Engage your employees like you engage your users

Amanda Bernardo

NextGen is building the next generation of pay system for public servants by engaging users directly and openly. It’s a valuable lesson for how we should engage employees too.

The future of work is constantly changing; new methodologies, technologies and ways of working continue to inspire and empower the public service in how they can deliver better for Canadians. With the Government of Canada’s Beyond2020 framework, public servants are being asked how they can be more agile, more inclusive and better equipped. Here’s how I’ve tried to apply these areas in my own work with the Next Generation HR and Pay Initiative (NextGen).

Group of public servants posing on right against a wall. Above, the Government of Canada logo. To their left, assorted coloured post-it notes filled with feedback.

As a Senior Advisor with NextGen, I’ve seen firsthand how adopting an agile approach can support new ways of achieving results. I’ve also experienced the shift in mindset required to adopt to this method in my own work. Working in an agile way is about more than simply working in smaller, faster sprints that enable course corrections and direct collaboration with stakeholders. It’s also about the mindset employees, at all levels, must adopt in order to work with each other to deliver results. For me personally, working in this way translated into working in the open, working more transparently, adapting to change and emphasizing the importance of communication across all work streams.

As part of my work with NextGen, I am responsible for leading national engagement strategies to connect public servants to our work. This work is a great example of how an agile mindset allowed me to work differently in an area that is not new to government.

Three employees with their backs turned, facing a wall of post-it notes, in discussion.

From January to February 2019, NextGen held a series of in-person engagements that created direct conversations with users. By bringing different perspectives to the table, we created an inclusive engagement opportunity that allowed us to gather feedback to co-create a next generation HR and pay solution. We then shared what we heard openly online so that others could take part in the conversation and add their feedback. Whether it be by tweeting results, sharing stories, photographing our post-its of feedback, or writing articles on what we learned, we tried to work as openly, inclusively and transparently as possible.

Purple post-it note on left reads, “Breakdown of paystubs deductions in plain language. Yellow post-it note on right reads, “the transparency for this process is outstanding! Go NextGen!”

When the in-person engagement sessions closed, we took the feedback we heard to adapt our next phase of engagement, developing a Digital User Expo that launched on April 8, 2019. With the Digital User Expo, we recognized that in-person engagements can be limiting, and that communications may not always reach public servants in a timely fashion.

Row of seated uniformed CBSA officers providing feedback on tablets
Row of seated uniformed CBSA officers providing feedback on tablets.
seated business casual employees providing feedback on tablets
Seated business casual employees providing feedback on tablets.

With these challenges in mind, we adapted and developed an Awareness Campaign that expanded our communications to remove barriers to collaboration. Public servants from across Canada were engaged to help promote the Digital User Expo to ensure maximum outreach – over 500,000+ accounts on Twitter. Despite not working for NextGen, public servants stepped up and became allies and enablers, recognizing our shared interest in an effective engagement for an initiative that impacts us all.

Twitter messages
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On left, screenshot of Twitter message from Abe Greenspoon: “You have to hand it to the #NextGenHRPay team – they work in the open and have made this incredibly important project really engaging. Check out their website (Canada.ca/nextgeneration) and Digital User Expo running from April 8, 2019 to April 30, 2019. Be part of the solution!”.

On right, screenshot of Twitter message from Nicolino Frate:“Des fonctionnaires de partout au Canada ont donné leur avis aux expos pour les utilisateurs sur des solutions de RH et de paye. Si vous les avez ratées, les expos #ProGenRHPaye seront maintenant en ligne : bientôt les expos numériques pour les utilisateurs.”

This experience taught me something that we sometimes forget in government:

We are all working towards the same common goal of delivering better, smarter and more efficient results for Canadians. We are, after all, employees of the Crown, regardless of department or agency.

This brings me back to the importance of inclusivity. With NextGen, we recognized and committed to putting the user at the centre … all users – employees, managers, subjective matter experts, HR and financial specialists, bargaining agents, and stakeholders. We not only put them at the centre, but we provided them a platform to be heard, to be involved, and to share their lessons learned and best practices.

By creating an ongoing platform where users could be heard at all stages of our work, we were able to develop an agile engagement strategy that allowed us to move beyond initiating conversations ourselves to proactively empowering users to start and be part of the conversation themselves.

Did we make some mistakes along the way? Of course; but we learned from them and adapted our work. We course corrected ourselves just as much as we course corrected our processes. This to me is what looking beyond 2020 is all about. Looking beyond how we see ourselves today, our work, our approaches and processes to not adapt but rather lead a workforce of the future.

Amanda Bernardo taking a self-portrait photo standing in front of a wall of assorted colour post-it notes with feedback for NextGen.

Where I see Beyond2020 challenging us all is in how we pause today to plan for tomorrow. Just as NextGen has put the users at the centre of our work, we should be putting our teams at the centre with them. Give your employees the opportunity to share their feedback on their work, on their progress, and on the very ideas that will take us beyond 2020. This, if anything, is the biggest lesson I’ve learned – the value that you will find when you engage your staff with as much vigor and transparency as when you engage the public. You may be surprised as what you will learn, but you will likely be more inspired as to what you can change.

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