have a reason for asking the question.

On average, how long does it take to train someone after he or she is onboarded?

[Patrick Borbey]

That falls more into the world of my colleague Carl.

[Carl Trottier]

I'm not sure I would be able to answer that. It would all depend on which job a person is hired for and the confidence of the....

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Let's say it's for an entry-level job. Just make it really simple.

[Carl Trottier]

Again, I won't be able to speak to the training, but what normally happens with an entry-level job is that an onboarding takes place. The onboarding is really about welcoming an individual to the workplace. This individual has been found qualified, has been hired, and is arriving. We want to make sure the technology is enabled and the systems are all up.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Would this be two weeks, three weeks, a month?

[Carl Trottier]

That's on day one.

Our objective on day one is to ensure an employee has the IT equipment they need. They meet their manager that day and have their job explained to them.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

You're hoping that training and onboarding won't take too long. Not weeks, but....

[Carl Trottier]

This would be within weeks. The onboarding is the beginning, but within weeks you want them to go through an orientation program that tells them what is what with regard to their job.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

On average, how long does an entry-level person stay in the job?

[Carl Trottier]

Again, I don't have that information here. I'm sorry.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Since we are investing 197 days, which I understand we are trying to shorten, I was hoping to get an idea of how long they are actually staying in this job. You said there is mobility, but if they are not staying in this job, there is another element that we really need to consider aside from the fact that it's taking us 197 days. If they are staying in the job for about four or five months—even if I assume 197 days is the elapsed time, not business days—it's going to take me 28 weeks to onboard someone. If, for whatever reason—we can probe into that in another study—they are not staying in the job for longer than four or five months—and I can share some of the stories from my experience—then we have an issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'm afraid you won't be able to share too many, because we're out of time.

Colleagues, we have a little bit of time left. I know that Madam Ratansi would like a round of questions. I'm going to cut them down to five minutes per. I'm not sure how many other questions we have, but we'll start with Madam Ratansi. If there are others when we're finished with her five minutes, we'll try to accommodate.

Go right ahead, please.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you very much. I think it was Ms. Yip who wanted to ask the question, but I will start off.

It was interesting listening to Mr. Jowhari when he was asking the questions and saying you're very system-focused and very technology-focused.

I used to do the hiring practices for the Province of Ontario. We used to look for internal auditors, and if you didn't have the right word in your application form, the system would throw it out.

How have you put into place checks and balances to ensure the good ones don't disappear on us? It's very critical. Technology is not a panacea for human eyes, although we have all looked at technology as a panacea.

Could you explain that to me?

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes, and I agree with you. Our vision is to ensure that the technology that we provide will be there to facilitate human decisions, not to replace human decisions. I absolutely agree with you. That's part of our design criteria.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

The comment I get from a lot of people who have applied to the public service is that they never received a response. The reason is that when the application comes, in my experience, it doesn't even come to a human. It is fed first into the system to discern whether it's an application that is even relevant to the position.

If my letter does not dot the i's and cross the t's, I think that's where.... I was listening to what Mr. McCauley was asking you, because if I did not know how the public service works, my application would be “I am this, that, blah, blah. I'd like to do blah, blah, blah,” and it wouldn't match that systems analytical tool. Have you ensured that the first round of your applications are actually processed by a human being, or is it a robot?

[Patrick Borbey]

There's no technology that I know of that exists in the public service that does that. All applications that come externally or internally are reviewed by individuals, by people who actually sift through and sort and read the very lengthy application and determine whether that person meets that first screening.

Remember we talked about the screening process for anonymous recruitment. Those are actually individuals who are going through that application and making that decision with, in some cases, some bias, as we talked about. That's the current system as it exists. Having done it myself, I can tell you that it is extremely lengthy and extremely tiring, and it's extremely easy to say at the end of the day, “Okay, I'm going to leave this aside because my eyes can't focus anymore.” That's part of what we're trying to change. Again, the complex application—to have to respond to 10 different asset criteria or even to describe the criteria—really is too complicated.

The other thing we want is to have managers, when they're interacting with potential candidates, talk more about what their potential is and less about what they've done, and have more of a conversation about what potential candidates could contribute in the future. Again, that's part of merit; it's not just what you bring today to the organization, but what you could bring in the future.

That's more complicated, and we have people in our Personnel Psychology Centre looking at ways that we could systematically assess that. It's much more complicated than just ticking a box that you can write briefing notes for ministers or whatever it may be.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

That's good to hear, but my next question is this: Have you reduced the complexity of the requirements? If you're applying for an administrative position and you put in bureaucratese.... Has the bureaucratese been reduced? Do we have a comfort zone? Do you have some ways that we can check it?

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes, and we've tried. We've had some pilots to look at using plain language. I don't know if I talked about it at this committee, but we compared job ads that we had to standards in top-performing organizations and determined that we rated something like a point zero or a 0.5 compared to 70 or 80 or whatever on this tool that we used.

We've made some modifications. We've attempted to jazz things up a little bit, make it more attractive, talk more about the organization that people would be joining rather than warning them about meeting all these criteria.

There's still much more work to do. We still have managers who fall into the comfort of saying, “If I add five more criteria, I'm going to reduce that 350 down to a manageable level” or something like that, not understanding that they're actually complicating the process and alienating good candidates that normally should apply.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we still have a little bit of time left. If there are any questions.... It would be a Conservative question if there is one.

Mr. McCauley, you have five minutes, no more.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Have you looked at Bill C-81, which we're debating right now? It's the new persons with disability act.

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes, that's the accessibility act.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Have you looked at how that's going to affect us, or affect you?