Category Archives: HR Guide

Loyalty and duty…

PolyWogg.ca
August 29 2016

I like reading the Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA) blog even though most of it is about education administration. Their recent post is about “Carleton’s Loyalty Oath” and basically outlines how Carleton University’s Board of Governors is struggling to address the behaviour of one professor on its board. To the blog’s eye, they’re behaving like “goons” and thugs. The issue surrounds Root Gorelick as the university faculty’s representative to the Board of Governors (BoG). He represents the faculty and feels he should blog to the community about the discussions, his positions, and even his objections to Board decisions. 

Yet part of being part of ANY board (co-op, school council, parliament, NGO, business, etc.) is joint responsibility. You individually contribute to joint discussions, you exercise your personal voting powers, but you make collective decisions. And once a group makes a decision, the members of that group collectively made that decision. It’s even part of your legal responsibility in some cases. And the short version is that if you cannot abide by the group’s decisions, you resign as a member of the Board. That’s the job. Since Gorelick hasn’t come to heel at the Board’s insistence, the Board is revising the Code of Conduct to make it a formally recognized duty. … Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 6 – Slow descent into uselessness

PolyWogg.ca
April 11 2016

When I left off my last update, I fast-forwarded through seven years of non-use of my french at work. Non-use is a bit of an exaggeration, I use it occasionally, but I certainly don’t “work” in French. More like active listening in meetings. It’s even worse over the last 10 years as I’m working in planning. Almost all planning in government is done in English. I had a francophone director previously, and even he said he didn’t know any of the french terms for the various documents. Phrases like the Program Activity Architecture, now the Program Alignment Architecture, are shortened in speaking even in French to “le PAA” even though the french acronym is simply the inverse (AAP). But nobody says the words that spell out PAA or AAP, and even francophones pronounced the acronym as just the letters P-A-A (not pay-ah-ah). Sad, but true. None of the inputs I receive are written in french, none of the drafts coming from other branches are in french. Once they reach a certain degree of “finality”, they are all translated, but francophones face a daunting level of anglo-ization in the planning world.

I still suck at what I call short-term transactional french. Simple interactions, short bursts, with admin staff for example are really challenging for me…I’ve always struggled that my french improves after about 3-5 minutes, but if the interaction lasts only 1 or 2, how do you “improve”?… Read the rest

HR, crazy trains and the PSLREB

PolyWogg.ca
March 7 2016

I know this will come as a complete shock to those reading my blog, but I’m a public servant. (Just kidding, everyone who reads this knows that fact, it is usually pretty clear). What also becomes clear when you talk to me about HR or my job is that I’m a public admin geek. One of my favourite textbooks of undergrad, law school, or grad school was one that wasn’t on any of my course lists, but I bought as part of my research for an essay … the book is “Public Administration in Canada” by Kenneth Kernaghan and David Siegel.

I bought my copy back in 1990, the link takes you to a 3rd edition in 1995, and it is long out-of-print. Public admin textbooks are passé, it’s all digital now, plus more about a series of articles, short monographs, chapters on policy, etc. But it was my first real public admin text and I thought it was brilliant. Unlike anything I had studied, and exactly in my wheelhouse. I still own it actually. From time to time, I think, “Maybe I’ll write my own version someday”, create a PolyWogg’s guide to public admin. Then I think of how much work it would be and decide I’m just crazy.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: The first rule of fraud – blame the auditors?

PolyWogg.ca
January 12 2016

I was a bit surprised by a recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision that upheld the 2014 decision against the accounting firm of Deloitte and Touche. Basically, the courts found them liable for auditing Livent Inc (Garth Drabinsky and company) and giving it an unqualified “clean audit” statement over several years despite the fact that Drabinsky and others involved were well-known for being creative with their financing and accounting. After Drabinsky sold off the business, it collapsed because it was a giant fraud.

Until these cases, there was a Supreme Court case (Hercules Managements Ltd. v. Ernst & Young) precedent that has generally been interpreted as saying “if a company goes belly up, even for fraud, you can’t sue the auditors for missing it”. Given this precedent, which has been binding for some time (1997), Deloitte might be surprised too, and chances are that an appeal will be launched to take it the Supreme Court — and with an $118M settlement against it, an appeal could be worthwhile.

Appeal court Justice Robert Blair ruled Friday that the original trial judge was correct in concluding Deloitte was negligent in its work on the audit of Livent’s 1997 year-end financial statements, as well as the interim statements for the second and third quarters of 1997.

… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 5 – Use it or lose it

PolyWogg.ca
December 15 2015

After all that hard work, all the stress, I didn’t use my french much at work. I really felt uncomfortable displaying my crappy language ability with my professional colleagues, and over time, I got more and more rusty. I was fine for reading, I was fine for listening somewhat in meetings (I can understand enough in context, as long as multiple people aren’t speaking at the same time and I can actually hear what is being said and it isn’t rapid fire speed!). But I rarely spoke it.

Fast forward five years, I was looking at promotions and things. And I needed to renew my oral and written french. Written was simple, a mild review and I got my B again. For my oral, I wanted to go on a refresher course before my test and my boss offered me 2 months of full-time to see if I could get my C (which I would need to move up). I figured C was impossible, not even on the radar, but a few weeks doing my B refresher would be great.

I went to a private school this time, and I was one on one with the teacher. Face to face. Nowhere to hide.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 4 – My B level test

PolyWogg.ca
December 15 2015

I met my tutor for breakfast, we had a quick conversation in french to get me ready, and off I went.

This was my third attempt. When we all did the first attempt, we went in cocky. We had heard there was an examiner named Jacques, “Jacques le Couteau” was his nickname, and we all wanted Jacques. We were ready, send in the heavyweight. None of us had him and we all failed. For the second test, it was just a blur. For my third test, I just wanted out. I was a bundle of nerves, and I was focused on remembering my structures, rules, stories even. I was ready, but still nervous. I was introduced to the examiner, and he said, “Bonjour, je m’appelle Jacques” and I just about soiled myself.

Jacques? Anyone but Jacques! I was doomed.

We started off a bit rusty, I was reeling with it being Jacques, but I recovered when we moved past the chitchat warmup and into the actual test. I was ready. I had my techniques ready. I knew how to tell a story, and open doors where I could talk about more in that area, while shutting others that I didn’t want to get tangled up in.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 3 – Return to Asticou

PolyWogg.ca
December 7 2015

I had been back at Asticou about five weeks when I realized that the passive receiver of language learning was not working for me, and I spent a weekend thinking about some of the challenges I had gone through in the previous year. I kept coming back to the tutor’s analysis — I wasn’t letting go. Except I had, at least to the extent I could i.e. the extent that was within my personality and my learning style, and it hadn’t worked. I needed a different option. Since letting go wasn’t working, what if I took full control?

Lots of people might read that sentence and think, “Oh, of course, the student has to drive their own learning, be responsible, be engaged, etc.”. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something much more dramatic.

I went into my first interview on the Monday morning and it was with a teacher I knew well. He started by saying, “Today we’re going to …” and I stopped him there. I said, “No, we’re not. Here’s what we’re going to work on…we’re going to talk about the work I do at CIDA, my three main tasks, and an experience from the past.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 2 – My first tutor

PolyWogg.ca
December 6 2015

Even though all of us said that we weren’t ready (My experiences learning French – Part 1), the school sent us for the oral test.

And all of us except one failed. The one who passed? The weakest one among us. Partly as her “stories” for telling what she did for a living were pretty simple in comparisons — she was a clerk who did very basic admin work. No one asked her how she answered the phone or sorted the mail. No follow-up questions, ever.

One of the other people in the group was a policy analyst, like me, and during their test, they were asked to explain “How do you go about analysing a policy?”. Umm, what? That question makes no sense. It’s like asking a car mechanic what steps they do to “mechanize” a car. Asking how to do research or do data analysis might be real questions, but an analyst couldn’t answer it well in english, let alone french.

Whatever, we tried, we failed. So back to the grindstone.

Except now that we had our reading and writing done, we could concentrate 100% on oral. This meant interviews every day, two or three per day depending on the day’s rotation.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 1 – Intro to Asticou

PolyWogg.ca
December 5 2015

I am a not a linguist by anyone’s definition. I’m not very eloquent in speaking English, let alone any other language. I can write pretty well in English, and I edit even better, but other languages were never my strength. I grew up in Peterborough, which was not exactly the hub of linguistic diversity. Or any other kind of diversity, for that matter, at the time, although it’s changed a lot since I was a kid.

Early learning

We started French in grade 4 or 5 as I recall. I was okay, mostly because I was a good student, not because I had an aptitude for it. One year we did “French Xmas” i.e. we made yule log cakes, basically made lunch for the other teachers and one or two parents. I don’t even remember if we got to have any ourselves, other than the cake. I do remember that we got to go into the teacher’s lounge, and for the era, being shocked to see teachers acting normal instead of like their classroom personas. Some of them laughed. One of them was smoking. But that was the only oven/kitchen in the school, so we used it.

I remember I didn’t particularly like French when I was in Grade 8, although I think mostly I was just bored.… Read the rest

Because that’s the job

PolyWogg.ca
November 1 2015

I’d really like to call this post something else, but it’s time I stopped holding back on what some people think is their God-given right to complain about how they think the public servant’s job should be done, and that all public servants will “obviously” agree. What triggered my lack of inhibition? Johanna Read’s incredibly biased and non-factual article in today’s Ottawa Citizen (Read: Trudeau is ready but the public service isn’t).

Let’s break her argument down, because there are very few points I can agree with as a career civil servant.

  1. Public service has been cut too far;
  2. Public service is gagged and under-utilized i.e. “scientists”;
  3. Public service is demoralized by previous government;
  4. Accountability measures created by civil servants pushed decision-making upward;
  5. Core business is fearless policy advice;
  6. Challenges in loyally implementing decisions;
  7. Public service values in treating each other are lower;
  8. No market for advice under previous Prime Minister;
  9. Public service policy is now about power games, cliques, and close-mindedness due to empire-building;
  10. Therefore public service is not ready as capacity has been weakened and need management agenda for culture change, including new values, new attitudes, new behaviours.

Not all scientists are created equal

Let’s start with the second one first — scientists are gagged.… Read the rest

An uneasy relationship with politics

PolyWogg.ca
October 20 2015

I have an uneasy relationship with politics. Some people are uneasy because they think all of politics is about sleaze — legalized lying to the voters in order to gain office. Others are uneasy with things like representation by population (or not), special interest groups, the need for compromise, the mudslinging, the promises, the need for more compromises, and the almighty need to sometimes do things that are unpopular but still the “right thing to do” to stop the majority from exploiting the minority. Those aren’t my issues. I’m uneasy because of my job. I’m a civil servant.

Note that I said civil servant, which in and of itself is a clue to my unrest. I didn’t say, public servant, which is the popular term these days. That is used ubiquitously for both bureaucrats and elected officials, which is partly why I don’t use it. I am not elected. I am hired to do a job, or to be precise, appointed under the power of legislation that delegates authority to make appointments to the Deputy Heads of organizations who then in turn delegate to underlings for regular staff appointments, overseen by the Public Service Commission to make sure processes are fair, transparent, etc, not to ensure the “right” person or even the “best” person got the job but that they were qualified.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: US State Department culture and the need to change

PolyWogg.ca
March 9 2015

Before John Price became an active blogger/commenter/editorialist, he served as U.S. Ambassador for 3 years in Africa and is now a Resident Scholar at the University of Utah. His career has given him keen insights into the operations of the U.S. State Department and I enjoy reading some of his posts. In a recent post, Price talks about how the culture of the State Department culture needs to change. (Link expired).

Having read lots of communiques from Ambassadors in the Canadian world of foreign affairs, I know that sometimes those posted abroad don’t always “get it right”, and what might improve local operations on a temporary basis becomes unsustainable for an organization over time.

The complaint that people rotate “too soon” is a common one. You see it in lots of businesses, governments, etc. because it is better for the micro-unit of the organization if people join and never leave. Corporate memory isn’t an issue because it hasn’t left. No time spent staffing. You know what else looks great to managers? Slavery and indentured servitude.

But here’s the thing about managers. They’re paid to manage. Not manage when it’s easy, or manage just the easy things, but to actually manage. And one of those “inputs” is people.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Universities paying lobbyists

PolyWogg.ca
March 2 2015

As I’ve mentioned before, I like reading the Higher Education Strategy Associates blog as they have some really interesting articles and topics. Most of the time I find it intriguing, maybe even illuminating, but once in a while I think, “nope, sorry, that analysis is weak”. Today’s article was in a similar vein about B.C. universities’ use of lobbyists to influence the BC government and the government telling them not to spend their money on lobbyists instead of actual programming.

So, the BC Government is telling BC universities that they shouldn’t hire lobbyists to lobby the provincial government. […]

From the university’s perspective, the sloganeering makes no sense unless you take the lobbyists effectiveness into account. If the lobbyist achieves nothing, then yes, that money would be better spent in the classroom. But if by spending 50K on a lobbyist, an institution ends up receiving another 500K in money, then that’s money extremely well spent. Obviously, it’s not always simple to determine cause and effect when it comes to an individual’s work, but that’s how universities need to look at the problem; is there a return on investment?

Admittedly, from the public’s point of view it’s not so simple. There is an unseemliness to institutions who receive public money to lobby government for more money.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Performance-based funding and education

PolyWogg.ca
February 17 2015

I subscribe to the daily feed from Higher Education Strategy Associates and I enjoy the main analyst’s take on things usually. He’s got one going this week on “Performance-Based Funding” that looks promising. Here’s an excerpt from today’s post:

At one level,PBF is simple: you pay for what comes out of universities rather than what goes in.
[…]
Take graduation numbers, which happens to be the simplest and most common indicator used in PBFs. A government could literally pay a certain amount per graduate – or maybe “weighted graduate” to take account of different costs by field of study. It could pay each institution based on its share of total graduates or weighted graduates. It could give each institution a target number of graduates (based on size and current degree of selectivity, perhaps) and pay out 100% of a value if it hits the target, and 0% if it does not. Or, it could set a target and then pay a pro-rated amount based on how well the institution did vis-a-vis the target. And so on, and so forth.

Each of these methods of paying out PBF money plainly has different distributional consequences. However, if you’re trying to work out whether output-based funding actually affects institutional outcomes, then the distributional consequence is only of secondary importance.

… Read the rest

Two cultures separated by a common language

PolyWogg.ca
April 12 2013

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been blogging about the merger of DFAIT and CIDA and some of the implementation issues that I think they’ll face. In the short-term, it’s probably mostly about basic implementation and structural questions. In the medium-term, there’s a larger question about “what does ‘development’ mean in a Canadian context”, how the new DFATD sets priorities, and even how to potentially modify legislation that appears to be narrowly focused on development but is really an almost-meaningless bit of rhetoric that combines apples, oranges and potentially a few truck parts, and calls it “poverty reduction”.

Yet, even as people focus on the short-term (CIDA: We got FACked!, FAC: DFATD, not DeFeATeD!) and medium-term (calling all pundits), it isn’t, in my opinion, anything close to the greatest threat facing the new DFATD in the long-term.

To borrow a cliché, CIDA and FAC are two unique cultures separated by a common language around Canada, government and internationalism.

Does FAC have culture?

I know, it comes as a shock to most people. But I mean small “c” culture, not Cultural Affairs-type culture, although many of them have that too. So, let’s look at that culture. And, reader beware, I might even say some nice things about them.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: When democracy starts looking weird

PolyWogg.ca
April 11 2013

For those who know me in person, you know that I’m pretty much a government-wonk. Not in the “I care deeply about politics” sense, because I don’t. Generally, I think there are a lot of good people out there who do care about those things, and care deeply about the policy direction of various parties etc., but my policy interests are a lot more narrow. However, I do have very strong views about how things are implemented once a decision is taken as to direction, and most of my posts about government will have that as a running theme.

Take for example two very different articles about government and laws in today’s New York Times. The first, about Latvia of all places, reflects the decision that government works best when it is “by the people”. Political engagement at the grassroots level. In Latvia, because they had low political engagement by its citizens, they launched a rule — if a citizen gets 10K signatures on a proposal for legislators, their Parliament will look at it and consider it. Think of it as the deep deep deep deep backbencher option for a private member’s bill.

The plight of local dogs left tied up alone outdoors has long bothered Mr.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Muzzling government scientists

PolyWogg.ca
April 2 2013

Most people who know me might think that since I have a pretty strong view about what limitations on freedom of speech look like and don’t look like for government workers, and that I even blog about stuff related to government, I would likely tilt against the current windmill of supposed Government censorship or muzzling of “scientists”, as the argument is aptly captured in the press (Information watchdog to investigate policies that ‘muzzle’ government scientists | CTV News.)

The argument from other windmill-tilters is pretty straight forward:

  1. Science is pure, non-political
  2. Science research by the government is paid for by taxpayers
  3. Taxpayers should have access to science research they paid for
  4. Ergo, government scientists should always be able to talk to the press and all research reports should be readily available.

Well, let’s look at those premises a bit more closely.

Science is pure and non-political? Actually, it is not and never has been. What a scientist chooses to study and what they decide is relevant or significant is as fraught with a personal subjective choice as any field of endeavour. It’s why they teach courses like “researcher bias” for scientists and “policy myopia” for policy wonks. This is totally separate too from the internal politics of any organization, non-governmental or governmental, that researchers think their work is the most important and that they should be fully funded, no reason to budget or conserve resources or fund-raise.… Read the rest

CIDA, DFAIT and what’s on the DMs’ minds…

PolyWogg.ca
March 27 2013

As with all posts on this site, my views are my own and obviously not that of my paycheque provider. Not that anyone complained, or that I’m being overly “critical” of decisions, as the reality of most decisions made by governments when it comes to structural changes is that most are simply that — choices. They are not “good” or “bad”, they simply have pros and cons. And just as with a hiring decision where one’s strength in being decisive can also be a weakness by being inflexible or quick to judge, the Deputy Ministers and Associates working on what the new merger will look like have a bunch of decisions to make, and most of the options have strengths that may turn out to be weaknesses or weaknesses that may turn out to be strengths.

Since many of you asked, and don’t have much experience thinking “structurally” or “corporately”, here is my guess of some of the things occupying their attention this week.

Job chaos

I may depress a lot of people with identifying this first, but it would be the most emotionless automaton working at that level who wouldn’t be affected by the chaos that just invaded their orbit.… Read the rest

A dark blue suit with Birkenstocks

PolyWogg.ca
March 22 2013

Each year, thousands of people compete for jobs at the Department of Foreign Affairs. But, while many are called, few are chosen (100-ish). Yet yesterday, DFAIT’s ranks swelled by 1800 people, most of whom no doubt greeted the news with a lot less enthusiasm than DFAIT’s normal hirings. With the announcement that CIDA was being “folded” into DFAIT, many are stressed that this sounds a death knell for development, that all principles of development will go out the window, and that CIDA will essentially disappear. Fortunately, the announcements of CIDA’s death may be a bit premature.

Some broader context, timelines up until 1998

Prior to WWII, most “economic development history” consisted of experiences with colonization, not development assistance as we know it. International development in its modern form actually began with Foreign Affairs types. When WWII ended, and reconstruction began in Europe, people thought, “Hey, we just need to do the same thing in developing countries, and it will work.” They neglected to take into account that European reconstruction worked because Europe already had working systems that produced the development in the first place, experience in managing it, and a tax and resource base to sustain it. Not surprisingly, the same methods didn’t work in developing countries and the early 1960s saw those same DFAIT types who had been struggling with a lack of success starting to think there was a need for separate organizational entities to deal with this type of issue.… Read the rest

Priority referrals from PSC: A new pilot project…

PolyWogg.ca
January 23 2012

It’s not that often that you see the Public Services Commission doing something innovative, but a new pilot project that starts today may qualify. And with all things HR-related, the impact may turn out to be either good or bad for employees on a referral list, depending on how the theory translates into practice.

So here’s the quick background you need to know first. When someone is declared surplus for whatever reason (relocation, program was cut, etc.), they can be put on a priority list for future jobs. Then, when any jobs come up in their region that match their skill sets, they’ll get referred to the hiring manager as a highly-possible hire. Unlike a regular applicant though where a hiring manager decides if a candidate meets the essential experience requirements and then invites them into a selection process (i.e. “screens” them in), a priority referral really IS a priority — if they meet the requirements, then the hiring manager MUST hire them. Good for the employee, they get a new job; good for the hiring manager, finding someone qualified really fast. Of course, there are lots of little tricks and tips on how a hiring manager may deem that the person does NOT meet the requirements if they want to screen them out, but in theory, if a priority candidate meets the requirements, screening them “in” basically means offering them the job.… Read the rest