Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 03

INTERVIEW ees self-identify. However, that’s a bit of a misleading piece of data because we know that participation amongst persons with disabilities in labor force is much lower than for the rest of the population. So we have work to do there, and we have ac- cessibility legislation that is expected to be tabled by the government. When that happens I think it’ll be clear that the fed- eral government has to play a stronger leadership role as an employer, and we have some work that we can do here at the Public Service Commission. We are find- ing that in our programs, the application rates for persons with disability is lower than what we’d expect. We’re struggling to figure out why that is. Is it that we’re not seen as an employer of choice or are people afraid to self-identify because they don’t think they’ll be accommodated in the workplace? Visible minorities are an interesting sit- uation. When we go to processes such as our student programs or Post-Secondary Recruitment program, we get a healthy level of applications. Generally we are appointing above the labor market avail- ability, but there are still some issues to address. Recently, we experimented with a Anonymized Recruitment Pilot Project. You may have heard about it. We used an anonymized approach for the screening of applicants and we tested that approach to see if that led to better screening out- comes for visible minorities. That pilot was non-conclusive in that it did not show any difference in anonymizing applicant information. We’re going to be using our audit responsibilities to do further work to better understand the barriers specifically impacting visible minorities. In the spirit of reconciliation, we have work to do in terms of not just recruiting or attracting Indigenous People to join the Public Service but keeping them. I saw some statistics a few months ago which indicated that more Indigenous People are leaving the Public Service on an an- nual basis than are joining. That’s very worrisome. That goes beyond just staffing and recruitment, it goes into what kind of supportive environment do they find? What kind of development do they have access to? Learning respect for culture, for language … those are all issues that at the end of the day will affect our ability to be able to not just attract Indigenous People but retain and develop them. In that context, we were very happy to take over an initiative launched a year or two ago by the Treasury Board Secretar- iat: the Indigenous Student Employment Opportunity Program. As part of our sum- mer employment programs, we have a specifically targeted program that aims at attracting Indigenous students into pub- lic service jobs across the country. We’re running it ourselves for the first time as a national program this year. That’s an example of a targeted approach to try to address some of those gaps. We also have an Aboriginal Center of Excellence here at the Commission that takes a look at all of our programs, working to ensure there are no barriers, and that our testing and assessment methods are culturally appro- priate. Q: You mentioned the work that you’re doing on the Anonymized Recruitment Pilot Project, and I’m wondering if there’s any other innovations that you’re seeing, ei- ther across the country, in Canada or globally that kind of excites you and that you could incorpo- rate into our HR practices here in Canada? Over the last few years we’ve experiment- ed with some pilot projects and have been inspired by other jurisdictions. We have a lot in common with Westminster-style governments, so we are constantly looking at Australia, New Zealand, and the UK to see what we can learn from their experi- ence. We also are looking at how the pri- vate sector, in some cases, manages these challenges. Even though we have a dif- ferent mandate, there are perhaps some techniques that we could adopt. At the Commission, we like to experi- ment first, or be part of the first wave of experimentation when it comes to new techniques. One we’re currently piloting, on a small scale, is with respect to em- ployee referral programs. This is a way the private sector attracts or finds talent in particularly hard to staff positions by sim- ply tapping into their employees’ knowl- edge and networks, and seeing if their employees know somebody they could refer. Now, of course, you have to protect against nepotism, and so that’s something we are building into the pilot. We’re look- ing at doing this for the external hiring of psychologists. That’s an important part of our workforce here, and they’re hard to recruit. Our efforts with recruiting at uni- versities over the last two years have not been very successful, so this is an area that does warrant a different type of approach or thinking. We’re going to test it and see if that’s something that could be applied to a public service setting. We’re also looking at completely trans- forming the experience that hiring man- agers and candidates have when they access our recruitment platform, which dates back to the 80’s and is certainly not adapted to the needs of today. So we’re working on prototypes, applying User Ex- perience principles, to come up with what that new system of the future might look like. Definitely inspired by the ‘Amazons’ and the ‘Turbo Taxes’, in terms of that intuitive experience that you have when you’re using those systems. We are doing interesting work that could significantly transform that experi- ence, and in that process reduce the time it takes to staff positions. Lots to do, but we are up to it. May/June 2018 // Canadian Government Executive / 13