Canadian Labour Reporter

7 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2014 CANADIAN LABOUR REPORTER CANADIAN LABOUR REPORTER NEWS Credit: Andy Clark (Reuters) A worker with the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans tosses a sockeye salmon back into the water during tagging on the Adams River near Chase, B.C. Unionized workers in 20 federal departments — including Fisheries and Oceans — are subject to Ottawa's new performance management system. cies of the core public administra- tion — including the Department of Finance, the Department of Health, the Treasury Board and the Correctional Service of Cana- da — and federal unions fear each department will apply the direc- tive's rating scales differently. Treasury Board president Tony Clement, however, promised the directive will provide consistency. "There will be no more so-called 'chronic travelers' who jump from department to department ev- ery time work starts to go south," Clement said in an address to the Association of Professional Execu- tive of the Public Service of Cana- da. "There will be no more trading off of underperformers to unsus- pecting departments with no in- dication of potential performance issues. There will be no more 'ne- glected' poor performers who are simply ignored or tolerated be- cause that's the easier thing to do." While Clement promised the directive is not a "backdoor at- tempt" to further slash the size of the public service, he promised poor performers who fail to im- prove and become productive employees will be dismissed. Through the application of this directive the Treasury Board expects to create a healthy work- place environment that promotes "leadership, commitment and results," as well as productive em- ployees capable of providing "ex- cellent" service to Canadians. The Treasury Board reports the regime will be consistently applied across the core public ad- ministration. But according to R. Douglas Williamson — CEO of the To- ronto-based professional services firm The Beacon Group — the di- rective's consistency is irrelevant. "Performance management as a practice is broken," Williamson said. "Most organizations, includ- ing the federal government, are using a model and a mindset that was built for a totally different time. The world has changed and yet the art of performance man- agement is lagging behind." Williamson said managers should focus instead on discre- tionary investment. Conditions should be created in the work- place — including the relationship between employers and employ- ees — that allow workers to invest more of themselves in their job and in the performing of the job. "It's kind of like the difference between a push and a pull," he ex- plained. "The old performance management system is a push sys- tem. When you think of it the way we should be thinking about it, it becomes a pull mechanism." The success of this style of per- formance management relies on the manager. "The unsophisticated manag- er relies on blunt instruments to enforce compliance. That's just so old-school as to be laughable," Williamson said. "The sophisti- cated manager understands that there's a whole other dynamic. We just don't have enough peo- ple skilled in those dynamics." While Williamson admits there are added complexities to perfor- mance management in a govern- ment setting, there is a strong cor- relation to the corporate sector. As in the corporate world, he said, training, above all, is the key to success. "There's no question whatso- ever that managers have not been sufficiently trained," Williamson said, and because of this employ- ees are left unsatisfied by the cur- rent system. A vast majority of public ser- vice employees don't feel their performance rating accurately re- flects their work, said Bittman. This disconnect will likely lead to the filing of grievances. "We agree in a performance management system and our employees want to be told how they're doing," she said. "They want constructive feedback so they can do their job better and provide excellent service to Ca- nadians. But when they don't feel they're being graded fairly, that's going to adversely affect employee morale." Training key to performance management system "Performance management as a practice is broken. Most organizations, including the federal government, are using a model and a mindset that was built for a totally different time." < from pg. 1

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