PS staffing issues aren't easy to fix
Re: Staffing irregularities in the public service on the rise, report says, Dec. 21.
I worked on (design and analysis) the Public Service Commission's staffing surveys for well over a decade, and read well over 40,000 comments from managers and internal job candidates. Despite sincere attempts to shorten the average time to fill an empty position, those times remained stubbornly high.
That, in itself, is not intrinsically a problem. In the private sector, employment-at-will allows poor hires to be fixed by simply firing the new employee. In the public service, it is necessarily complex, with many safeguards built in, before making that longterm commitment. There are likely some aspects that can be sped up, but not in any wholesale manner.
When we dug a little deeper into the survey data, we learned that a large share of staffing actions involved backfilling a position, in which the incumbent gave short notice of their departure for another position elsewhere and the position remained vacant for several months afterward, with no opportunity for anyone to job shadow, share organizational knowledge or simply do the work.
The blame does not lie solely with employees. It makes little sense for them to tell their own manager they have applied to a process that might take another four to six months to complete, only to learn they were unsuccessful.
The two ends of the circle need to meet halfway. The corners cut in those staffing processes that prompt investigations are partly a response to the disjunction between the time a normal process takes, and the opportunity afforded hiring managers to provide the overlap that well-functioning organizations aim for.
Processes do need to be shortened as much as possible, but employees also need to be more upfront about their departure intentions, so as to permit a degree of functional continuity.
And internal job candidates need to be informed as soon as possible that there is or isn't a chance they will be moving on. Mark Hammer, Ottawa