I've been on the road for the past few weeks - interrupted only by a short holiday in my native land (!).
Last week during the Management Trainee Program (MTP) Annual Conference I gave my "Bottom-Up Change" presentation in both official languages for the first time. Today, I'll be delivering it at the Canada School of Public Service's weekly Armchair Discussion, first in French, then in English. The presentations will also be available in webcast. If you attend the event in person or watch it on the Web, please use my blog to provide feedback. I'm looking forward to reading your comments.
Last week's MTP Conference also featured my new talk: "Living Renewal: How to Turn An Organization Around in 1000 Days". In this presentation, I discuss the drastic shift in morale and employee engagement experienced in my organization over the past 3 years. It is directly in line with the objectives of PS Renewal, and I've been waiting for the opportunity to tell this story for almost a year now. It seemed to be received quite well, despite the fact I had to cut short the last half-hour - which is also my favourite part because I use it to debunk some myths about organizational renewal and change management. This afternoon I am supposed to record the talk in both French and English for a podcast sponsored by CSPS. Hats off to Dean Landry, who is really "taking the bull by the horns" by bringing these concepts to life at the School and making the most of what technology has to offer!
I know I will be drained by the end of the day. Regardless, I think it will be worthwhile!
So PLEASE!!! Share your comments and feedback! :-)
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
A Glimmer of Hope
In the past few weeks, I have witnessed some meaningful development around the use of social networks in my Department, and the government in general.
It started with my meetings with the people from Values and Ethics - the same people who dealt with the complaint filed against me about a year ago after I released “An Inconvenient Renewal” (if you have missed it, see my postings on the topic: here, here and here). We didn’t get into all the details of the investigation (or “fact-finding exercise” as they call it), but they acknowledged that they were a little overwhelmed and ill-equipped to deal with my case a year ago. A lot has happened since then: some learning has taken place, and the efforts of the government to bring Web 2.0 into the workplace has gotten many people to be a bit more open-minded about it.
The good thing though is that my case kind of set a precedent that was necessary to get senior public servant to a) think about the impact of Web 2.0 on the way we run our organizations and b) ponder the opportunities and risk involved in giving employees a space to voice their ideas and concerns about the public service in general and PS Renewal in particular.
In fact, I was just tasks by my superiors to look into the best practices surrounding the use of discussion boards and other alternatives to allow employees to discuss PS Renewal matters and voice their thoughts on the topic. There seems to be an awareness that there are risks involved, yet the benefits can offset those risks and therefore the initiative is worth pursuing.
I have also been asked to provide some kind of guidance to the employees of my organization with regards to the use of social networks. What could be the most interesting thing about this exercise, is that we do not seek to forbid the use of social networks, but rather educate employees about some of the implications of sharing information about work on sites such as Facebook and others. We have yet to issue the communication to staff, but I find we are taking a very progressive direction. If we go that route, it will strike a nice balance between being cautious and harnessing the power of Web 2.0.
Hopefully, this will serve as an incentive for more public servants to interact on existing websites related to the federal public service and PS Renewal.
On that note, here are three interesting postings about blogging:
It started with my meetings with the people from Values and Ethics - the same people who dealt with the complaint filed against me about a year ago after I released “An Inconvenient Renewal” (if you have missed it, see my postings on the topic: here, here and here). We didn’t get into all the details of the investigation (or “fact-finding exercise” as they call it), but they acknowledged that they were a little overwhelmed and ill-equipped to deal with my case a year ago. A lot has happened since then: some learning has taken place, and the efforts of the government to bring Web 2.0 into the workplace has gotten many people to be a bit more open-minded about it.
The good thing though is that my case kind of set a precedent that was necessary to get senior public servant to a) think about the impact of Web 2.0 on the way we run our organizations and b) ponder the opportunities and risk involved in giving employees a space to voice their ideas and concerns about the public service in general and PS Renewal in particular.
In fact, I was just tasks by my superiors to look into the best practices surrounding the use of discussion boards and other alternatives to allow employees to discuss PS Renewal matters and voice their thoughts on the topic. There seems to be an awareness that there are risks involved, yet the benefits can offset those risks and therefore the initiative is worth pursuing.
I have also been asked to provide some kind of guidance to the employees of my organization with regards to the use of social networks. What could be the most interesting thing about this exercise, is that we do not seek to forbid the use of social networks, but rather educate employees about some of the implications of sharing information about work on sites such as Facebook and others. We have yet to issue the communication to staff, but I find we are taking a very progressive direction. If we go that route, it will strike a nice balance between being cautious and harnessing the power of Web 2.0.
Hopefully, this will serve as an incentive for more public servants to interact on existing websites related to the federal public service and PS Renewal.
On that note, here are three interesting postings about blogging:
Friday, November 21, 2008
On-the-Spot Job Offers: Real Solution or Quick Fix?
There is a fair deal of excitement right now in the federal public service over “on-the-spot job offers” to students in college and university job fairs. Personally, the concept of “on-the-spot job offers” leaves me skeptical at best.
Rather than launching into all the reasons why I feel that way, let me start be enunciating the conditions to which I agree with the idea of “on-the-spot job offers”:
(Gulp!)
Assuming all the conditions are met, and assuming the manager feels confident about the whole “on-the-spot job offer” thing, then we must ask ourselves the $1,000,000 question:
"If we feel fine about hiring a total stranger after a 15 minutes assessment in a college gymnasium, why do we still resort to iron-clad processes that take months or years to administer to assess career public servants we often know (such as our own staff!)? Why can’t we use the same type of “on-the-spot” assessment to appoint internally?"
Some may argue that the jobs we staff with university grads don’t require the same level of expertise than the jobs we staff internally. I don’t buy it for a second. I just look at all the steps, tests, interviews and reference checks involved in the creation of CR-4 and AS-1 internal pools and I see major inconsistencies with the argument.
Others will argue that we need to make “on-the-spot job offers” to people in highly specialized fields where expertise is rare or unique, otherwise they will choose another employer. That makes sense, but then I wonder how we can assess highly specialized workers in 15 minutes when we take months and months to hire people for generic clerical jobs…
The real answer for the difference of treatment between external candidates to who we are ready to make an “on-the-spot job offer” after a 15 minutes assessment, and the internal employees who are qualified, experienced and who we know intimately is the following: fear.
We are afraid of confronting unsuccessful employees, especially when we know them. We dread a complaint to the Public Service Staffing Tribunal, not simply because of the extra work it might require on our part, but because it could make the Deputy Minister look bad (or, alternatively, make the senior HR advisors look bad to the eyes of the DM for allowing such a thing to happen!).
Consequently, many managers would rather leave appointment decisions in the hands of a tool (preferably a standardized test that can’t be challenged) than come up with a few simple questions that would suffice to assess the applicants fairly accurately in a matter of hours, use their judgment and demonstrate courage in making the appointment decision based on this assessment.
The perverse effect of leaving appointment decisions in the hands of tools such as written tests rather than exercising our judgment is that many applicants who are successful in staffing processes are just that: people who do well on tests.
At the risk of bringing discredit upon myself, I will acknowledge in public what I have often confided in private: I have been lucky to get a job in the public service. I was hired not so much for my competence or talent, but mostly because I did well on a series of tests (IQ, written communication, situational judgment), in-baskets, simulations, and interviews. In all fairness, the process I originally went through was very rigorous, and I do take pride in having made it through. But I know many people who would have made just as good (or better!) public servants, employees, or managers. But they’ve never really done well on tests, or at least couldn’t do well enough to go past this early screening stage. (Fortunately, in all of these cases, the public service’s loss was another employer’s win!)
So back to “on-the-spot job offers”. I don’t want to condemn these so-called “innovative” hiring methods. But when I look at the gap between this and the staffing methods we used internally, I shake my head. Couldn’t we have come up with some sort of middle ground?
For instance, managers could do an early screening of university applicants based on a 15 minutes interview during which we assessed a limited number of well-defined merit criteria (i.e. education, experience, etc.), and reserve a more thorough assessment (i.e. skills, background and reference check) for later, thus cutting by many months the recruitment process, narrowing the pool to a smaller number of high profile candidates, and remain a competitive employer.
Only time will tell if those “on-the-spot job offers” really work, or if we are simply solving a recruitment issue by creating a performance management problem elsewhere.
Rather than launching into all the reasons why I feel that way, let me start be enunciating the conditions to which I agree with the idea of “on-the-spot job offers”:
- The hiring manager himself is on-the-spot to hire the employees (as opposed to a delegated report or an HR advisor);
- The Statement of Merit Criteria is well suited for on-the-spot assessment of the candidates by the manager.
- The manager is able to overcome any personal bias (positive or negative) with regards to gender, ethnicity, and other employment-equity-like characteristics.
- The manager is able to resist the temptation to hire a clone (i.e. someone who studied in the same institution, shares similar interests, has the same kind of personality, roots for the same hockey team, etc.).
- Whenever appropriate (read: most of the time!), the job offer is conditional to further background or reference check.
- There are very strict conditions of probation attached to the job offer and the organization has a solid probationary process in place with clear accountability for managers.
- Managers set up the new hire for success by providing him or her all the necessary orientation, training and support during the first days, weeks or months on the job.
- There are regular formal performance appraisals during the first year (ideally every three months at least) during which the new hire is assessed thoroughly against objectives and expectations.
- There is ongoing and immediate feedback between the manager and the new hire to correct any behaviour that is not in line with expectations.
- The hiring manager is held fully accountable for the hiring decision and managing the performance of the employee.
(Gulp!)
Assuming all the conditions are met, and assuming the manager feels confident about the whole “on-the-spot job offer” thing, then we must ask ourselves the $1,000,000 question:
"If we feel fine about hiring a total stranger after a 15 minutes assessment in a college gymnasium, why do we still resort to iron-clad processes that take months or years to administer to assess career public servants we often know (such as our own staff!)? Why can’t we use the same type of “on-the-spot” assessment to appoint internally?"
Some may argue that the jobs we staff with university grads don’t require the same level of expertise than the jobs we staff internally. I don’t buy it for a second. I just look at all the steps, tests, interviews and reference checks involved in the creation of CR-4 and AS-1 internal pools and I see major inconsistencies with the argument.
Others will argue that we need to make “on-the-spot job offers” to people in highly specialized fields where expertise is rare or unique, otherwise they will choose another employer. That makes sense, but then I wonder how we can assess highly specialized workers in 15 minutes when we take months and months to hire people for generic clerical jobs…
The real answer for the difference of treatment between external candidates to who we are ready to make an “on-the-spot job offer” after a 15 minutes assessment, and the internal employees who are qualified, experienced and who we know intimately is the following: fear.
We are afraid of confronting unsuccessful employees, especially when we know them. We dread a complaint to the Public Service Staffing Tribunal, not simply because of the extra work it might require on our part, but because it could make the Deputy Minister look bad (or, alternatively, make the senior HR advisors look bad to the eyes of the DM for allowing such a thing to happen!).
Consequently, many managers would rather leave appointment decisions in the hands of a tool (preferably a standardized test that can’t be challenged) than come up with a few simple questions that would suffice to assess the applicants fairly accurately in a matter of hours, use their judgment and demonstrate courage in making the appointment decision based on this assessment.
The perverse effect of leaving appointment decisions in the hands of tools such as written tests rather than exercising our judgment is that many applicants who are successful in staffing processes are just that: people who do well on tests.
At the risk of bringing discredit upon myself, I will acknowledge in public what I have often confided in private: I have been lucky to get a job in the public service. I was hired not so much for my competence or talent, but mostly because I did well on a series of tests (IQ, written communication, situational judgment), in-baskets, simulations, and interviews. In all fairness, the process I originally went through was very rigorous, and I do take pride in having made it through. But I know many people who would have made just as good (or better!) public servants, employees, or managers. But they’ve never really done well on tests, or at least couldn’t do well enough to go past this early screening stage. (Fortunately, in all of these cases, the public service’s loss was another employer’s win!)
So back to “on-the-spot job offers”. I don’t want to condemn these so-called “innovative” hiring methods. But when I look at the gap between this and the staffing methods we used internally, I shake my head. Couldn’t we have come up with some sort of middle ground?
For instance, managers could do an early screening of university applicants based on a 15 minutes interview during which we assessed a limited number of well-defined merit criteria (i.e. education, experience, etc.), and reserve a more thorough assessment (i.e. skills, background and reference check) for later, thus cutting by many months the recruitment process, narrowing the pool to a smaller number of high profile candidates, and remain a competitive employer.
Only time will tell if those “on-the-spot job offers” really work, or if we are simply solving a recruitment issue by creating a performance management problem elsewhere.
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