Government Operations Committee on Sept. 20th, 2018

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Order.

Colleagues, while Paul is handing out the last of the speaking notes, I would like to welcome everyone here. The meeting is now in public.

We have before us representatives from the Public Service Commission and the Treasury Board Secretariat, who will be providing a briefing to committee members on the challenges the federal government and the public service may be facing on the recruitment, hiring, and perhaps even retention of public service employees, particularly younger employees, because we do have an aging population not only in the general populace but also in our public service. This may be a very timely discussion.

I understand, Mr. Borbey, that you will be going first. I would ask you to please introduce your colleagues and make your opening statements. You will be followed by Mr. Trottier.

If you can keep your comments to about 10 minutes or less, that will allow committee members much more time to pose questions to all of you. Thank you again for being here.

Mr. Borbey, the floor is yours.

[Patrick Borbey, President, Public Service Commission]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for your invitation to provide a briefing on the current state of public service hiring. You have rightfully honed in on a key issue, at least the way I was briefed: the length of time it takes to appoint someone to a job.

I'm pleased to be joined here today by Michael Morin, who is responsible for the staffing policy at the Public Service Commission, and Véronique Gaudreau, who is responsible for our central recruitment programs.

Canada's public service is built on the foundation of merit and non-partisanship. I am proud that the Public Service Commission has been safeguarding these two principles for over 110 years now. As you know, Canadians and governments alike have been well served by our professional public service. This is recognized here and abroad, with Canada's public service ranked first in last year's Civil Service Effectiveness Index.

One key aspect of public service hiring is that departments and agencies operate under a delegated model. Deputy heads are responsible for the hiring practices within their departments. They have a great deal of flexibility when it comes to how employees are hired. This is recognized in the Public Service Employment Act and in the Public Service Commission's policies and practices.

Reducing the time it takes to hire someone is something that I'm personally seized with and that the entire Public Service Commission is working on. In fact, the number of days to complete an external recruitment process is the very first indicator listed in our departmental plan.

Based on the most recent data, we have established that it takes, on average, 197 days to hire a new employee using an external advertised competitive process. This is from the time the opportunity is posted on our GC Jobs site to the day that employee reports to work. It includes such steps as second language testing and obtaining the necessary security clearances.

We can agree that 197 days is unacceptably long and that this makes for a frustrating experience for applicants, hiring managers and HR advisers alike. We lose many good candidates along the way, and positions remain unfilled for long periods, impacting service to Canadians.

I should clarify that this measurement does not apply to a number of other mechanisms, such as lateral moves, appointments from inventories, student hiring, non-advertised appointments, and appointments of individuals with priority such as our veterans, all of which are much quicker ways to hire.

Nonetheless, as we want to see more external staffing in the public service and to provide opportunities for the best and brightest from across the country, this is a baseline that we must and that we will significantly improve.

And I'm convinced, Mr. Chair, that we can modernize and speed up the hiring process while maintaining and in fact strengthening merit, transparency, fairness, diversity and regional representation. Flexibility, creativity and merit are not and cannot be seen as mutually exclusive.

Two years ago, we took important steps to reduce the administrative burden placed on departments and agencies when it came to staffing, with what we called, and still call, the new direction in staffing.

The number of Public Service Commission policies was reduced from 12 to one. We have encouraged departments and agencies to simplify their job ads. Deputy heads have been exercising their discretion to hire based on their own circumstances. We recognize that the employees needed to protect Canada's borders are different from those who work in a call centre or those working in a medical lab.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to hiring. However, hiring decisions continue to be based on merit and non-partisanship.

The cumbersome staffing culture that has developed over time will not change overnight, and it is something we are committed to improve in every way. There has been noticeable progress in many areas, but there is still much room for improvement when it comes to simplifying staffing and we will continue to exert our influence across the hiring system. For example, I have recently had discussions with some deputy heads who now consistently succeed in staffing positions externally in less than 100 days.

We know that the right policy framework and the commitment of deputy heads is not enough to turn this ship around. Not when we are relying on antiquated recruitment programs, tools and systems. Since my arrival at the Public Service Commission a year and a half ago, I have placed a priority on modernizing our recruitment toolkit starting with bringing GCJobs into the digital era.

We have engaged with job applicants, hiring managers and HR professionals from across the country to make sure their needs are understood and form the basis of changes we are making to tools, systems and procedures. The result we are seeking is leading-edge technologies based on user testing, user-centric design and modern prototype development.

This work has provided us with the detailed user requirements to allow us to move forward and start working on creating a modern, digital recruitment platform to replace the current system, which has been in use for decades. This includes improved communications with candidates and managers. It will be highly intuitive and easy to navigate. I'd like to think that it will be an experience much like that offered by large companies such as Amazon, which offer convenient, efficient and quick online shopping experiences. Imagine, for example, a “one-click apply” user experience.

We want a system where a candidate's profile—education, qualifications, official language results, confirmation of security levels and accommodation requirements—follow them so they don't need to provide it every single time they apply or are hired for a Government of Canada job.

A system where they apply once and the information submitted can be used multiple times for similar jobs.

A system that provides real-time regular feedback on the status of an application.

A system that provides hiring managers up-to-date labour market information, to help educate their choice of recruitment strategies.

A system that provides access to state-of-the-art assessment tools such as unsupervised Internet testing.

And one that is inclusive and accessible by design.

We are also experimenting at other points in the hiring process. For example, we are piloting changes to the second-language evaluation process and looking at an employee referral program. Other departments are also doing innovative work. The talent cloud pilot project and the free agents program are two examples.

Although we recognize that we need to continue to improve our recruitment and hiring practices, I should note that an impressive number of people from all parts of the country, from all walks of life and with a wide range of educational profiles, experience and skills, including language capacity, apply to our various recruitment programs every year.

In fact, last year, 325,000 unique applicants demonstrated their interest in the public service. Almost 16,000 applied through our post-secondary recruitment program. When it comes to students, 47,000 applied and nearly 13,000 were hired. The number of students hired has increased in each of the past five years.

I know we will have additional opportunities for ongoing conversations about progress on changing the staffing culture and building the tools needed to modernize staffing.

We expect that Statistics Canada will release the results of our Staffing and Non-partisanship Survey in the coming weeks. These results will be used to further identify staffing trends and inform improvements to staffing policies and practices. Our 2017-2018 Annual Report to Parliament will be tabled later this fall, as will our Departmental Results Report. Both these reports will be referred to you for examination.

By simplifying staffing, we will support efforts to improve diversity and inclusion within the public service. We're on the right track. We've improved the policy framework and we are modernizing our tools. Ultimately, these will work together to help change the culture, which in many ways is still risk-averse and focused on short-term needs. It places too much emphasis on internal staffing rather than recruiting the best talent from wherever it may be, and it may come from across the country.

Rest assured that the Public Service Commission maintains a strong oversight role, including our audit and investigative functions, which are important in safeguarding merit and non-partisanship.

Thank you once again for your interest in public service hiring. We would be pleased to provide further information and answer your questions.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, Mr. Borbey.

Mr. Trottier, you have 10 minutes.

[Carl Trottier, Assistant Deputy Minister, Governance, Planning and Policy Sector, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Thank you very much for inviting me here today to provide members of the committee with an update on recruitment initiatives.

As stated in the clerk's most recent report, “When done right, recruitment can act as an accelerant to bring about change.” This is why excelling at recruitment is such an important focus as we continue to improve our recruitment, development and retention practices.

As touched upon by my colleague, recruitment is a shared responsibility among deputy ministers, the Public Service Commission, and the office of the chief human resources officer.

The efforts mentioned by Mr. Borbey, as well as those undertaken by the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, are key to addressing demographic changes, planning for the future of work, changes to the nature of work and the workplace, and building and maintaining the capacity to meet the expectations of Canadian citizens.

The Public Service of Canada is strongly committed to recruiting, developing and retaining a high performing workforce that can deliver on the government's current and future priorities.

The approach we have taken to people management and recruitment includes reviewing and testing new and innovative ways to attract top talent for a high-performing public service that supports and strengthens diversity and inclusion and explores new ways to serve all Canadians. Greater diversity and inclusion have been linked to better results for organizations, including higher productivity, lower turnover, better decision-making informed by diverse perspectives, and enhanced overall performance and results.

Canada's demographic landscape is changing. There are currently nine million youth across the country, representing approximately one quarter of the population. The indigenous population is projected to grow at twice the rate of the general population.

Immigration accounts for two-thirds of Canada's current population. According to the 2016 census, if current population trends continue, the representation of visible minorities in Canadian society is projected to grow from 31.2% to 35.9% in the next two decades.

The public service must keep pace with these changes.

Budget 2018 proposed the creation of the Public Service Centre on Diversity, Inclusion and Wellness to support departments and agencies in creating safe, healthy, diverse and inclusive workplaces.

The Treasury Board Secretariat has been collaborating with key partners, and is developing a diversity and inclusion strategy as well as a multi-year action plan, including targeted recruitment efforts, that will serve the public service to increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Overall, the public service is representative in each of the four employment equity designated groups as of March 31, 2016. We are proud that this overall representation has been sustained for the past four years, but we observe that gaps persist in certain occupational groups and levels in some departments and agencies, and efforts continue to address these.

An important part of improving diversity and inclusion in the public service includes exploring efforts and ideas that target recruitment and eliminate barriers in areas where we know that representation gaps continue to exist, such as women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields; visible minorities in scientific and professional groups; as well as indigenous persons in executive ranks.

Through targeted recruitment, we will also be able to attract other segments of the Canadian population, including youth and LGBTQ2+, among others.

I am very proud of the success of the federal student employment programs.

These programs provide students with meaningful work experience, exposure to a wide range of jobs and future opportunities in the federal government.

They also allow managers to identify potential recruits with diverse backgrounds and skill sets, who can be later hired as full-time public servants.

I want to highlight two targeted recruitment initiatives that are already under way.

First, the indigenous summer employment opportunity, now in its third year, is designed to create a positive working experience for indigenous students across Canada. It was first launched as a pilot, and allowed 33 students to come to the national capital region for a summer work term. More recently, the Public Service Commission expanded this program nationally, and 180 students were hired this year across Canada.

Second, the youth accessibility summer employment opportunity is a recruitment, onboarding, and engagement initiative originally piloted in 2017. This initiative was designed to create a positive and inclusive work experience for post-secondary students with disabilities, and created greater awareness in participating organizations about the opportunities and supports available to employees with disabilities.

The initiative used various approaches to recruitment, with an enhanced onboarding process with the goal of providing support to the hiring manager to better integrate young employees with disabilities within the public service.

In the first year, departments hired 19 students. This was expanded to 61 this year.

We will build on our efforts to expand our learning from these experiences, and apply the best practices to other targeted recruitment efforts and segments, including youth and mid-career professionals.

Our focus remains on ensuring that we have the right people in the right jobs at the right time, and that we are innovative in our approaches to attract talent of all ages.

There will also be times when we will need to target specific technical experience that is best suited to mid-career-level candidates. We have mechanisms in place to bring in this talent through the interchange Canada program, Canada's free agents program, and the PCO fellowship program.

These and other innovative recruitment initiatives help fast-track the ability to bring in or mobilize new talent as we work in partnership with departments and the Public Service Commission to increase talent access.

Once new employees are recruited, it is also imperative to ensure that effective support tools and practices are in place to support onboarding and capacity for new recruits, including talent management, learning plans and the development of career management tools.

I want to close by saying that we are constantly working to improve and find new ways to engage and recruit talent. Further work is needed with respect to engagement of stakeholders outside the government, such as community organizations, professional associations, universities, colleges, technical schools and private sector leaders in talent acquisition.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

I think you are all aware of the drill that we go through with questions here at committees.

We'll start with seven-minute rounds, starting with the government side.

Mr. Drouin, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome again to the committee, Mr. Borbey.

I also welcome you, Ms. Gaudreau, Mr. Trottier and Mr. Morin.

Of course, the figure that stands out is the 197-day figure. That is the time that is required to hire a new employee from the day on which the position is published on GCJobs.

Does that include the part of the process that begins before the position is advertised? For instance, a director general may need more employees or human resources in order to reach an objective. What happens before that 197-day period? We know that the process can be longer than that.

[Patrick Borbey]

Once the decision to staff a position has been made, and once it has been posted publicly, it takes an average of 197 days to hire a new employee. Prior planning of human resources remains necessary to ensure that the available resources are taken into consideration and that the manager choses the right staffing tool. All of that work must be done upstream. You are correct to say that the process is more complex than what we measure.

We chose to establish that starting point and that end point for our calculations. Afterwards, we will need to establish a baseline. Finally, we will see what improvements need to be made to the process in order to shorten some steps.

A lot of people are participating in the process, at each step. The hiring manager has a role to play. Human resource professionals provide advice. There is also the Public Service Commission. There are others involved, like the people who are responsible for security in the departments. So there are a lot of stakeholders. Aligning all of these stakeholders to work together on a strategy to rationalize the process represents quite an effort.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Do you act as the central agency to align the different criteria and the different agencies?

[Patrick Borbey]

We are responsible to Parliament for the quality of the Canadian public service staffing system. Even though it is a delegated system, and there are a lot of players, we chose to assume the role of lead agency. We must exercise a direct influence, and, in certain cases, an indirect influence.

I spoke about a change of culture. We also most convince the managers that when there is an emergency, they must not completely set aside the staffing process, and come back to it two or three weeks later, when candidates are waiting for the next step.

We are going to have to impose a certain discipline, but above all we have to establish a partnership.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I am sure that everyone around the table here has heard horror stories. For instance, it has happened that people were called back two or three years later. They said thank you, but declined the offer since they had found other jobs. That may be an extreme case, but the fact remains that there is a problem.

We have already discussed this in other committees. If we want to attract people of my generation, and children of the millennium, we have to be a lot quicker, especially since we are competing with Google, which can offer jobs on the spot to people who go to job fairs.

Are there any pilot projects in universities or elsewhere?

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes.

You are correct, but we must not forget the figure I gave earlier: 325,000 people applied for jobs in the public service. There are some 50,000 external appointments to the public service. There will always be a lack of balance in that way, but it means that we have a lot of choice, and quality candidates, which is good.

We set up an initiative with the University of Montreal, in Quebec. This shows that we can do things differently, and have instant staffing, so to speak, somewhat like Google.

Ms. Gaudreau, would you like to tell us more about it?

[Véronique Gaudreau, Director General, Central Programs and Regional Offices, Public Service Commission]

Yes, certainly. Thank you for the opportunity to add some details.

In March 2018, in co-operation with the University of Montreal and six departments, we organized a speed staffing event at the University of Montreal. We had chosen 56 positions to be staffed. Some of these positions were temporary, others were indeterminate, and others were linked to the cooperative education program. These positions were advertised in advance. We took the time to simplify the language, so that there would be no complications on that side, and so that the type of jobs we were offering would be clear to students and new graduates.

Three hundred people took part in that event. There were 67 on-site interviews. There was a whole system to coordinate and plan the event. We determined which people had the necessary skills for a given position. There was an on-site interview with a manager. When the manager indicated he had chosen a given candidate, we fingerprinted him or her and filled out the necessary security forms. At the end of this process, the candidate received a job offer on the spot. Of course, that offer was conditional on the result of the security investigation and language requirements, but the candidate knew that he had gotten a job. We received a multitude of positive comments and this event was a success. It was a pilot project.

You need a lot of partnerships. Currently, such programs allow us to go from transactions to relationships. We need such partnerships to understand to upstream needs, so that things can be aligned properly and candidates can be matched with positions according to their qualifications. People were surprised because in 35 minutes they received a conditional job offer.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Do you measure the retention rate?

[Véronique Gaudreau]

There were 32 conditional job offers.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Currently, are you measuring the retention rate per age category? We are told that millennials want to change jobs often. How can we create a culture within the Government of Canada to ensure that they can go from one department to another?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Answer in about 30 seconds, if you can.

[Patrick Borbey]

I don't have an answer on the retention rate.

I have to say that the mobility issue is very interesting. We will, in fact, be addressing it in our next annual report. There is indeed a great deal of mobility potential within the Government of Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McCauley, you have seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Borbey, welcome back again.

In a previous meeting with us, you discussed some of the issues attracting younger applicants to the public service, whether millennials or those who are younger. Can you briefly talk about some of your recruitment methods for that? I can't imagine we're doing a one-size-fits-all.

[Patrick Borbey]

No, but certainly our post-secondary recruitment campaign does very much target millennials, although there are also university graduates who are not millennials, so we don't discriminate.

Our student programs are targeting millennials, essentially, and those programs are growing. I was looking at the numbers. Of the indeterminate hires in the last year, almost 55% were under 35. These numbers are going to be released with our annual report.

we're making some progress, and this has been steadily improving over the last number of years.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do you get a sense that 55% is replacing people who have retired, or is that just replacing churn?

[Patrick Borbey]

This is 55% of the people we've hired externally into indeterminate positions.

Just to give you a sense, when it comes to students, 97% fall into the definition of millennials, but as I've said before, I think we're still significantly under-represented in terms of the millennial population, with those being 21% or 22% of our labour force compared about 34% in the broader labour force, so we have a lot of work to do.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Yes. That could very well be just the length of service of public servants as well, and there just aren't the openings available.

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes. Obviously we have a lot of people who are at the tail ends of their careers, people like me, at that age spectrum—I'll pick on myself—so it takes a little bit of time to turn that ship around.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Speaking on behalf of the middle-aged, hang in there.

In The Globe and Mail, there was an update on one of their old articles about nepotism in the public service, and it talks about nepotism in the standard term that we're used to, but also about job postings being tailored with specific people in mind. Could you address that?

It's funny, because I came across a great old Dilbert cartoon in which Alice, if anyone's familiar with Alice, talks about internal job postings. She sees a job she'd love and she says, “Experience required: a candidate must be a guy named Eric, pot-bellied, nearsighted, must drive a red Ford Bronco”, and Dilbert says, “Well, they might have someone in mind already.”

There was a report that came out before your time, before most of our time, about the nepotism issue, and I wonder if you could address how we're dealing with that ongoing issue of how job postings are getting tailored with someone specific in mind and are not making it to the general public, either to new people coming in or perhaps to people from other departments.