Departmental Results Report 2019-2020

President’s message

I am pleased to present the 2019–20 Departmental Results Report for the Public Service Commission of Canada. In the following pages, we discuss the 3 main results that we aim to achieve:

• The public service efficiently hires the workforce of the future that is capable and ready to deliver results for Canadians.
• The public service reflects Canada’s diversity.
• Canadians are served by a politically impartial public service.

We have made progress on these results over the past year. We developed experimental projects and piloted approaches to address the challenging issue of reducing the time that it takes to staff positions. These initiatives will help to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the public service staffing system.

Modernizing the public service recruitment platform remains one of our priorities. We aim to provide an inclusive, accessible and user-centric digital solution to attract talent and meet the needs of job seekers, hiring managers and human resources professionals. This work will move forward in stages, and proof-of-concept testing will take place in 2020–21.

We continue to focus on promoting and supporting the hiring of persons with disabilities in the federal public service. For instance, we launched the Federal Internship Program for Canadians with Disabilities in April 2019, and the first interns have been hired.

Towards the end of 2019–20, the coronavirus pandemic presented a unique challenge, one that we rose to meet. We adapted by re-focusing our priorities and taking on a proactive approach to enable departments and agencies to carry out urgent staffing actions in response to these unprecedented circumstances.

I invite you to read this report and learn about our achievements in hiring the workforce of the future. We will continue to spearhead change in building a diverse and inclusive workforce and to ensure that the public service remains fair and impartial. Together with our partners, we continue to envision and lay the foundation for Canada’s future public service.

Patrick Borbey
President
Public Service Commission of Canada

Results at a glance and operating context

In 2019–20, the Public Service Commission of Canada supported federal departments and agencies in renewing their workforce amid fierce competition for key skills. We focused on:

• experimenting to reduce the time to staff
• implementing initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion
• modernizing the Government of Canada’s recruitment platform ^{Endnote E1}

The following key achievements contributed to our expected departmental results.

We led and supported departments and agencies to help them build a diverse and highly competent public service.

In 2019–20, we worked with departments and agencies to provide them with options to respond to government expectations for reducing the time it takes to staff federal public service positions.

• We led and collaborated on experimental projects to improve time to staff and make the staffing process more efficient and effective, including:
  • piloting an employee referral program for difficult-to-staff positions
  • participating in the exploration of the use of artificial intelligence in screening processes with Employment and Social Development Canada
• We held sessions with departments and agencies to:
• foster engagement and support them in innovating as they leverage the New Direction in Staffing^{Endnote E2} (the policy framework that we renewed in 2016 and sets out rules for public service hiring)
• address the issues identified in our monitoring activities
• support culture change

We provided high-quality programs, services and systems that contribute to the hiring of a competent, diverse and professional public service.

One of our areas of focus in 2019–20 was to improve the recruitment of persons with disabilities. The Accessible Canada Act (which came into force in July 2019) and the Accessibility Strategy for the Public Service of Canada provided us with clear goals in that regard. We worked to meet these goals in partnership with other central agencies, as part of our own priorities and in alignment with broader Government of Canada diversity and inclusion priorities. We also worked on approaches to support departments and agencies in achieving a collective goal of recruiting 5 000 persons with disabilities by 2025. We leveraged our federal public service workforce macrosimulation tool to provide insight to Deputy Ministers and senior executive committees across the public service on the level of recruitment required to reach this goal and its effect on the diversity of the public service over the next five years. We also launched the Federal Internship Program for Canadians with Disabilities in April 2019, and the first cohort of interns have been hired.

We made progress on our key initiative, GC Jobs Transformation,^{Endnote E1} which aims to improve the application process and accessibility to public service jobs for all Canadians, and to help hiring managers quickly find skilled employees. An options analysis has led us to further explore software solutions. In doing so, we will evaluate recruitment solutions from vendors and determine how they meet our user needs and the functionalities we are looking for. Based on these evaluations, we will recommend a potential solution, which we will pilot using live hiring processes. Arriving at this stage has involved significant discovery work, which included doing research and gathering lessons learned from other countries; collecting user feedback; and assessing delivery options and vendor demonstrations of recruitment solutions.

We promoted and safeguarded the integrity of the staffing system and the non-partisan nature of the federal public service.

We developed a regulatory framework to modernize the Public Service Employment Regulations, which is now in the consultation phase. We also published the Results of the Horizontal Audit on Credential Validation,^{Endnote E3} which identified the need to increase awareness and understanding of the requirement to assess foreign credentials.

We provided research and data analytics to support reporting, policy improvements, decision-making and learning. We also adjusted our second Staffing and Non-Partisanship Survey questionnaire, which will launch in 2021, to focus on potential challenges to accessibility and inclusiveness in staffing practices.

At the end of 2019–20, the COVID-19 pandemic required us to rapidly redirect our resources in order to adapt to an unprecedented situation. This involved helping departments and agencies to quickly staff positions critical to the effective functioning of government. The pandemic resulted in a shift to full-time remote operations for most of our staff, affecting the progress of some initiatives for 2019–20 and our plans for 2020–21.

In working to achieve our results in 2019–20, our total actual spending was $93,611,830 and we had a total of 857 actual full-time equivalents.

For more information on the Public Service Commission’s plans, priorities and results achieved, see the “Results: what we achieved ” section of this report.

Results: what we achieved

Core Responsibility

Public Service Hiring and Non-partisanship

Description

The Public Service Commission (PSC) promotes and safeguards a merit-based, representative and non-partisan public service that delivers results for all Canadians.

Through policy direction and guidance, the PSC supports departments and agencies in the hiring of qualified individuals into and within the public service, helping to shape a workforce reflecting Canada’s diversity. The PSC delivers recruitment programs and assessment services supporting the strategic recruitment priorities of the Government of Canada and the renewal of the public service, leveraging modern tools to provide Canadians with barrier-free access to public service jobs.

The PSC oversees public service hiring, ensuring the integrity of the hiring process. The PSC provides guidance to employees regarding their rights and obligations related to political activities and renders decisions on political candidacy, respecting employees’ rights to participate in political activities, while protecting the non-partisan nature of the public service.

Results

In 2019–20, we aimed to achieve 3 main results:

1. The public service efficiently hires a workforce for the future that can deliver results for Canadians.

We recognize that reducing the time it takes to hire new public servants requires a culture change. Such a change will take time to implement across the public service. In 2019–20, new requirements to ensure prompt and accurate pay for newly appointed public servants may have limited progress on reducing the median time it takes to staff externally advertised positions. Newly imposed timeframes between the signature of the employment letter and the employee start date can add up to 15 workdays to the hiring process. The time to staff did not decrease this year. We have been working to develop and implement projects and approaches to address the challenging issue of reducing the time that it takes to staff positions. We will also leverage the lessons learned from departments and agencies on improving time to staff.

We completed several research projects on the efficiency and effectiveness of staffing in the federal public service, examining:

• the length of time job postings are published
• redundancies in published job postings
• the likelihood that candidates will apply based on whether they subscribe to email job alerts

We also developed and updated staffing-related tools that allow departments and agencies to:

• visualize Survey of Staffing and Non-Partisanship data
• forecast the number of applications
• verify the accuracy of the translation of statements of merit criteria
• view a dashboard of labour market indicators

Findings from these projects shed light on additional support and policy changes that departments and agencies may need to achieve intended results.

We led a pilot project to streamline priority clearances, a step in the recruitment process that the Public Service Commission is responsible for. Overall, feedback from departments and agencies on this project, which shortened the recruitment process by 4 to 6 days, was positive. This is a small reduction that we hope will lead the way for departments and agencies to identify more incremental administrative efficiencies.

We continued working to make the federal public service more attractive as an employer of choice for Canadians, and to promote recruitment that supports our diversity and public service renewal agendas. We also worked to ensure that the public service is well equipped to retain and hire the best and most qualified candidates. For example:

• we developed and piloted an electronic managerial in-box test, which now assesses the softer skills and traits that leaders need to be successful in the future
• over 200 candidates across the country piloted this new test
• we conducted an evaluation of the Veterans Hiring Act implementation in partnership with the Veterans Affairs Canada, the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces
  • it highlighted progress and barriers that veterans and eligible Canadian Armed Forces members face in finding public service jobs
  • we will work with our partners to build on measures to retain and attract these talented and experienced individuals

2. The public service reflects Canada’s diversity

Although the latest results on employment equity group representation in the public service were not available when this report was prepared, we expect to see a gap between the percentage of employees who are persons with disabilities and our objective to meet or exceed workforce availability. We have been working with our partners and stakeholders to close this gap by identifying, preventing and removing barriers in staffing and recruiting for persons with disabilities. As part of this work, we:

• developed approaches to support departments and agencies in achieving our collective goal of recruiting 5 000 persons with disabilities by 2025
• shared expertise with departments and agencies to help candidates during the assessment phase of the hiring process, through a network of in-house experts fully trained in accessibility assessment
• as of March 31, 2020, 30 departments and agencies had roughly 50 accessibility assessment ambassadors working to make the recruitment of persons with disabilities into the federal public service as barrier-free as possible
• launched the Federal Internship Program for Canadians with Disabilities^{Endnote E4} to increase the economic inclusion of Canadians across the country who have disabilities and little work experience, and to help them develop their skills for future employment 
• the program will provide 125 2-year internship opportunities in the federal public service over 5 years
• 20 interns were hired and are now part of the first cohort of the program
• we have integrated lessons learned from the first year into our approach for the second year to increase the number of placements
• attended 46 outreach events to directly support the recruitment of persons with disabilities, partnering with organizations external to the public service such as the Canadian Association of Supported Employment
• established the Employment Equity Research Working Group, made up of 15 representatives from 8 organizations, to bring forward the reality and challenges faced by members of employment equity groups, and incorporate their views and concerns for future research
• completed the examination phase of our Audit of Employment Equity Representation in Recruitment, which explores how applicants from the designated employment equity groups fared in the recruitment process compared to other applicants, and whether certain factors had an impact on their success

Beyond supporting the recruitment of persons with disabilities, we leveraged our student and graduate programs and inventories to promote diversity. We significantly increased our outreach activities in 2019–20 to promote federal public service job opportunities to potential applicants in every region across the country. More specifically:

• we targeted outreach and promoted self-declaration to job seekers for the 2019–20 Post-Secondary Recruitment campaign, which generated a 22.7% increase in the number of Indigenous applicants and a 34.7% increase in persons with disabilities who applied, compared to last year
• 115 students were hired by federal departments and agencies for summer 2019 under the Employment Opportunity for Students with Disabilities ^{Endnote E5}program, which brought in a total of 1 571 requests from hiring managers
• the Indigenous Student Employment Opportunity^{Endnote E5} provided onboarding tools, training and networking events, and brought 225 Indigenous students into the public service in 2019–20
• we also provided advice, guidance and management of an inventory for hiring Inuit in Nunavut in support of Pilimmaksaivik, the Federal Centre of Excellence for Inuit Employment

Gender-based analysis plus

In 2019–20, under our Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) Action Plan 2019–21,^{Endnote E6} we applied a gender and diversity lens to our activities and decision-making processes. For example, to better reflect key GBA+ considerations, we adjusted new guidance tools and added expectations to the project requirements for our future recruitment platform. The goals and activities of our new Inclusive Recruitment Centre of Expertise were refined through an equity-based lens. Our evaluation report on the Recruitment of Policy Leaders program integrated a GBA+ approach in the analysis and presentation of a breakdown of findings based on a range of socio-demographic factors. We also modernized how we collect information related to gender in our forms and systems, in keeping with government-wide requirements. In this endeavour, we stopped collecting sex and gender information through our investigations case management system and training form.

3. Canadians are served by a politically impartial public service

In 2019–20, we prepared for the launch of the second Staffing and Non-Partisanship Survey to assess progress and improvements to staffing policies and practices, and to identify areas of focus to safeguard non-partisanship within the federal public service. This biennial survey of staffing and non-partisanship is key to determining the overall health of the federal public service staffing system. The results provide crucial insights for our oversight efforts, as well as for policy development and program delivery in support of our other expected results. We had planned to launch the survey in mid-March but, due to the COVID-19 situation, it has been postponed to spring 2021.

We observed an increase in 2019-2020 in the number of investigations related to electoral candidacies that were initiated by public servants before obtaining permission from the Public Service Commission. The federal election year also raised the profile of political activities. In order to raise public servants’ awareness of their rights and responsibilities, we delivered over 45 information sessions on political activities and non-partisanship. The busy electoral year have contributed to the increase in allegations and founded investigations.

We are maintaining this ambitious objective in 2020–21 to preserve the impartiality of the public service, and to ensure that all federal public servants meet their obligation to maintain a non-partisan public service. In light of this approach and the increase in the number of complaints, specifically in relation to public servants who sought provincial and federal candidacy, we will explore new, online awareness activities to reach more public servants. We will also strengthen our messaging on the requirement for public servants to obtain our permission before seeking office in elections.