PolyWogg.ca – Page 4 – The writing life of a tadpole

WFH vs. RTW, part 3: The research (mostly) shows…

September 27 2022

For all the departments looking to have people back in the office, they frequently will use the phrase, “So, yeah, we’re looking to have people back in the office at least some of the time because the research shows that it’s better.”

And when they say it, most people listening think it is complete bullsh**. Particularly EC policy wonks who see and hear that phrase every day from stakeholder groups, academics, think tanks, lobby groups, Joe who works at the corner deli. Everyone. And our job is to look at their evidence. “Really, you have research? Well, let’s see that research, show me your evidence, your methodology.” We eat that sh** for breakfast. I don’t want to overstate the case, but honestly, most of the ECs have spent the last 80% of their career ripping apart false claims based on so-called “evidence” that group A’s approach is better than what we’re already funding. Heck, we TRAIN our policy wonks to look for those tricks.

But, well, the people making the claims are not completely wrong. Let’s look at some of the areas of research.

Decades of academic research about business

If you go back to the era just before the introduction of the assembly line, people had realized that a central site for working was better than a whole bunch of solo workers working on their own.… Read the rest

WFH vs. RTW, part 2: A baseline year…

September 27 2022

In the world of performance measurement, a friend and I have a cynical joke between us that it seems like every year is a baseline year for some programs…if you’re always moving the baseline, there’s never anything to measure or report other than activities undertaken. There’s no standard for success. When it comes to the question of working from home, any year up to the end of 2019 would have been a baseline year, and there is still not much evidence of a performance standard for success.

What did it look like?

If you looked around the government on January 1, 2020, you would have seen very few departments leading on anything resembling working from home except in exceptional circumstances. Generally speaking, the only people who had full remote access from home fell into one of three categories:

Duty to accommodate — remote logins, bad gateways, slow networks, little in the way of IT supports, occasionally people making noises about having the government pay for their internet and especially so if they had to get faster internet to run work applications, etc.
People dealing with emergency issues, where timely access tended to outweigh security concerns; and,
Senior personnel.

Almost no departments were offering full remote access to internal systems.… Read the rest

WFH vs. RTW, part 1: Something to talk about

September 24 2022

As everyone has seen over the last 2.5 years, every business entity has had to deal with the labour organization aspects of the pandemic. Separate from all the labour and health and safety issues, or supply-chain issues, one of the most pervasive questions has simply been one of location. Could employees work from home or did they need to return to work at a specified location? In the private-sector goods and services world, many of those business decisions were obvious. For example, fast-food restaurants in set locations needed employees to be on-site to work. It’s hard to flip a burger in your kitchen and upload it to the drive-through window.

But many knowledge-economy jobs are digitally-enabled. People could and did pivot to work from home when the pandemic hit. Banks. Gig economy workers. IT. Insurance. And, yes, government.

For the Canadian government, that was about 360,000 employees suddenly working from home. I’ll go into more details in future posts, but let’s say generally that the response was positive from most employees (> 80%, with > 95% in some cases). Fast-forward 2.5y, and they are still mostly working from home. Departments have experimented with different pilot options, while some went back earlier to hybrid configs (some days in the office, some days at home) and others doing specific jobs were in-office immediately.… Read the rest

Great practice from PHAC on HR notices

January 1 2022

If anyone has read my HR guide, you already know that there are notices of appointments that go up on the Jobs.gc.ca portal. When it is a non-advertised appointment, and it says promotion, you really have almost no idea why the person is being promoted. It just says “non-advertised” and “promotion”.

Common rationales for non-advertised appointments

From a process perspective, a non-advertised appointment is a perfectly valid tool to be used by any manager. The requirement isn’t to assess everyone everywhere in the world for the position, nor even to choose the best candidate available, it’s to demonstrate that the person being appointed meets all the merit criteria.

One rationale (A) for that appointment might be that they were in the job for 2 years on an acting basis, have clearly demonstrated they meet all the requirements for the job, and are performing at-level for the position. The manager could run an open competition, and lots of people would say that was the fairest option, but the likely result is the person will make the pool and get selected. There might be people with better qualifications, but not better experience than the person doing the job already. One might quibble about how they got the acting in the first place, but that’s a separate issue.… Read the rest

#NaNoWriMo2021 – Days 8-30

December 12 2021

Way back at the start of November, I committed to the National Novel Writing Month goal of 50,000 words in a month.

I’ve done lots of writing in the past, never thought I’d do a binge one, but was feeling a little lethargic about my HR Guide. I want a full update for January, so I buckled down and wrote, wrote, wrote.

I had hoped to reach 70K, but life intervened. I found it difficult to write much at night, and I was using a poor physical setup to write close to my son’s computer. He was also writing and I was impressed with his commitment. Not sure how we’ll maintain that going forward, but we’ll find a way. He’s got a good idea, but keeping the faith will be hard for him.

I set a blazing initial pace, hitting 30K+ easily by the mid-point. Then, I got kind of distracted. On the last day, I was about 2000 words short of the 50K goal. So I stayed at my computer until I finished the section I was on, blazing to a final total of 50,925. I’ll do the rest after Christmas probably. We’ll see, I need to do some more planning and outlining this week so I can finish on time.… Read the rest

Auctioning off an astronomy friendship

November 26 2021

When businesses close, customers often fall into different camps with their reactions. Those who didn’t like them assume it was because of bad business decisions and enjoy the schadenfreude joy of another’s misfortunes. If they were casual customers, they might think, “what a shame”, and move on. If you were fans of the business, you might often feel a greater sense of discomfort.

But when that business is an astronomy store that claimed the title of the oldest telescope retailer in Canada, dating back to 1975 as the first authorized Meade dealer in Canada, it feels more like losing a friend.

I can’t claim that Focus Scientific was the source of my first scope, as that honour goes to Sears probably, with a small hand-held scope as a kid that didn’t seem to show anything different than I could see with my naked eye. I can’t even complain that it was a typical department store scope problem, not even at that level, because it didn’t even come with a tripod of any sort, it was just handheld.

Instead, I went to Focus Scientific much later in life when I was 45 years old. My mother had passed on leaving a bit of money to the family as an inheritance, and I used some of my share to buy a Celestron NexStar 8SE.… Read the rest

#NaNoWriMo2021 – Days 5-7 – Chapter 4a, b, 5a, 8156 words

November 8 2021

Over the last three days, I’ve finished a long chapter on understanding the HR process, added a section on acknowledgements, and drafted most of a chapter on searching for government jobs.

Friday (Day 5) was 3865 words, Saturday was a light day for writing (918 words) but I did a bunch of research, and Sunday (Day 7) was back up to 3373 words. Call it 8156 over three days. My new combined total is 24,378 words, or about 34.8% of my 70K estimate for the guide.

HR Guide

34%

Jacob added 500 words on Friday and took Saturday and Sunday off. This brings a total of 2137, or 24.2% of his revised 8800 words goal for the month.

Fantasy novel

24%

Stylized signature block to say happy reading in most posts and pages

#NaNoWriMo2021 – Day 4 – Chapter 4a, 4481 words

November 4 2021

Tonight was a bit of a tough slog for content, part of a very long chapter for the HR guide. I did about half of it.

Understanding the HR Process
…Overview
…Understanding Merit
…Step 1 Needs
…Step 2 Advertising (including clearance, etc.)

I managed to get 4481 words today. My new combined total is 16222, or about 23.2% of my 70K estimate for the guide.

HR Guide

23%

Jacob added 481 words to his fantasy novel, bringing his total to 1637, or 13.6% of his 12K goal for the month.

Fantasy novel

14%

#NaNoWriMo2021 – Day 3 – Chapter 3, 4318 words

November 4 2021

About 2.5h tonight of actual writing, but a few hours earlier of research and collation of bits to help me write later.

Today I was on to chapter 3, understanding types of government jobs.

~~Types of Jobs~~

…~~Functional classification~~

…~~Life beyond the three big categories~~

…~~Departmental Roles~~

I managed to get 4318 words today, which generally flowed pretty well. I’ll have to cut it down in editing, but it’s not bad as it is. My new combined total is 11741, or about 16.8% of my 70K estimate for the guide.

HR Guide

17%

Jacob added 277 words to his fantasy novel, bringing his total to 1156, or 9.6% of his 12K goal for the month.

Fantasy novel

10%

#NaNoWriMo2021 – Day 2 – Chapter 2, 3887 words

November 3 2021

I was so happy with my progress on day one. 5500 words, I noted. It seemed high, but I didn’t really question it. I do write fast, it’s non-fiction, and I’m working from a solid draft even though it’s pretty much a complete rewrite of the earlier version. I’m not keeping much at all.

And today, I worked about the same amount of time, but had 2000 fewer words. Wait a minute…oh, I see what I did. I wrote down 5500 instead of 3500 yesterday. It’s actually 3536 and I just duplicated the 5. Oops. Well, okay.

Today I was on to chapter 2, knowing yourself.

2. Know yourself
…WFH changes to work environment

I managed to get 3887 words today, which was 11 for a title page, 84 for a copyright page, 26 for a dedication, 738 for an executive summary of the “welcome” chapter, and 3028 for Chapter 2 on “knowing yourself”. I kind of like the way that worked tonight. I took Chapter 1 from yesterday, duplicated it and reduced it down to 700 words for an executive summary version, and then worked on Chapter 2. While my goal is to get the ExecSumms down to about 300 words or so, I’ll leave Chapter 1’s summary long for now and edit at the end of the month.… Read the rest

#NaNoWriMo2021 – Day 1 – Chapter 1, 3536 words

November 2 2021

As I mentioned in a previous post (#MoreJoy – Day 31 of 31 – NaNoWriMo), I had a number of “works in progress” for consideration as my WIP this November. Ultimately, I chose to commit to working on my HR Guide. I want it fully written, revamped, edited, and published by January 1st, so blasting through now isn’t a bad idea.

I have written the intro multiple times. 2014, a revision in 2017, an earlier revision of the current version in 2020. And yet, I wasn’t happy with the flow. It was solid, a good draft. Certainly addressed the content I wanted it to, at the time.

Now? I hated it. So I completely rewrote it from scratch. For my “checklist” tracking on my dashboard, I dealt with:

~~1. Introduction~~
…Competition vs. selection
…Myths

I managed to get 3536 words done (**for some reason, I wrote it down as 5500, a bit too ambitious), but I’m expecting to go to about 70K. Either way, Chapter 1 is relatively “done”, at least as a draft.

HR Guide

5%

Jacob is also joining me for a writing quest this month, and he managed 398 words for Day One for a fantasy novel.… Read the rest

#MoreJoy – Day 31 of 31 – NaNoWriMo

November 1 2021

For those of you not familiar with the acronym, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing in a Month. Ignoring the awkward construction of the title, the premise is simple. People around the world are encouraged to write, write, write every day for the month of November — binge-writing, if you will — to produce a 50,000-word manuscript.

There are LOTS of views about NaNoWriMo, ranging from “everybody just writes crap, it’s quality that counts” to “what a great way to just blast through and remember what’s fun about writing.” There is an equal number of views about HOW to do NaNoWriMo, including from those who plot and plan in advance (plotters/planners) or who write by the seat of their pants (panters).

But I really enjoy the premise. This isn’t a Hallmark commercial thing, the “organization” that came up with the idea is a not-for-profit. Sure, there are lots of commercial options out there tied to NaNoWriMo for trackers, notebooks, mugs, websites, webinars, writing groups, etc., but at its core? It’s writers talking to writers and encouraging them to do nothing more than put their butt in their seats and write. Maybe the 50K will never amount to anything more than the wordcount itself.… Read the rest

Demonstrating merit, non-advertised appointments, and frustration as a manager

October 27 2021

Normally when I write about HR, I do so as a public servant talking to other public servants on how to prepare for competitions. I might draw on my own experiences competing or running processes from the other side of the table. But rarely do I write as simply a manager talking about my job. Today, I’m frustrated with the tools available to me as a manager for a specific type of non-advertised appointment process. I apologize for the upfront context, but it takes a bit to get us to where the problem comes up. If you already know all about non-advertised appointments, you can skip to the “But what if…” heading below.

Quick context

Most managers know that all PS staffing, maybe even all of HR outside of leave and benefits, is about “demonstrating merit”. Performance measurement, documentation, competitions i.e., selection processes, it almost all comes down to how we demonstrate merit.

In staffing, we generally have a matrix combining the elements to be demonstrated down the vertical axis while across we have a box for the lines of evidence. In most processes, we have:

Basic eligibility for status and location of work (i.e., some jobs are restricted to internal candidates only or regional areas)
Education;
Experience;
Knowledge;
Abilities;
Personal Suitability;
Expanded eligibility for security and language profile; and.

… Read the rest

Since I blog about writing

September 27 2021

Way back in 2012, practically the dark ages of the internet, I bookmarked an article by author Veronica Sicoe called 13 Types of Writers’ Blogs – Pros and Cons. Fast forward 9 years, and it is still one of the better lists that I have seen of blogs / websites that authors use.

Sooooo, considering I’m a wannabe writer, and I do have a website, what elements interest me? I blogged the other day about not wanting to monetize my site, but this isn’t quite the same thing. This is more about using my website to promote potential book sales. It’s a very fine-line for a distinction, but it is a distinction of significance to me.

General writing advice — I have no extensive expertise to offer, but there are a few blog posts here and there where I have had an opinion that I hoped was worth sharing about small narrow areas. A different take on an issue, for instance. But, as noted in the original article, the posts are generally of interest to writers, not readers, so it doesn’t do much to sell your books.

The Writing Industry / Self-Promotion — I am a good analyst, and one of my skills is the ability to take a lot of info and synthesize or condense it down to meaningful, digestible chunks.… Read the rest

A draft ToC for my astronomy guide

September 27 2021

I had a small handheld telescope when I was a kid, but I never saw anything worth seeing, not even the moon (I suspect I only ever looked when it was full where I could see just the flat disk). I had no road map to figuring out how to learn about astronomy, didn’t even know there were likely guides at the library. And I didn’t know anyone to ask. Not surprisingly, my interest didn’t proceed very far.

However, in 2014, I bought my first real scope using inheritance money from my mother’s estate. It is a Celestron NexStar 8SE, one of the so-called GoTo Scopes, and I thought the heavens would open and all would be revealed automatically. Instead, I struggled with some setup issues for quite some time, and I read a LOT of other resources on the internet and in paper to figure out what I needed to know. But regularly, I found myself wanting a bit of “this book” and a bit from “that book”. Or that an article over there did a good job of explaining this bit.

From time to time, I would wade into deeper waters to try and answer someone’s question in an online forum based on what I had gleaned from others during my own quest to learn.… Read the rest

Playing with Scrivener

September 6 2021

As an aspiring writer, I confess there’s a certain degree of desire created in me when I see these flashy programs that are designed to help the new writer. Just as books about writing are great ways to procrastinate from actually writing, so too are these great tools ways to pretend you’re writing without actually writing.

Lawrence Block’s take on early writing mirrors some of my own experience. When you’re starting out, and finding the idea of a novel a bit daunting, it isn’t uncommon to turn to tips and tricks, and there is no more common myth in writing than that of the “correct way” to get organized. Whether it is a novel or a screenplay, there is a lot of advice out there that revolves around index cards.

Generally speaking, what this means is that you are going to do an outline of some sort for your novel or screenplay, prepare lots of little index cards around various scenes or perhaps character profiles, and as you go, you’ll likely want to put them on a bulletin board with pushpins so you can move them around at will until you’re gotten to a point where you say, “Eureka! That’s my story!”.… Read the rest

Is work-from-home the new government normal?

February 7 2021

For those who work in government, almost universally around the globe, the workforce response to the pandemic was pretty much the same. Everybody pivoted to work from home (WFH). And as time goes on, people are generally coming to the conclusion that WFH was not as terrible as everybody used to think, the current “normal” is generally working in many if not most areas, and so as people discuss how to “build back better” (BBB), there is a general informal consensus that BBB means WFH is now permanent. In short, while WFH started as an accidental outcome of the pandemic, people want to assume it is the “new normal”. But is it?

Over the last week, because of my HR guide, nine separate people have asked me variations of this question. Some of them want to know if they should buy a larger house with space for an office. Most want to move back home and work from a distance. Everyone wants to know if all departments will be WFH or only some. One of the most ironic things is that Global Affairs, the department with the most distributed workforce of all to begin with, is telling people they will be back at Fort Pearson, and that WFH will generally NOT be part of their new normal.… Read the rest

Smartphone Astronomy – Reducing white light from the screen

August 21 2020

There is a lot of info on the web about how to do two big things with electronic devices for astronomy. The first is usually about “electronically assisted astronomy”. Local astronomer Jim Thompson was interviewed for the website AstronomyConnect.com and he defined EAA the following way:

…the application of any sort of technological aid for the enhancement of astronomical viewing falls under the EAA umbrella. Devices such as light intensifiers and video cameras both fit into this category. The purpose of the technological aid is either to increase the observable detail over what’s possible with a conventional eyepiece, or in some cases to make it possible for those with vision problems to see anything at all.

In short, it helps you or your equipment see better. Tightly tied to it is the idea of using the electronic devices to actually capture the images for astrophotography.

Stepping back — Smartphone astronomy

Some people like to use their smartphones with their astronomy setup, but not always in those first two big ways. More often than not, they are using smartphones or tablets as simple electronic star maps or reference libraries rather than carrying paper guidebooks. My interests start off with these much simpler needs and go up to and include simple astrophotography.… Read the rest

Astro Echoes – Sky and Telescope, 1941

August 20 2020

As part of my education on all things astronomy, I try to read a variety of modern sources of information including discussion forums on Facebook and Cloudy Nights, helpful tips from blogs, the big name astro books like Nightwatch, and the various monthly magazines like Astronomy, Sky News, and Sky and Telescope.

A couple of years ago, one of the members of our astronomy club, Paul, passed away and another member, Attilla, was helping his widow clean out some of the astronomy collection that he had accumulated. He had a collection of Sky and Telescope materials going back to 1966 to get rid of, and while some people might see that as merely an opportunity for hoarding, I saw it as an opportunity for learning. Could I read through some 50 years of astronomy articles aimed at backyard astronomers rather than scientists, and if I did read them, what would I glean? What sort of astronomy echoes would I hear from the old issues?

I took all of the magazines that they had, and I also decided to add to my paper collection and see what was available online for even farther back. The first thing to jump out at me was the starting year of the magazine.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: 21 HR Jobs of the Future

August 13 2020

Harvard Business Review’s mailing include a link to a cool article by Jeanne C. Meister about what HR people will be doing in the future, or doing “more of” in the future, given the impact of COVID-19 and the likely enduring switch to working from home. It’s based on a think piece from one of the thousands of organizations looking at the “future of work”, and there are tons of these reports coming out, as they have for the last five years. Most of them are, quite frankly, wrong. They’re pie-in-the-sky visions of “what could be”, not very practically tied to the current environment. In order for most of the predictions to come true, we would need to see a massive disruption in the workplace and workforce.

Like COVID-19 has now done, which makes some of the more recent predictions more closely tied to reality.

The report outlines 21 different job functions that HR people expect to see in the next 10 years and plots them on a 2×2 grid of how “techy” the companies are and time. It’s an interesting idea, but my take on it is that most of the 21 functions are “options” and not necessarily cooperative ones.… Read the rest