Scorecard… at glance

On this page

• What are these psychosocial factors?
• The PSES contains many more questions than what is found on the Scorecard. Why?
• Percentage versus score on 100
• The results review is everyone’s business!
• Positive questions and negative questions
• For more information

Since 2018, the Public Service Employee Survey (PSES) has been administered every year across the public service. To facilitate the reading and use of the survey results, PCH has developed a tool – the Scorecard – to make it possible to identify organizations’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as concrete courses of action. It is based on the 13 psychosocial factors of the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace.

What are these psychosocial factors?

• The 13 factors are elements that impact employees in their workplace. When ignored, they can lead to psychological health problems. They encompass the work that is carried out (deadlines, workload, work methods) and the context in which the work occurs (including relationships and interactions with managers, supervisors, colleagues, peers and clients).
• The 13 psychosocial factors are the following:
  • Psychological support
  • Organizational culture
  • Clear leadership and expectations
  • Civility and respect
  • Psychological competencies and requirements
  • Growth and development
  • Recognition and rewards
  • Involvement and influence
  • Workload management
  • Engagement
  • Balance
  • Psychological protection
  • Protection of physical safety

The PSES contains many more questions than what is found on the Scorecard. Why?

• As the result of a close collaboration among the Human Resources and Workplace Management Branch, the Office of Values and Ethics, and the Public Opinion Research Group, a number of questions were selected for each factor because of their relevance to each one of them. It would have been more difficult and counterproductive to consider all questions for the production scorecards.

Percentage versus score on 100

• The numbers found in the Scorecard are, unless otherwise specified, expressed on a score of 100 and not in percentages. But why? Using a score makes it possible to take all the answers (positive, neutral and negative) into consideration and present the mean, which provides a more comprehensive representation of the results than simply examining the percentage of respondents that are satisfied or agree with a particular statement. This also makes it possible to equate questions whose answer options (scale) are different.
• In the end, a scoring system based on 100 makes it easier to quickly understand your organization’s health. Intuitively, the more we tend toward 100, the closer we get to the desired result and inversely when the score is very low.

The results review is everyone’s business!

• Whether or not you have management responsibilities, it is important to be aware of the results that concern your organization. The Scorecard makes your task easier, by enabling you to quickly see where the organizational results are higher or lower than those of PCH or to compare these results with those of the previous edition. This makes it easier to initiate discussions and target interventions.
• To help you identify possible actions, the Office of Values and Ethics has developed a very useful workbook, which provides possible solutions and discussions so that teams can work together to arrive at a plan of action that suits them.

Positive questions and negative questions

• Some questions are deemed negative when a high answer is undesirable. For Example, “the lack of clear expectations creates stress for me at work.” Since most questions are positive, the results of these negatively formulated questions have been converted in order to facilitate the interpretation of the results, so that a high score represents a desired/positive finding, just like all the other questions. These questions are clearly identified in the Scorecard.

For more information

• Intranet – Survey Section
• Office of Value and Ethics Workbook
• Mental Health Commission of Canada – Standard
• Treasury Board Secretariat – PSES

For any questions or comments, please contact the Human Resources Policy, Planning and Strategies unit.