Nepotism – Placing a hold on an appointment process to appoint a family member

Section 66 – Founded – Improper conduct – Nepotism – Appointment of a family member

Authority: This investigation was conducted under section 66 of the Public Service Employment Act, S.C. 2003, c.22, ss. 12 and 13.

Issue: The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether a hiring manager favoured the appointee — a family member — for appointment. Concerns were raised to the effect that the hiring manager did not disclose their family relationship with the appointee.

Conclusions: The investigation concluded that the appointee’s appointment was affected by improper conduct (nepotism) on the part of the hiring manager.

Facts:

An internal advertised appointment process was launched by the hiring manager to establish a pool of qualified candidates to fill administrative positions at the AS-2 group and level. Several specialized requirements, including experience in a federal government program and system, were required for the positions. Based on the requirements, the hiring manager screened in 8 candidates.

During the month following the advertisement’s closing date, without disclosing the relationship, the hiring manager hired a family member (their grown child) on a casual basis in their unit to fill one of the administrative positions. The family member had no prior government experience and was not eligible to apply in the above-noted advertised process.

Shortly afterwards, the hiring manager recommended placing on hold on the ongoing internal appointment process to appoint their family member on a term basis, through an external non-advertised appointment process. The evidence showed that the requirements for the family member’s appointment and for the internal advertised appointment process were very similar. Also, the assessment against the requirements was almost exclusively based on the experience the family member acquired during their casual employment. The hiring manager’s justification for the non-advertised appointment process was that training another employee would be too labour and time intensive. The investigation determined that the hiring manager’s testimony was not credible because the appointee in question performed with very little experience and there were screened-in candidates with much more experience, who were ready to be assessed or deployed from the advertised process.

The evidence showed that the hiring manager favoured the family member by placing a hold on the advertised process in order to appoint them through an external non-advertised appointment process, while concealing their relationship.

Corrective action:

The family member was no longer an employee of the federal public service at the time of the decision for the corrective action,

Following the conclusion of improper conduct, the Commission ordered the following actions for the hiring manager:

Investigation File No.: 19-20-09

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