Transcript
Transcript: EXecuTALK: Public Service Renewal: An Act of Intelligent Risk Taking
[This Executalk aired Thursday, April 12, 2018]
[Host, Danl Loewen interviews Patrick Borbey, President of the Public Service Commission]
(Interviewer)
Welcome to EXecuTALK, sponsored by the Canada School of Public Service.
My name is Danl Loewen and I'm here today with Patrick Borbey, President of the Public Service Commission of Canada.
Patrick Borbey, you've joined us wearing a hockey jersey. Do you want to share that?
(Patrick Borbey)
Yeah, well - in Canada, we've all been touched by the tragedy in Humboldt and in sympathy, in solidarity with the people of Humboldt for the Broncos who are living through this tragedy, all Canadians were encouraged today to wear a jersey and I decided I would wear one with the Canadian maple leaf.
(Interviewer)
Bravo.
(Patrick Borbey)
And of course, myself, I was a hockey dad. I was a coach, and I still play hockey, so I can relate to what the parents, the coaches, that community is going through right now.
(Interviewer)
Those are really very human things that are happening to people right now, independent of where they work, what they do in their spare time. A tremendous impact across the country in terms of people's hearts going out to each other.
(Patrick Borbey)
And we're all connected, and that shows that we can share the grief and help that community in these very, very difficult moments.
(Interviewer)
Thank you for sharing that.
Now, as President of the Public Service Commission, can you explain in a few words what the role of the public service is, for the benefit of our audience?
(Patrick Borbey)
The Public Service Commission is one of the oldest institutions in the country. We're celebrating its 110th anniversary this year. It's been around since 1908 to protect the integrity of the staffing system and recruitment in the public service, and to make sure that positions are staffed based on merit in a non-partisan and professional way. So we have a very important role to play and we've been doing it ever since.
But we also offer programs and services. We have a Personnel Psychology Centre that conducts tests of all kinds - not just language evaluation tests, but also a whole range of assessments pertaining to candidates. We have national recruitment programs like Post-Secondary Recruitment. We have student programs - which reminds me to encourage everyone to start thinking about recruiting students. Now's the time to plan for that and to start calling on us to get candidate referrals. And, of course, we have oversight activities to ensure that the system is working well, through audits and sometimes investigations.
(Interviewer)
That makes a lot of sense. And you're certainly well versed to lead an organization that serves the entire public service after having worked in so many different departments. Namely: Canadian Heritage, CanNor (which is the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency), Indigenous and Northern Affairs.
Privy Council Office, Health Canada.
Transport Canada, Parks Canada, Finance. As well as the department, formerly known as DFAIT,
Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Department of Communications and Industry, when they were known by those names. That's in the National Capital Region and the regions. Is that a long list? It sounds like you can't keep a job.
(Patrick Borbey)
Yeah, I think that's probably a good indication. But it also is an indication of the rich diversity that you can have in a career in the public service. I often remind people that we are the biggest employer in Canada, but we're also the most diversified employer. And we have a tremendous amount of mobility. So moving from one department to another, it's not always easy. There are cultural differences. There are, you know, adjusting to a new environment, new people. But we have a lot in common as well, and we do facilitate that kind of movement.
And I think that's part of planning a good career in the public sector. It's not just moving up along the way, but also moving sideways and trying different roles, to go from program management to maybe working in an area that's more scientific; working in regional development, coming back and working in corporate work, whether it's HR, Finance. So I've had a great career. I've had great opportunity. But the reason why I had those opportunities is because people trusted me. People had confidence that I could do the work. I had good managers that were coaches and mentors that helped me make that transition and help me succeed in those different roles.
(Interviewer)
And at each stage, were willing to take the risk.
(Patrick Borbey)
That's right. It seems to me like we were much more willing to take risks 20 years ago that we are today. I think we've got to reinvent a little bit our approach to bringing people into jobs - maybe they don't have all the skillsets that they need, but they show the potential to grow and to learn. And give them the ability to stretch themselves and also accept that maybe there'll be failure, but with failure comes lessons learned, come opportunities for improvement. So again, let's not be afraid to talk about failure once in a while.
(Interviewer)
Just that statement is fraught with fascinating topics for executives who are seeking to be as economical as possible in their time and effort, to achieve a major impact in terms of renewing the public service - our focus today. When you talk about risk: we live in a culture of considerable risk aversion within the public service. There are many times when the priority concern for an executive might be staying off the boss's desk, staying out of the newspaper, staying out of question period. And yet, we know that if you're not putting a false step occasionally, you're not learning anything much new. What do you want to say about risk aversion?
(Patrick Borbey)
Well, I think it's an issue that we have to tackle. And it's something that has crept up over the years. And I think probably there are some good reasons why managers became risk averse. I mean we had the Gomery Commission. We had some failures in the past. And I think we have to loosen up a bit. We have to give executives the ability to lead their organizations and we have to ensure that people don't go to the natural easy solution when it comes, for example, to renewing the public service. So when Sally announces that she's retiring, the best solution might not be to choose between Joe, Diane and Phil who are behind that person as a manager or as a senior officer.
Maybe as executives, we need to take a look at our organization. Maybe tackle that reversed, inversed pyramid that we see too often - not enough jobs at the base - and create more entry-level positions, restructure the work and bring in some talent from outside: 68% of our staffing in the public sector is internal. We are very insular to a certain extent.
(Interviewer)
That fosters a lot of churn.
(Patrick Borbey)
Exactly: churn. So we're constantly moving people around or chasing after talent. And that's great for mobility, clearly, but I think there's also lots of room to bring in new talent. With new talent, with open-to-outside recruitment, also comes a great opportunity to improve representation and diversity.
(Interviewer)
So why diversity? Here we have two white, I'm going to say middle-age gentlemen of middle class and so on, apparently looking able-bodied, cisgendered, heterosexual to the casual observer - and yet how do you and I benefit from programs of diversity that bring in people who are not like us?
(Patrick Borbey)
Well we have to think about the country, first of all. It's not about us - it's about the country. And as a public service, we have to be representative of the people we serve. The country is changing - the country has changed. It is very different than when I joined the public service. And the public service has changed as well. But we're not changing as quickly as we should. Again, because of the fact that we are a little bit too insular. So what I'm seeing when I look at our applications, for example, for student employment or for Post-Secondary Recruitment, I'm seeing a tremendous diversity. And so if we open up our processes, if we take a chance on new recruits, if we create entry-level positions, we are going to create more diversity.
And remember: the definition of diversity is also changing. So it's not just about the four employment equity groups. It's also about LGBTQ2+. It's also about diversity of thought. We're starting to think about that in terms of how our organizations are led, the decision-making process, making sure that we're not surrounded by people that just think the way we are - not just that they look the way we are but they think the way we are. So I think that as a result of diversity, we can actually have better programs, better services to Canadians, and probably have better solutions to some of those wicked problems that we have to deal with within the public sector.
So diversity is part and parcel of the wealth of this country, but it can also improve productivity as well as the quality of decision-making and of the services offered to Canadians through the public service.
(Interviewer)
Right. So two fellows who look like us benefit from the fact that we have different perspectives coming in; people who will have different cognitive or ethnocultural diversity, or regional, or maybe they've worked in a service department as opposed to an armed department as opposed to a regulatory one, or that sort of thing; a variety like that, a central agency. So we get different perspectives to come together that foster the innovation you were talking about, that help us better represent, better serve Canadians.
Innovation: we don't want to leave anybody with the idea that innovation is. what do they call it? Punctuation for executives: we drop it in all the time. For you, when it comes to public service renewal, what does innovation actually look like? What are the practical successes here or elsewhere? What are the things that our executives on line and others can do today, tomorrow, the next day, to foster innovation?
(Patrick Borbey)
Well I think it's everybody's business to look at their job, to look at their work through the lens of innovation and creativity. Small ideas, small changes, small suggestions can be just as important as, you know, sometimes major changes that we're contemplating. So I think we look at it this way, and of course as executives, create the conditions under which people feel comfortable bringing forward their ideas, making the suggestions and giving them the safe space to actually explore that.
And when I was at Canadian Heritage for example, with Graham Flack, we created a small innovation fund. And we said we want it run by employees - it's not going to be run by a manager. We had a manager there to sign off as we called her, "la marraine", the godmother, it was a woman. But the employees decided which of the innovative ideas would be pursued. And some of them were fairly complicated, very sophisticated. But a lot of them were very small things that didn't require a lot of resources, a lot of effort.
At the Public Service Commission, we are certainly taking innovation very seriously. We have a responsibility to ensure as part of renewal of the public service that our programs, our services, our policies are as modern as possible, are adapted to the reality of today. We by and large still manage a framework that was designed in the '80s at a different time. We've completely changed. In a digital era, we have to have different solutions. So we are taking an experimentation approach to looking at things such as the new employee referral program, for example, so looking at a different way to go get new employees in areas that are very difficult to staff.
We always will have a lot of people applying for our jobs. But sometimes the people we're really looking for, they're not looking for a new job. We need to have a much more proactive approach, a targeted approach to go and convince them to try or to look at the public sector as an option. So there are various pilot projects and we're doing some prototype development also in terms of our recruitment platform, working with users, with applicants as well as hiring managers, to see what is it that they really need, what's a more intuitive experience when you're hiring or when you're applying for a job.
Our dream is to have an Amazon-type of environment where, you know, it's almost a one-click apply as a candidate, and where you have much more feedback as the staffing process comes along. Right now, we hear quite often from candidates: "we apply, we don't hear from you for six months, for nine months. Are you really serious? Are you really looking for new talent?"
(Interviewer)
In other words: "Is it worth my while to apply again if I haven't heard back?"
(Patrick Borbey)
Exactly. And we have many applicants to our programs, but are they the right kind of applicants? Are they the kind of people we should be targeting to help with the renewal of the public service? So we have a lot of work to do on that front. And as far as I'm concerned, it starts with an experimentation approach, pilot projects, testing new approaches, risk management - and managing risk well means that in some cases, we have to accept there will be failures, but what can we learn from failure?
We've got a term that we used to use at Canadian Heritage which is "fail forward". So fail, and fail early, but then learn from your failure and then make adjustments necessary to then move on.
(Interviewer)
That goes naturally with what you were saying about exploring. You're exploring some initiatives, which implies that you're not certain how they're going to go. You're not certain that they will be a roaring success, but you're exploring those in order to find out what is working, what will work and what doesn't, with which populations, for which kind of work and so on.
(Patrick Borbey)
Yeah. And I have to say, I say "we" but I mean "we" as the public service at large because the Public Service Commission is exploring alternative methods for recruitment, but a lot of departments are doing really neat things. As a result, the delegation, the transfer of responsibilities that we've made over the years with the new direction and staffing, we have a lot of departments that are trying new things. And then we want to learn what works. What can we apply then more broadly in the system?
(Interviewer)
That's profound.
When you pay attention to the mandate letters for each department, and you hear various deputy ministers and the president of the Public Service Commission, as well as the clerk and the president of the Treasury Board asking us to innovate, explore, figure out what works to digitize what we do in order to improve our services to clients, to work more effectively with our colleagues, to better collaborate with other departments, horizontally.that suggests that there needs to be from executives on the front line greater confidence, greater courage to consciously go to their boss and say:
"I'm going to try something. I'm not sure it's going to work."
(Patrick Borbey)
Absolutely. It starts there. At my level, or even at the assistant deputy minister level, we can set the tone but it's really up to the directors, the DGs - that's where major changes can happen. That's where we expect leadership to kick in. If we're really serious about renewing the public service, I think it's going to come through their day-to-day activities and decision-making, and how they apply those decisions; and through human resource planning and talent management, in order to foster the growth of their workforce.
(Interviewer)
That makes a lot of sense.
When you're talking about renewal, I noticed that the Commission is doing some significant things about promoting the employment recruitment from groups that are under-employed in the population: Indigenous people, veterans, recent retired veterans, young people, people living with disabilities. As well as, in addition to that, you're introducing some of the tools you mentioned, that neutralize the question of gender or culture or disability in the hiring process. There are some risks in launching those programs that are student programs, targeted to particular populations. How do you think executives - directors general, senior directors, executive directors - can encourage the use of that in their own sector, branch, region and so on?
(Patrick Borbey)
Well, certainly we're there to help provide the programs that they can tap into. So for example, this summer we have the Indigenous Summer Employment Opportunity Program which grew from a pilot project at the Treasury Board Secretariat initiative, and now it's a national program. We have already an inventory. I'm not sure what the numbers are today, but last week, it was over 550 candidates were available. And they can be referred now. So that is a very targeted program that can help us improve the diversity, improve the participation of Indigenous people.
Now, recruiting people is one thing. But onboarding, having a successful onboarding experience, working on retention, helping with development, showing employees a vision in terms of how you're going to help them grow to their full potential, I think that's equally important, because the last thing we want is to recruit people, bring people in and then have them leave because they're discouraged, because they don't see the future or the opportunities within the public sector.
And in that context, I also would mention again, when looking at diversity - I'm also conscious of the fact that where we have our biggest gap in our workforce is with millennials, young people. We have not been recruiting enough over the last number of years. We have an aging workforce. Baby boomers are going to be retiring, are going to be leaving, and we're going to leave a big gap behind because we have not prepared the next generation. So for example, 21% of our workforce right now are millennials. They represent 34-35% of the total labour force in Canada.
(Interviewer)
Across Canada - and 21% of the workforce in the public service are millennials, those who are, say, 35 and under. So we're grossly under-represented in terms of the people who are going to be arranging for my pension cheque, who are going to be providing services to Canadians, who are going to be defending the country, providing health oversight, that sort of thing.
(Patrick Borbey)
Exactly. And the projections are that within 10 years, they will represent 75% of the labour force across Canada. So imagine, we have a lot of catching up to do, not only in terms of recruiting, but also developing them, matching them with employees that will at some point retire, ensuring that corporate knowledge transfer, stretching them and sometimes in some cases giving them assignments that are going to be a little bit more risky so that they can learn as a result - but providing them with the right support so that again, if they fail, if they run into issues, that they will have the mentoring, the coaching, the support to be able to make it through. And we all know as managers, some of our failures are our greatest learning experiences, and as a result, I think we've become better managers, better executives.
(Interviewer)
And we foster innovation by bringing people together from different perspectives, whether it's the cognitive patterns, whether it's working in different agencies, whether it's different cultures or different generations in the workplace at the same time.
(Patrick Borbey)
Yes, and I'll tell you that every time I meet a group of millennials and they talk about the possibilities of artificial intelligence and the other technological improvements, I mean, it's a little bit beyond my comprehension, but I can see how applying those new techniques, data analytics, how that can really change the way we do our business, and lead to better results for Canadians.
(Interviewer)
Impressive. We're talking about millennials. There's two things in there: One is the idea of how we're bringing them in because it's shocking when you say that the population right now, the workforce rather is 34% millennials, people under the age of 35 in the workforce. It's climbing to 75% in the next decade. And I'm ashamed to say that - or I'm not afraid to say, I should say - that the decade goes quicker than I'd like it to. In the next 10 years, it's going to climb by some 30%, and we're already 13 points behind.
(Patrick Borbey)
Yep.
(Interviewer)
So it means that we have a lot of work to do to bring in those new folks. If I'm trying to do it the old way by being absolutely sure, I'm not going to get those people in the door. But if I'm hearing you correctly, let's take intelligent risks in terms of bringing people in. We have a year to look at probation. We have opportunities to develop, to mentor, to coach in a whole bunch of different ways - formal training, stretch assignments, and inviting people to do things they haven't done before, inviting people to do things we haven't done before, knowing some will fail and we'll be in a position to fail forward as an individual and as an organization.
(Patrick Borbey)
Yes. But it takes commitment. It takes commitment: it's not just risk-taking, but it's also leadership commitment and continued leadership. We've demonstrated, for example last year, with the pledge for students, and it led to an increase in the number of students that were hired, but more importantly, the feedback that we got from students as they were leaving, when they were surveyed was much more positive than it has ever been. People had meaningful assignments, they felt they had meaningful assignments, and they were actually thinking of us as a career, a true career option for the future, because that's the purpose behind student employment programs.
It's not just to plug a hole. It's really to try to test the future workforce and see if that's a match for them as well as for us. And of course as you know, hiring a former student, that's a very simple way to actually fill positions and it takes very little time - because we know, all executives complain about the time it takes to staff any position. But there are ways of staffing positions very quickly that can really enrich your workforce, whether it's with students, millennials, even veterans. Hiring a veteran is a very simple process through our priority list. We've hired over 500 now into the public service over the last two years since the change in the law, but we still have many, many, on our inventories.
And I also should mention that we are just establishing now our inventories for Post-Secondary Recruitment. We have over 16,000 qualified applicants that are there, some of them in very particular streams such as for computer science or for trades, human resources. And managers, executives can go and tap into those pools right now to renew their workforce.
(Interviewer)
So hiring managers at every level can avail themselves not only of the inventories you've created, the Commission, for CR 3-4-5, AS 1-2-3. I don't plan to ever run any of those competitions, any of those staffing processes again, knowing the work that you folks have done. But you've also partially pre-qualified people in a whole range of professions and classifications, 16,000.
(Patrick Borbey)
16,000 - and you mentioned CRs and administrative staff, but unfortunately, it's still the largest demand. When I looked at the stats recently, 26% of our external recruitment were for CR jobs, and only 11% of the total workforce across the public service are CRs. And we know with technology, that's an area that's going to continue to diminish in importance. So I think we still have a situation where our managers, our executives are taking maybe short-term, less risky decisions by bringing people into CR positions, and probably bringing people that are over-qualified and putting them into situations where perhaps we're not using their talent to the best extent possible.
(Interviewer)
It sounds a bit like we're expecting or encouraging senior executives and their hiring managers to turn to external recruitment to staff tomorrow's public service, especially with people coming from co-op programs like FSWEP or Post-Secondary Recruitment, instead of looking in-house for a CR4. In fact, what we probably need is a better balance of internal and external recruitment, so that we don't have 64% of staffing being done internally.
(Patrick Borbey)
Yes, we need a better mix. Obviously, we need new blood, but we also need to help the people who are already in the system develop further. There are people who still have many years to contribute, so they deserve a chance to grow. We need to come up with an approach that meets the needs at all levels, including for the people that will be retiring in the next few years. Can we find a way that allows them to transfer their knowledge and help train the next generation, to carry on with the leadership that they've demonstrated? Canada can be very proud of its public service - as you know, we've been ranked among the very best, according to the Civil Service Effectiveness Index compiled by Oxford University.
(Interviewer)
We showed up #1 in the Civil Service Effectiveness Index.
(Patrick Borbey)
Yeah, #1 according to that index, very closely followed by other Westminster types of countries such as New Zealand and Australia. But in order to maintain that level, we have to continue to work on renewal of our public service because the people who make up the Public Service of Canada are the main reason why we've achieved that level of excellence.
(Interviewer)
Right. They are 80% of our spending. They are our entire workforce. They're the people who move us forward. I'm going to try to pull some of what you said as a description of renewal, just in the last couple of minutes - and I want you to laugh, add, correct as you see fit. The importance of bringing in new talent, blending it with existing talent to foster innovation and knowledge transfer between generations, to tap into underused portions of the population to make sure that we're drawing out - whether it's from new Canadians or veterans or Indigenous people - make sure that we're drawing all that talent forward, somewhat to the degree that we also at one point recognize we were ignoring women and all of the talent they brought to the workforce.
And there's an opportunity to bring in that much more talent and to find ways to not only recruit but onboard effectively, performance manage, practise learning and development so that we can retain those people and then help them to find the appropriate fit within the public service. Not just those groups, but also youth through the various programs that you've enumerated, that the people who will be in learning from the grey hairs, learning from everybody as those generations replace each other. What would you add to that?
(Patrick Borbey)
That's a pretty good summary, I have to say. I would add, you talked about women: I'm glad you mentioned it because again, even though in the public service, women are actually over-represented in terms of the overall public service, we know that they are very significantly under-represented in certain key areas related to STEM. So for example, recently when we ran our Post-Secondary Recruitment campaign, we focused on CSs because we know there's going to be quite a demand for staffing in that area.
(Interviewer)
In the Computer Science area.
(Patrick Borbey)
And again we were disappointed and maybe it's just a reality, not just of our labour market but also even our school system, but that there were less than 30% of our candidates that were women. So we've got a lot of work to do here. Alex Benay has talked about it. There's some interesting initiatives such as Hacker Girl and initiatives like that that I think we have to now really aim at. Even high school is too late, you know. Grade school - in terms of getting young women to continue to study in these areas because there'll be tremendous opportunities in the future, and we don't want them to miss out.
(Interviewer)
For their sake, for our sake. We don't want women to miss out because they make up more than half the population. We all need to tap into that talent.
(Patrick Borbey)
And the other point that you made also is the whole regional representation. I think, again, if we want a representative public sector, then we also need to make sure that our regions are very strong. And that's something that I'm a little bit worried about. I find that our programs such as the student employment programs are under-utilized in the regions. Again, maybe managers there in the regions don't feel as comfortable in taking risks and I think we need to send them the right signals.
So for example, in our co-op programs, we hire about 4,000 co-op students on an annual basis. But 62% of them are hired in the National Capital Region, even though 55% plus of our workforce is outside of the NCR. So clearly there's some more work that we need to do to make sure that our regions are also strong from a renewal perspective.
(Interviewer)
I've lived in Ottawa for years but the best as I can tell, there's nothing special in the water in Ottawa that uniquely qualifies me for positions in the National Capital. So anything you want to say about areas of selection? But first I will confess to having set areas of selection in order to reduce the number of applicants. I will confess to that. I now look at that and realize how foolish that is in that I'm denying access to all Canadians who pay taxes, who are being served, who get a chance to vote, participate in our economy and our democracy. What do you want to say about areas of selection and the fact that we so often limit that?
(Patrick Borbey)
Yeah. And I understand hiring managers are concerned about when they open up a process, that they will be flooded with applicants, right? What happens if you opened it up to everybody in the country and you get 5,000 applicants? How do you get down to the 30 or 40 that are really worth considering, seriously considering for the position? So again, this is where technology can bring some solutions in the future, where we can use, for example, unsupervised internet testing to bring that number down. Make sure that we end up with the candidates that we're really interested in.
The other thing that I find interesting is with technology now, work does not have to happen in the NCR, national work. So you can have people working on national programs in Vancouver or Halifax. Actually we at the Commission are going to be testing that because we already have, for example, some of our inspectors that are working on cases. They're based in Halifax or Toronto and they're working on cases involving other regions of the country. There's no reason why they have to reside in the National Capital Region to play that role. So we're going to be looking at some other ways that we can also locate staff in the regions. That also will be contributing to national objectives.
(Interviewer)
As executives, whether it's EX 3-2-1 level, it's up to us to have confidence and accept the risk of hiring someone to do the work remotely.
Because we know that warming seats doesn't produce deliverables. It's the production of deliverables that delivers on jobs. So it can be done from Toronto, from Moncton, from Ste-Thérèse, all across the country.
(Patrick Borbey)
I do think, however, I believe in a workplace setting as a social environment as well. So again, I'm not suggesting that people can - like for example, I'm from Elliot Lake in Northern Ontario. I'm not suggesting that I could be the President of the Public Service Commission living in Elliot Lake. Maybe I'd like that, but I think I have an important leadership role and it has to be in a social setting. So similarly, when we're talking about co-locating staff who have national responsibilities, we're talking about co-locating with regional teams. So they are part of a team environment as well.
(Interviewer)
Right, right. Just a couple of minutes left. I was going to make a point that if anyone has a question.
If you want to send a question for Patrick Borbey, president of the Public Service Commission, act quickly and you might get an answer.
I don't suppose that we're allowed to ask you who your favourite team is in the NHL playoffs?
(Patrick Borbey)
That's a tough one. There's a couple of teams that I might've been rooting for that, well, are going to be vying for a good draft pick, I guess at this point. But I have to say, I have a special place in my heart for Winnipeg.
(Interviewer)
The Jets, there we go!
I have another question, one of my own: how can I make my boss more comfortable and more confident in tolerating, accepting and embracing risk so that I may go off and try something new? Even if I don't know how it will turn out because I'm just exploring options.
(Patrick Borbey)
Yeah, I think that's based on results, and the trust that you've established with that person. If you've managed to get positive results in a way that inspires confidence - as you know, it's not just the "what" but the "how", so if you've managed to establish that climate of trust, I'd like to think your boss will allow you to take certain risks and will support you. Also, what is your boss's reaction when things go wrong?
It's nice to talk to your boss when you've had, you know, a nice success. But what happens when you come in and say: "You know what? We've had a bit of an issue here. There's a mistake that's been made. Here's what's going on. Here's what I'm doing to deal with it." How does your superior react to that? And that's a big test to that relationship.
So I would hope that if there's trust in that relationship, you'll be able to take a certain amount of risk, and then be able to deliver some results. When it comes to the hiring process, results don't happen from one day to the next. It takes a bit of time. It requires an investment. So you also need to have patience within that relationship.
(Interviewer)
Yes, well said. Thank you. If you had one issue you'd like to emphasize for our listeners right now - if you had one question you wanted to share with folks out there, we can collect them here and send them to you. So what would you like the EX 3s, 2s, 1s, to be thinking about? Or what do you need from them as information?
(Patrick Borbey)
Well, I'd like to know what is it that's preventing them from making decisions that take them outside of their comfort zone - taking some risks in terms of staffing, using the national inventories, expanding the use of students. What are the issues that are preventing them? Which ones of those are internal to their organization and where they may have some influence working with their deputy to create the right conditions?
And which ones of them frankly should be directed to the Public Service Commission? Because we're not perfect. We still have a lot of work to do to ensure that our tools, our approaches, our policies are well suited to the needs of our hiring managers and our candidates. And so we want to know: if there's something that we can do to improve, things that we're not doing well, that are not working well, we want to know.
(Interviewer)
The door is open.
(Patrick Borbey)
Exactly. Don't be shy. We're always open to feedback. And we want to hear it because it's fine to invest in programs and policies and inventories, but if they're not being used by managers, they're useless. So we really want your feedback.
(Interviewer)
Thank you very much.
Patrick Borbey, president of the Public Service Commission of Canada wants to know from you what it is that's keeping you from being innovative, from taking intelligent risks and from making full use of the services that are available, in each of us making the effort in our specific environment to help renew the public service.
Thank you so much.
(Patrick Borbey)
Exactly.
It was my pleasure.
Thank you.
