Public Sector Leadership Challenges in
Today’s World
Profession in Perspective 2010
Presentation by Maria Barrados
President
Public Service Commission
September 7, 2010
Check against delivery
RDIMS # 300373
Dublin, Ireland
1
Setting the Context
• Economic downturn
o Reductions, cutbacks
o Impacts on public servants
• Politicization of public services
o Changing institutions
o Changing relationships between public servants
and elected officials
2
People Management
•
“Getting people part of the organization right”
•
“First get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to
drive it”
•
“’Who’ questions come before ‘what’ decisions”
Good to Great , Jim Collins
•
Growing influence of HR in organizations
o
Workforce planning linked to business strategy and
outcomes
3
Valuing and Managing Talent
• In Canada
o expecting tighter labour market, accelerating retirements,
shortage of critical skills.
• Valuing Your Talent – HR Trends and Metrics (June 2010)
o Report by Conference Board of Canada
o Top challenges: Retaining critical talent, grooming future
organizational leaders
 Acquisition,
 Development
 Leadership Development
 Engagement
4
Acquisition = recruiting, selection, hiring
• Canada’s aging workforce; shortage of critical skills
• 20% - difficulty in recruiting quality candidates
• Close to 80% - difficulty recruiting candidates with critical skills (key
tasks) and hot skills (high demand).
–
Challenge similar for both private and public sector
• Internal job postings, corporate
internet sites and third-party web
boards are the most effective
methods of recruiting for all jobs
except the top jobs.
5
Acquisition – Canada’s public
service
In Canada’s public service:
• Values – merit, non-partisanship; fairness,
transparency, access, representativeness in terms of
reflecting our diverse population
• Challenge is to have representative, bilingual public
service
6
Acquisition – Public Service Commission
• Better planning to identify areas of critical shortage.
• Identifying areas of critical shortage.
• Targeted outreach and recruitment – universities, career fairs
• Post Secondary Recruitment Program
– Specific career streams
• Clerk of the Privy Council’s objective - hiring 4000 post-secondary graduates –
largely met
• With help from PSC’s post-secondary recruitment drives
• Pools of partially and full qualified candidates for high demand and high turnover
areas in the public service
7
Acquisition – attracting talent - Jobs.gc.ca
A single window for
Canadians to apply to the
Government of Canada!
A Huge Success !!!!
Very easy and better
to locate jobs.
Thank you!
CCG Videos
promoting Coast
Guard College!
8
Development
Conference Board Report:
• Shift from formal training to development
• Downward trend in spending on formal
learning
o Higher in public sector
• Clearly defined competencies
o 79% of public sector, vs. 68% of private sector
• 59% have formal learning and development plans; higher in public sector
– (60% )
• Increasing reliance on segments for determining development
opportunities.
• Managers formally accountable for people management
9
Development, Training, in Canada’s
Public Service
• Need to demonstrate clear linkages between individual and organizational needs
• Canada School of Public Service delivers centralized training
– Targeted to specific levels and communities
• Learning plans developed for every employee
– Goal is 100% completion rates for learning plans and performance feedback
reports
• Performance Management is now embedded at senior levels.
• Professional development communities
– National Managers Community Professional Development Forum
• Engaging and facilitating dialogue and the sharing of best practices.
– Young Professionals Network
10
Leadership Development and
Succession Planning
Conference Board Report:
• Organizations facing leadership crunch.
• Succession Planning : Public sector lagging behind private sector
–
81% of private sector have identified key leadership positions for succession planning,
vs. 63% of public sector
11
Leadership Development and
Succession Planning
• Increased succession pools for second-level executives and senior
managers
• More organizations are identifying mission-critical positions – nonexecutive jobs, vital to the organization’s performance.
Diversity
• “representation falls as people in diversity groups climb the career
ladder”
• “the integration of diversity management practices across all facets of
talent management, particularly development should have higher
priority.”
12
Leadership Development, Succession Planning – Canada’s Public
Service
• Challenges not getting easier.
• Leaders of tomorrow’s public service are within our departments today.
• Talent management in place for all executives, moving toward some
non-executive levels.
• Leadership Development Framework in place
 responsibility for leadership – with department s
 focus on work-based learning.
 broadening experience and knowledge, vs. accelerating their progress up the ranks
• Moving forward: more systematically integrated with business and HR
planning, including succession planning and filling identified
organizational needs.
13
Leadership Development –
Canada’s Public Service
• Continuing role of corporate leadership development:
• Advanced Leadership Program
o Highest level program for senior executives ; increase awareness of social,
global issues
• Fellows Program :
o short-term exchanges with business, academia, not-for-profit organizations
and other levels of government.
• Public Servant in Residence Program
o Placed in Canadian universities to conduct research and/or teach.
• Living Leadership Program
o Experiential leadership program –practical application of leadership skills
14
Succession Planning - Canada’s Public
Service
• At executive level and in key skill shortage areas.
• Good data needed
• Tied to plan for identifying critical positions
• Ensuring pools, strategies are in place
• Also tied to values – and to ensuring we have representative, bilingual
public service
15
Employee Engagement
Conference Board Report
16
Employee Engagement
Conference Board Report
• Employee engagement one of top HR priorities cited in Conference Board Report
• Surveys used more frequently in public sector
• Prevalent employee concerns are: recognition, career opportunities, effectiveness of
management, and development opportunities
• Wellness, voluntarism and social networking – can enhance engagement and benefit
employees, and organizations.
• Wellness, work-life balance initiatives are increasingly part of the corporate agenda – more
so in public sector
• Community involvement, voluntarism allow organizations and employees to express and
act on shared values in a concrete way
• Social networking
• 43% of private sector organizations offer unlimited access to social networking vs
23% of public sector organizations
17
Employee Engagement – Canada’s
Public Service
Canada’s public service
• All public servants have role to play
• Overcoming risk-aversion by building trust; through dialogue.
• Federal Public Service Employee Survey – every three years - online first time in 2008
– Departmental surveys
– PSC – five surveys to date – developed action plan, posted to the web.
• Voluntarism - Government of Canada’s Charitable Workplace Campaign
– Strong participation
– This year included activities related to healthy living and wellness
• Social networking, wellness : Clerk of the Privy Council has made renewing the workplace
a priority.
– web 2.0 technologies
– GCpedia – Government of Canada’s wiki
– PSC – fostering innovative uses of social media
• President’s blog.
18
Conclusion
• Importance of human resources - Majority of organizations surveyed
(three quarters) believed that HR is more influential than it was 5 years
ago.
• Value of people management – underscored in Canada by Clerk of Privy
Council’s emphasis on PS Renewal.
• Renewal - strengthening the capacity of the federal Public Service to
meet the needs of Canadians and deliver on the business of
Government.
• Clerk reported in the Spring on the Public Service Renewal initiative
• Highlighted progress on recruitment, as well as on integrated HR and
business planning.
–
Departments, agencies taking a more strategic and coordinated approach to
recruitment, building on integrated business and HR plans.
19
Workshops
What lessons can we learn from the private sector in
relation to leadership development?
What good practices in leadership selection and
development can we share from our own respective
countries?
What are the new and emerging competencies for effective
public sector leadership?
20