Human Resources Committee on Sept. 29th, 2011

[Carolina Giliberti]

That's right, so over--

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

So there is a mass exodus from the centres to the bigger centres. Is that correct?

[Carolina Giliberti]

We have a very planned workforce adjustment, such that positions for those people who are retiring will not be backfilled. So it's done through attrition. As those positions are not backfilled, in the areas where we're actually going to have growth, they will be filled. So either through attrition--

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Certainly, if you're at a lower rate of automation now, by doing this you're going to run into all kinds of problems.

[Carolina Giliberti]

Exactly. So we're phasing our attrition and the people who are moving and backfilling based on our automation releases. So as Mr. Thompson's shop does automation rollouts, we are carefully monitoring our workforce. We have a number of management controls, such as vacancy management committees and knowing exactly where our staff are, as well as their eligibility for either retirement or attrition, or other business lines they can maybe work in. We are carefully monitoring all of that in line with the automation agenda that Mr. Thompson's shop is rolling out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Your time is up.

We have time for one more questioner. Do you wish to go ahead?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

I'm going to share my time with Mr. Menegakis.

Going back to the earlier comments on HRSDC, the Prime Minister has made it clear that direct transfers to Canadians will not be affected by the strategic operating review, just so we're clear on that.

One of the Service Canada outreach centres is in my riding. It's superb. It definitely aids in reaching higher volumes, which I truly appreciate.

There's one thing you didn't go into detail about, but I think the committee members would appreciate knowing. You do an excellent job of monitoring your quality and making sure you are meeting that 90% or more--and from some of the statistics I've seen, it's even more--and of reaching Canadians about the things they need at the right time and the right place. Could you maybe comment on the monitoring and the quality control that you have?

[Carolina Giliberti]

Yes. We are very committed to delivering high-quality service that meets the needs of citizens. Really, what it means for us is listening to clients tell us about our services and how we can improve, as well as looking to our employees and a series of management tools that we've put in place to make sure we have good integration between what we hear from our clients and employees and our service improvements.

The work is really being done in Cheryl's shop, so I'll let Cheryl expand a bit on some of the quality assurance we've put in place.

[Cheryl Fisher]

Thank you.

Quality assurance for us is really about continuous service improvement and about always making sure that we're responding to citizen needs and expectations. One of the key ways we do that is through feedback. This actually was acknowledged in the Auditor General's report last year. We have a number of feedback mechanisms--it's really quite rich--and I will name a few of the key ones.

In every Service Canada office we have client comment cards, and we pay very close attention to them when people take the time to write down their comments. We take them into consideration. We also have “Your Comments Matter!” online; we get a lot of feedback there. We have the 1-800-O-Canada number, and also the office for client satisfaction, which takes client comments into consideration.

Really importantly, I think that our mystery shopper research and our client satisfaction surveys are also key, being among the more quantitative measures that we use to monitor how we're doing and how we're meeting client expectations.

One of the key recommendations or outcomes of the Auditor General's report was to consider comments from employees. We've just launched a process called the voice of the employee, using social media and some internal online methods to efficiently gather the collective experiences of our employees to improve service.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

There are two minutes left.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you very much for your presentation here today. It was very thorough. I've certainly learned a lot. It's nice to see it in one document in front of us.

I have a service centre in Richmond Hill, my riding. I see it as an extension of the constituency work that we do in Richmond Hill. It's absolutely fantastic. I'm very, very pleased with the service, and the collaboration and communication between my office and Service Canada is certainly of a very high quality.

I did note some statistics from your presentation that I find rather amazing, if not astounding. There are 67 million online visits to the site. Just to put that into perspective, that's 183,561 per day. Perhaps more astounding are the 58 million calls handled by Service Canada annually. That's 158,904 calls per day.

My question is a rather simple one if you happen to have the statistics. Annually, we accept more than 250,000 people into Canada—new Canadians. Are you finding that new Canadians are using the service across the country?

[Carolina Giliberti]

Yes, I think it is part of our efforts to make sure that Canadians know about our services and, certainly, when we look at some of the activities that we're trying to do with bundling, we're hoping our services can be enriched by making sure that we meet their needs.

I think Cheryl might have some things to add on what we do on--

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much for your excellent work.

[Cheryl Fisher]

Are we out of time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Do you have a comment to conclude with? We are at exactly the end of our time.

You've been very informative, which we certainly appreciate. I'll let you make a final remark and then we'll close.

[Cheryl Fisher]

I just wanted to assure the committee and the member that newcomers to Canada are a key client segment for Service Canada. We have seven client segments, and newcomers are one of the key client segments. So, yes, we pay a lot of attention to them and they do come to see us.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for your appearance.

The meeting is adjourned.