The comprehensive human resources strategy at Statistics Canada

• The Comprehensive Human Resources Strategy
• Professional recruitment and development
• Investment in training
• Career broadening
• A positive work environment
• Broad management practices behind HR at Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada is one of the world's largest and most highly respected statistical organizations. It is the core of the country’s socio-economic information system, serving the needs of all levels of government, businesses and labour unions, the media, the academic sector and the general public. The Agency facilitates evidence-based decision making by illuminating issues at stake, and providing insight into the underlying realities and causalities.

As a scientific research agency, Statistics Canada publishes a wide range of statistical analyses and contributes substantially to the development of statistical methodologies at the national and international levels. It operates as the hub of the nation's statistical systems, and conducts special surveys funded by other federal departments and agencies, provincial government departments, or private sector clients.

The Comprehensive Human Resources Strategy

A number of years ago, Statistics Canada developed a Human Resources Development Strategy to address the areas in which the Agency was vulnerable:

• Our workforce was aging. Projections from our simulation model (PERSIM) indicated a major loss in middle and senior managers just after the beginning of the new millennium.
• Sources of funding were hindered by tight budgets. Demands for products varied, and increasingly there was a demand for new and varied products.
• Technological advances were changing the way we did business. Our requirements were for more professional and technical positions, and far fewer support positions.

The Agency realized that what was needed was flexibility, skills, and professionalism to meet product demands. Since the nature of the work requires a high level of skill and versatility, the Agency is committed to investing heavily in recruitment, training and career development in order to retain employees over a long-term career. In such a way it benefits from the accumulated knowledge and experience of employees and its investment is not lost.

Our strategy for human resources management is based on four key programs centred around the following: hiring the best and the brightest; training the Agency’s workforce in up-to-date skills necessary for their job (e.g. survey skills, data analysis, etc.); developing long-term career potential through career broadening assignments; and creating a positive work environment which motivates and promotes productivity. The strategy is operationalized by a network of management committees driven by line managers who are focused on addressing human resources issues.

Statistics Canada's Human Resources Strategy

Professional recruitment and development

At Statistics Canada, the level of investment in each employee is high, so it makes sense to begin with recruits who have the greatest potential. With limited resources to hire entry-level professionals, it is critical for the Agency to select wisely and to nurture the new hires carefully. A Corporate Recruitment and Development Committee, composed of senior managers, guides the hiring and development of recruits. The Recruitment and Development Division provides support to these committee activities.

Recruitment based on projections

The Agency uses a micro-simulation model called PERSIM to project personnel flows into, out of, and within the organization. The Human Resources Information System (GLOBAL) supplies the micro-data on these past flows. The PERSIM model then applies past flow information to the existing workforce to make projections of future requirements.

Corporately managed recruitment and development

The Recruitment and Development Committee forecasts the Agency's future needs, and engages in hiring the best and the brightest university graduates. Line managers, accompanied by graduate recruits, visit universities and encourage students to make application to the Agency. Interested students sit for written exams set up by Statistics Canada, and those who pass are invited to an oral interview which is conducted at the university by a team of middle and senior managers. Job offers are made to those who are successful, and the students report for work after they have graduated.

Newly hired graduates are not placed immediately into a regular position. Instead, they are placed in a two-year developmental program which provides them with broad exposure to the Agency. While on this program, they rotate among several positions on assignments in various divisions, are aided by mentors, and take prescribed training before they ‘graduate’ to a regular position. Recruitment at Statistics Canada is essential to the Agency’s continuing viability, as it ensures that any expected skills shortages are replenished.

Mentoring

Mentoring and coaching are fundamental elements of the Agency’s recruitment and development programs. Recruits are assigned mentors to help guide them for the duration of their program. Mentors are seasoned managers who have a broad knowledge of the skills required by the Agency. Their role is to guide the recruit and provide reference points so that the recruit can gain an overall perspective of the Agency and access corporate memory. The mentor helps the recruit select assignments and training.

Mentoring is not only targeted at recruits who are part of a developmental program. It is also provided to employees who are in the midst of a career transition and have recently been appointed to the senior management level.

Investment in training

Statistics Canada places the highest priority on learning and invests heavily in training, regardless of volatile swings in financial budget levels. Over three percent of the Agency's overall budget is invested in training, with an ensuing average of six days of training annually per employee.

The Agency has an overall training framework and has developed major, long duration flagship courses (on topics such as survey management and data analysis) designed to address the major technical, professional and managerial needs of the organization. Ninety percent of the courses are delivered in-house by Agency resources at the Statistics Canada Training Institute. The 30 full-time trainers are professionals on temporary assignments to the Institute, while some 200 ‘guest lecturers’ donate their time to performing training functions in addition to their regular jobs.

The Training and Development Committee, composed of a dozen divisional directors and chaired by one of Statistics Canada's more senior managers, provides overall management and direction to training. On an ongoing basis, this committee reviews, discusses and monitors the identification of training needs and policy.

Employees discuss their training needs, both for their current job and for planned career moves within Statistics Canada, during their annual performance review. Employees also have the opportunity to discuss longer-range training to meet career goals in a unique biennial interview with their supervisor's supervisor. This interview is aimed at providing employees with a corporate perspective on occupational growth. Most divisions have training co-ordinators who develop and maintain divisional training plans that incorporate individual training plans.

Career broadening

Career broadening is a prime focus for the Agency. Flexibility to quickly adapt to changes in the environment is fundamental to an effective organization. Statistics Canada encourages employees to become versatile, to acquire a firm grounding in a subject area, and to broaden their experiences and enhance their long-term potential. A number of mechanisms are used to ensure the existence of a large cadre of mobile employees who are willing and able to move to new, demanding work assignments. In combination with this focus on broadening is an emphasis on knowledge transfer.

Career streams

Within each of the mainstream occupational groups employed at the Agency, there are ‘streams’ – clusters of jobs that serve a somewhat similar function and require similar competencies. The Committee on Career Streams, made up of senior managers who champion career development, looks strategically at these streams providing policy advice and general direction geared at managing the pace of recruitment and promotion within the career streams. One of the initiatives of this committee has been to create unique electronic career path documents to help guide employees and mentors in planning and selecting options for career development. These tools are available on the Agency’s Internal Communications Network (ICN). They explain the methods of selection for each level in a group, and the attributes associated with the level; for example, the knowledge, the abilities, the training, and the rotation traditionally used to build these competencies.

Corporate Assignments Division (CAD)

Initiated in 1983, Corporate Assignments Division (CAD) is designed to support training and career development. It brokers assignments, and provides fast service with minimum red tape – either to fill human resource requirements on a temporary basis and meet peak workloads, or to start urgent new projects.

CAD provides employees with opportunities to:

• acquire new work experience;
• practice second-language skills;
• explore different areas in the Agency;
• gain experience that may lead to transfers or promotion;
• or get a second start because of downsizing or restructuring.

All employees are eligible to apply for CAD, with their director's approval. After four years in the same position, employees need no formal approval to participate. CAD has about 400 employees on assignments at any given time. A key element, which further supports the rotational programs, is that employees are guaranteed the security of returning to their home positions. Experience has indicated that those who have been on CAD assignments generally have a higher rate of subsequent career success.

Generic competitions

Career progression in the Agency is based on selection through a competition process designed to ensure that the most qualified person is selected. The traditional norm in government has been to hold a competition for a specific position in a given subject matter area. To increase promotional opportunities, Statistics Canada has made a major shift to ‘generic competitions’, which staff positions through one large competitive process for a classified group and level.

Generics serve the Agency well because they encourage middle and senior managers to promote versatility through career-broadening assignments, and acquire a broader appreciation of corporate issues affecting the Agency. Generics are used for the full range of levels beyond recruitment, including senior management levels. A Senior Steering Committee on Staffing oversees the generic process to guide generics and ensure consistency between competitions.

Knowledge transfer

Statistics Canada will undergo a fundamental change over the next few years. Present projections indicate that, by 2010, 80 executive positions will have to be filled, equivalent to 90% of our staff at that level. Some years ago we recognized this eventuality and developed our human resources strategy accordingly. We created pools of talented and well-trained individuals at each level; from these pools we are now able to promote the best as vacancies at the next level occur. This approach is more transparent and sound than the ‘crown prince’ approach of developing one successor for each key management vacancy.

Executive Selection and Development Program

The Agency’s Executive Selection and Development Program (EX-RDP), the first of its kind in the Public Service, is designed to select new executives and ensure that they gain the broad spectrum of competencies needed at the director level. It begins with a developmental pool entered into by generic competition, followed by assignment experience of 24-36 months, individualized training, experience through committee involvement, and culminating with a roll-up to the EX2 level.

Assistant director pool

To ensure a robust pool from which the Agency can select future leaders, the Agency regularly holds a generic Assistant Director competition. Successful candidates in the generic Assistant Director competition are appointed to a pool of positions. New Assistant Directors are assigned from this pool to various divisions for periods ranging in length from two to four years. Care is taken to ensure that the first assignment is not in the candidate's home division, so as to ensure a broadening of exposure.

In the spring of each year, the Human Resources Development Committee, made up of senior managers, reviews the pool of Assistant Director positions for rotation of participants, giving consideration to strengths and weaknesses, interests, best timing for next rotation, and long-term potential.

Senior Management Development Program

To complement the EX-RDP, and the Assistant Director Pool, Statistics Canada has in place a Senior Management Development Program, which is targeted at the assistant directors and levels above. This menu-based, flexible program is geared at personalized training and development programs for new and existing members of senior management at the Agency. It was created to strengthen the management group, and foster the concepts of continuous learning and working together.

This development program aims at increasing awareness of social and economic issues, developing management skills, keeping current on policies and practices, and fostering a strong sense of team. It consists of three segments: learning courses available from the Canadian Centre for Management Development, a program of arranged speakers, and a mentoring component. The program is championed by a director and is guided by volunteers from the target population.

Middle Management Development Program

An award-winning integrated training and development program is in place to enhance managerial competencies at the middle management level. This modularized program uses a learning framework based on nine managerial roles and identifies the means to develop competency in each role. Individual diagnostic assessment based on the nine elements of the learning framework is then used to identify which of the corresponding series of thematic workshops are best suited to reinforce the competencies in the targeted learning areas. A unique module uses action learning to further understanding of the corporate decision making process, through participation on task forces to address real work issues and identify innovative practices. Another module encourages networking through a Middle Management Conference.

Alumni Program

To draw upon resources that might no longer be available to Statistics Canada, the Agency developed the unique Alumni Program, which matches the skills of retired Statistics Canada employees with projects requiring a scarce resource in terms of corporate knowledge, wisdom and experience. This program is the first of its kind in the Public Service. It enables the Agency to obtain the services of retirees who have specialized knowledge and skills, to optimize a project, develop programs, facilitate the transfer of skills and expertise, pass along historical knowledge through training and mentoring, or increase the Agency’s flexibility in handling peak workload periods. The program is not a means of staffing on-going jobs.

A positive work environment

The creation of a positive work environment is an essential element in the Agency’s Human Resources Strategy. Ensuring that our employees have a strong sense of their value and contribution to the Agency helps to encourage commitment, increase retention and facilitate mobility and versatility. A positive work environment helps the Agency achieve its goals. The Agency has gradually built a series of practices which support and demonstrate a commitment to its employees and help to create a positive work environment.

No lay-off policy

A ‘no lay-off’ policy has been maintained since 1979, despite periods of severe budget cutbacks. The policy is vital to career mobility as it encourages risk taking. It succeeds because of the Agency’s strong investment in training and rotation. If it becomes necessary to eliminate a program, the affected employees are readily redeployable to other areas.

Flexible work schedules

The Agency offers a truly flexible work environment. Some Statistics Canada initiatives are common with those offered by other enlightened employers; for instance, flextime, part-time, job sharing and compressed time, when the situation permits.

Statistics Canada is unique, however, in that it is able to consistently offer all of these options. The Agency can be flexible because the employees are well trained and have the versatility to perform many functions, so they can easily rotate to another section if the existing work environment cannot be modified to suit the accommodation requested. This ‘open market’ actually forces, or gives incentive to, managers to be more obliging, since otherwise they risk losing talented employees who can easily rotate to an area with a higher reputation for flexibility in meeting personal needs.

Employee Opinion Survey

An Employee Opinion Survey is conducted every three years to guide and monitor management initiatives. The survey’s primary role is to engender ‘shop floor’ discussions between employees and managers, since all managers must find a suitable way to investigate what lies behind the survey results for their areas. Consequently, the results of the survey serve as a tool for dialogue and interaction between employees and managers for the design of HR programs and other management initiatives.

Performance Review Process

The most important part of a Performance Review Process is the year-round communication between supervisor and employee. This culminates in a structured year-end interview where the focus is on job performance, training and developmental needs.

All employees are entitled to at least one year-end interview with their boss, and while the option is provided for a written report if requested by either party, the norm is that there be no formal documentation. An annual performance review is a frank, open, non-threatening discussion on work performance.

Skip-level interviews

Skip-level interviews, which form part of the performance feedback and review process, allow employees the opportunity to speak individually with their supervisor’s supervisor about career development. These meetings provide employees with a corporate perspective about training, conferences and assignments that would facilitate their personal development and provide opportunities for growth.

Encouraging bilingualism

The use of both official languages is encouraged. Practical programs are in place to encourage bilingualism and to support employees in working in the official language of their choice.

Employment equity

Employment equity principles are incorporated into day-to-day operations to create an environment that values and supports diversity and enhances employment and career opportunities for all employees, particularly those from the designated employment equity groups.

Internal Communications Network

The Internal Communications Network (ICN) is an electronic network offering fingertip availability of information and resources. The inspiration for the ICN came from the 1991 employee opinion survey, which found unanimous desire for better internal communication.

Weekly executive debriefings

Weekly skip-level executive debriefings mean that essential discussions and decisions taken by the Chief Statistician and six Assistant Chief Statisticians are communicated to directors within the next day. They, in turn, debrief their senior staff so that some 300 to 400 managers are kept current on issues at the corporate level.

Lunch with the Chief Statistician

Luncheons with the Chief Statistician facilitate direct communication by directors with the most senior person in the organization. The Chief Statistician meets them in this mode twice a year, in randomly selected groups of six to ten directors. Directors General meet one-on-one with the Chief Statistician every six months in similar informal encounters.

Program Report (biennial and quadrennial)

A Program Report detailing the main program elements, performance measurements, current challenges and goals for the next two years, and progress since the last report, is prepared every two years by every division. Every fourth year, a longer, more strategic Quadrennial Report is prepared. Individual divisions receive a personal response from the Chief Statistician. The feedback often contains requests for clarification and suggestions for new priorities and goals for the next two years. The biennial and quadrennial reports, and the Chief Statistician’s feedback, are occasions for divisional stock-taking and are typically posted on the Internal Communications Network.

Transparency

All business decisions of the Agency are made within a highly transparent planning system. This not only allows for, but also requires, wide-ranging consultations both within and outside the Agency.

Broad management practices behind HR at Statistics Canada

The foundation for this HR strategy is reinforced by the cross-cutting principles which guide the way that Statistics Canada manages its human resources: business sense that reflects a corporate perspective, long-term careers, line management ownership, and consistency and tradition.

Business sense that reflects a corporate perspective

Sound HR practices are critical to the Agency’s survival as an effective organization. Statistics Canada places a high priority on HR management functions, not only because they represent a more equitable way of treating people, but because they make good business sense as a means of encouraging maximum performance and excellence.

Both the character of statistical work and effective customer service demand that employees should work within broad teams. Data from different statistical vehicles must often make sense when used together. Increasingly, clients require customized data packages that draw upon a variety of relevant sources. To be effective, there is a need for coherence of outputs, and an understanding of how information is linked and used. A corporate perspective facilitates such linkages. Direct engagement of managers in corporate HR activities furthers understanding of strategic issues, corporate goals and needs. The shared corporate perspective benefits the Agency as managers pull together on initiatives that make good business sense.

Long-term careers

The work of Statistics Canada is complicated, so the initial investment to train an employee is very high. The Agency’s strategy therefore involves acquiring only the very best recruits with long-term potential and then providing them with an attractive work environment along with a 'no lay-off' guarantee in order to retain them for a long-term career. Although open to good outside talent at the mid-career level, the expectation is that most senior managers will develop from the ranks of entry-level recruits.

Line management ownership

The high level of investment in recruitment, training and career development means that decisions must be made on the basis of what is best overall for the Agency rather than on the basis of local need. With this approach, individual managers do not make local decisions on recruitment, training or promotion based on individual positions or transactions. Instead, they are invited to participate on corporate committees to contribute to the overall effective management of the Agency. The degree of empowerment is high. Statistics Canada gains from this, as proposals to create, modify and improve have direct input from the managers who are the beneficiaries of the changes. The committee system enables this very balancing between corporate and local needs and ensures that there is a built-in incentive for managers to do what is best for the Agency.

The network of HR management committees is a vital infrastructure to ensure corporate perspective and encourage the acceptance of individual managers. Each committee is composed of 10 or so senior managers and each is responsible for a major element of a human resources program. Managers are expected to make innovative contributions to these committees, and their contributions are factored into the appraisal process. Career success depends on progress in both areas. In all (including formal subcommittees), there are some 400 positions for middle and senior managers on over 50 HR committees and working groups. Through this infrastructure, managers are involved in training, recruitment and career management on a corporate basis.

Consistency and tradition

Consistency and tradition are essential. The Agency has been careful not to undo previous efforts by compromising any of the basic crosscutting principles in the interest of short-term expediencies. For example, at times it might have seemed easier to alter the no lay-off policy or to eliminate the annual investment in professional recruitment and training to deal with budget reductions or resolve competing funding needs. Instead, the Agency adjusted the amount of investment to adapt to current competing priorities, but the basic principles and HR programs remained unchanged.

Consistency builds trust and commitment, and spawns openness by enabling employees to focus on work and on career development. Consistency is also vital to achieving a cumulative effect. Year after year, the Agency has initiated new programs that are based on the same set of principles: the corporate hiring of entry-level professionals, a vastly expanded training program, the Employee Opinion Survey, generic competitions, rotation of senior managers, and so on. What is the cumulative message of these initiatives? – HR management is everyone’s business, and this organization places huge emphasis on it.

Example from the top

The concept of leadership and corporate thinking is best instilled from the top. Managers are constantly bombarded with competing demands. They must choose priorities. To detect what is really important, employees observe what management does as opposed to what it says. When the Agency makes a sizeable investment in training and career development, the message is clear: lead, guide and develop employees to optimize their career advancement potential.

Participation

A participative approach empowers. It leads to proposals for new developments and improvements, and promotes acceptance. Participation enables the direct input of the managers who are the beneficiaries of the changes, and provides a more effective assessment of costs and benefits.

Incentives

Incentives that clearly link programs to a direct benefit for those who participate are the best means to obtain participation. For example, employees are willing to rotate when a no lay-off policy provides a safety net, the assignment offers an opportunity to increase breadth, and promotion is linked with breadth. Employees seek out assignments because they like the enrichment and the increased career opportunities that, as experience has taught them, go with them. Managers seek out assignees because they can get a high-quality resource quickly.

Communication

Communication is therefore essential to make the incentives and benefits of each program known. The Agency uses a number of practices which are geared at improving communications with employees and managers. These practices include : the Internal Communications Network, Weekly Executive Debriefings, and the Employee Opinion Survey.

Pulling together

With vision and consistency in its approach, Statistics Canada has gradually built a series of programs and practices to address the strategic challenge of managing and developing its human resources.

More than anything else, the lasting impact of this comprehensive and caring HR policy has been to create the Agency’s distinctiveness and identity. It has a unique sense of community and tradition. And, far from being in contradiction to our business plans, HR programs are their most important pillars.