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Management of Personnel

Expectation (a): The Board must assure itself that the Agency has a Human Resources management regime that promotes Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) values and ethics.

Related Key Questions
Evidence
Evidence In
  • Do employees believe that CRA leaders foster a culture that is consistent with CRA values?
  • 2005 Employee Survey provides quantifiable evidence that CRA employees believe their leaders foster a culture consistent with CRA values; for example:
    • 75% of respondents believe they get adequate recognition from their immediate supervisor when they do a good job (73% in 2002);
    • 73% of respondents believe that the Agency works hard to create a workplace that prevents harassment and discrimination (76% in 2002); and
    • 72% of respondents know where to go for help to resolve an ethical dilemma or conflict between values in the workplace (71% in 2002).
  • Employee responses in employee surveys
  • Does the public believe that CRA employees exhibit the values of professionalism and respect?
  • Public perception: 2007 CRA Annual Corporate Survey found that:
    • 78% of respondents agree that CRA acts in a professional manner (80% in 2006); and
    • 77% of respondents agree that CRA treats public with respect (81% in 2006).
  • Annual Corporate Survey
  • Does the CRA take steps to foster and promote the values of the Agency?
  • CRA's national action plan developed in response to the 2005 CRA Employee Survey includes initiatives targeting staffing, career development, leadership, harassment and discrimination, and workplace well-being; progress against the Action Plan is posted on the InfoZone.
  • The 2006 report on governance of the Values and Ethics Environment found that most of the fundamental elements of the Agency's Values and Ethics Framework are established and most intermediate elements are being developed.
  • Values and Ethics Champion's mandate includes the related 3-year action plan for the framework.
  • Business case to secure funding to advance the work related to values and ethics will be brought forward to the Resource and Investment Management Committee during the winter of 2008.
  • Policies, processes, initiatives and resources are established to support and promote CRA values, these include: CRA Code of Ethics and Conduct, CRA Conflict of Interest Policy and Office of Dispute Management.
  • National Action Plan for 2005 CRA Employee Survey
  • Governance of the Values and Ethics Environment
  • Employee responses in employee surveys
  • Is the CRA workforce guided by CRA values and ethics?
  • Messages from senior management including the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner of Public Affairs regularly remind employees of the important role they play and the need for high professional standards.
  • Executive Cadre (EC) performance agreements contain commitments to values-based ethical decision-making and behaviours.
  • The Board's Human Resource Committee assists the Board in fulfilling its oversight responsibilities by reviewing the management of human resources within the Agency and providing recommendations and advice on the Agency's human resources management strategies, initiatives, policies and work plans.
  • Manager's Charter commits managers to “Act according to our corporate values of integrity, professionalism, respect and cooperation” and “Encourage open, constructive communications and working relationships.”
  • New employees are made aware of the Agency's values, ethics and codes of conduct upon initial hire: letters of offer require them to abide by CRA values and ethics; CRA InfoZone lays out required expectations; and, employees must sign an Employee Certification that they have read and understood the expectation.
  • Employees are encouraged to talk to their managers if they find themselves in a conflict situation or witness a situation or an individual acting in an inappropriate manner.
  • Employee responses in employee surveys
  • Guidelines to complete Executive Cadre and Senior Manager Performance Agreements
  • Manager's Charter
Rating Scale
Board's Assessment and Related Comments
Next Steps
Strong
STRONG
 
Acceptable
Opportunity for improvement
Attention required

 

Expectation (b): The Board must assure itself that the Agency has a Human Resources (HR) management regime that maintains a workforce that is productive and adaptable and effectively manages employee performance through the use of best practices.

Related Key Questions
Evidence
Evidence In
  • Does the Agency's workforce meet ongoing and new business goals?
  • Agency's workforce has demonstrated its ability to meet ongoing and new business goals, adapt to change (e.g. 2-D Barcoding for T1, tax implications related to United States Softwood Lumber Agreement and new workloads from other Government departments) and new businesses (Corporate Tax Administration for Ontario).
  • Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) invests approximately 6% of its annual salary budget on training and learning and supports employees' education through educational assistance, recognizing employees' service and achievements through CRA's Awards and Recognition program and providing a healthy and productive work environment through the Agency's Employee Assistance Program services and conflict dispute resolution channels.
  • Workforce is diverse and reflects the Canadian population; services provided in both official languages.
  • Quarterly reports
  • Annual Report
  • CRA Annual Report on Official Languages
  • Does the Agency demonstrate best practices in managing employee performance?
  • Employee Performance Management Policy and Guidelines support and strengthen organizational and individual performance through the management of human resources by establishing expectations, identifying measurement criteria, where applicable, and by providing performance feedback.
  • Effective People Management, a mandatory performance accountability component for executives and managers is reviewed and revised annually to ensure personal accountabilities of all executives and managers are aligned with corporate plans, priorities and strategic outcomes.
  • The Corporate Administrative System, an electronic decision support system that ensures milestone information is captured, facilitates use of MG performance management information for talent management; in 2006-2007 it indicated 72% of eligible MGs and 62% of eligible employees with completed performance assessments.
  • Review Committees monitor and report on the MG performance reward process to ensure fair and consistent administration and quality process results.
  • Human Resources Branch completes an annual review of the employee and MG cycles and reports to the Agency Management Committee on Review Committee results and makes recommendations for priority enhancements to the performance management process.
  • Agency Management Committee, chaired by the Commissioner, decides executive performance awards through rigorous process to ensure that the performance pay is seen as a reward for results and not as an entitlement.
  • Performance Management Program is monitored through the HR Monitoring Framework to ensure program objectives are met, timely corrections enabled, and best practices and efficiency opportunities incorporated.
  • CRA Performance Management Program model is being used as a reference in order to build a Performance Management Framework for the core public administration population.
  • Performance Management Regime
Rating Scale
Board's Assessment and Related Comments
Next Steps
Strong
STRONG
 
Acceptable
Opportunity for improvement
Attention required

 

Expectation (c): The Board must assure itself that the Agency has a Human Resources management regime that is sustainable –  recruits, develops and retains the right talent.

Related Key Questions
Evidence
Evidence In
  • Does the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) workforce have a sustainable capacity to perform its duties (e.g. its size, mix of skills, and diversity of backgrounds)?
  • CRA has focused on student and new graduate hiring through established recruitment programs such as the Cooperative Education/Internship Program, the Management Trainee Program, the Financial Officer Recruitment and Development Program and the Post-Secondary Recruitment Campaign and specialized recruitment programs such as the Auditor Apprenticeship Program, the Aboriginal Tax Office Apprenticeship Program and the Aboriginal Student Employment Program.
  • An action plan and recruitment strategy are being developed from feedback from students and new graduates.
  • In 2006 CRA reinstated its Student Ambassador Program with the objectives attracting new talent through peer-to-peer marketing, increasing CRA's visibility on college and university campuses across Canada and promoting employment opportunities (30 new student ambassadors in 2007-2008).
  • Summer student recruitment and student bridging have increased over recent years.
  • Managers are being encouraged to raise the education prerequisites for certain external recruitment processes to help build career paths for new employees and strengthen future workforce capacity (e.g. some external selection processes for entry-level positions are opening the area of selection to students for placement upon graduation).
  • CRA has actively communicated and developed partnerships with academic institutions, participated at career fairs at colleges and universities, coordinated outreach events and used student bridging as a vehicle for recruitment. In response to the Government-wide emphasis on Public Service Renewal, the CRA has surpassed the target of 165 new graduate recruitments for 2007-2008.
  • CRA will develop and implement a succession-planning framework for non-Executive Cadre (EC) positions by end of 2007-2008.
  • Talent management framework is being developed which will help managers to strategically manage the flow of talent through the Agency, i.e., close the gaps between the talent the organizations has and the talent it needs to successfully respond to current and emerging business challenges; framework will focus on: attracting and developing talent; allowing talent to develop and thrive; positioning the right people with the right jobs at the right time; and avoiding loss of talent to other organizations.
  • EC succession planning ensures that a capable and representative executive cadre is continually ready and available for the changing business needs of the Agency.
  • Senior management has identified 64 key positions that are mission-critical for the functioning of the Agency; however, they have also taken measures to ensure a supply of six times the number of key positions; for the 519 classified EC positions, 944 potential successors have been identified; 178 candidates identified in pre-qualified pools, which exceed the demand of approximately 80 annual EC vacancies.
  • Time to staff
  • Key loss rates
  • Ratio of indeterminate appointments to separations
  • Succession plans and recruitment strategies
  • Percentage of external hires compared to internal hires
  • Talent Management Framework
Rating Scale
Board's Assessment and Related Comments
Next Steps
Strong
STRONG
  • Succession Planning and Talent Management – Strategies to address:
    • The large numbers of vacancies in the senior leadership ranks; and
    • Significant competition for talent, especially knowledge workers
Acceptable
Opportunity for improvement
Attention required

 

Expectation (d): The Board must assure itself that the Agency has a Human Resources management regime that encourages continuous learning, improvement and innovation.

Related Key Questions
Evidence
Evidence In
  • Does the Canada Revenue Agency's (CRA) learning strategy align with Agency priorities and management improvement objectives?
  • Agency has a series of processes in place to guide its efforts to align learning with business needs.
  • Learning Council, comprised of senior representatives from the Branches and Regions, is consulted on a regular basis to ensure alignment with business needs and to discuss future learning needs.
  • Branches and Regions have Learning Advisors and Learning Coordinators to administer the business required technical training of their staff.
  • Agency learning strategy envisages both the corporate needs and the individual needs.
  • Agency has a formal process (the individual learning plan (ILP)) to foster a discussion between employee and immediate manager on learning; enhance the learning based on an individual evaluation of every employee's learning needs and aspirations, as determined by both the manager and employee, to foster an engaged workforce that the Agency can nurture, retain and support to reach excellence.
  • Individual learning plans in place
  • Employee responses in Employee Survey
  • Return on Investment (ROI) with respect to training (Phillips' ROI)
  • Is the CRA workforce versatile, innovative and continuously learning?
  • ILP is part of a Learning Management process which improves the CRA's ability to identify learning and development trends, provide management reports on learning requests, make decisions on planning and funding of learning and development activities.
  • ILP starts by linking the learning events to the CRA competency framework and allows employees to clearly identify which competencies they will be addressing with the learning events they plan to attend.
  • CRA uses various e-learning techniques to provide flexible, on the job learning opportunities to its employees.
  • CRA's emphasis on coaching for supervisors and peers is highly conducive to fostering a continuously learning environment and to promoting versatility.
  • Work assignments also contribute to employee innovation by exposing employees to different work practices that they can influence by bringing new perspectives and conversely bring back best practices to their initial work environment when they return from their assignments.
  • Agency managers have access to management learning through an Agency specific Leadership and management suite of learning products and through the more general Public Service courses available through the Canada School of Public Service.
  • Agency is a continuous learning and a responsive organization
  • The CRA is analysing the learning needs of various specialized streams, i.e. senior auditors, ruling officers, and appeals officers, within the Agency.
  • Successful implementation of new strategies
  • Employee perceptions from employee survey
  • Agency learning policy and learning plan
Rating Scale
Board's Assessment and Related Comments
Next Steps
Strong
STRONG
 
Acceptable
Opportunity for improvement
Attention required

 

Expectation (e): The Board must assure itself that the Agency has a Human Resource management regime that ensures that collective agreements are respected.

Related Key Questions
Evidence
Evidence In
  • Are employment and workplace practices fair and are labour relations effective?
  • Maintaining good relationships between Unions and management is of paramount importance in the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).
  • Agency has a Union-Management Initiative (UMI) in place to cultivate understanding between the parties and cooperation in the development of new policies and practices which impact upon employees.
  • Managers are to receive training on the UMI: begun in 2007, training will continue until all managers have attended the training sessions.
  • Collective agreements are published on InfoZone, and employees receive copies of new agreements.
  • Employees are encouraged to approach their managers if they feel any aspect of a collective agreement is being breached.
  • Through CRA communications, employees are encouraged to report any perceived breaches of collective agreements, and are reminded that it is their right and no retribution will be taken against an employee who files a grievance.
  • CRA follows all steps defined in collective agreements to deal with any grievances raised by employees.
  • CRA employees have easy access to their union representatives should it be felt that an aspect of a collective agreement is not being respected.
  • Data from the administration of grievances confirm that large numbers of grievances are denied, and that many grievances get withdrawn indicating a high compliance level of collective agreement provisions.
  • Component of performance rewards for managers is for Effective People Management which implicitly includes respect for collective agreements; executive performance agreements explicitly include UMI.
  • As an Agency, the CRA negotiates it own collective agreements with bargaining agents.
  • Recent settlement with the Public Service Alliance of Canada was reached in record time in advance of the expiration of the previous contract, thereby also permitting the implementation of the new Services and Programs (SP) classification.
  • It is important to note that there have not been any major changes in collective agreement of the past few negotiation cycles indicating that the collective agreements are widely understood, and work well from both management and bargaining agent's perspectives.
  • Grievances – number received, closed, resolved or denied
  • Employee responses in employee survey
  • Percentage of recourse requests and resolution
  • SP Classification
Rating Scale
Board's Assessment and Related Comments
Next Steps
Strong
STRONG
  • Monitor the progress of the negotiations with the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada and direct management on the negotiating mandate
  • PROTECTED
Acceptable
Opportunity for improvement
Attention required

 

Expectation (f): The Board must assure itself that the Agency has a Human Resources management regime that adheres to applicable legislation.

Related Key Questions
Evidence
Evidence In
  • Does workplace reflect appropriate Official Language balance?
  • Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) adheres to Official Languages, Employment Equity and the Canada Labour Code legislation.
  • CRA meets its obligations under the Official Languages Act and its workplace reflects an appropriate official languages balance; as of September 2007, the percentage of employees and supervisors meeting the bilingual requirements of their jobs is as follows:
    • 83.2% of employees providing services to the public meet the language requirements of their position;
    • 86.4% of employees providing internal services meet the language requirements of their position;
    • 86.6% of supervisors meet the language requirements of their position; and
    • 99% of executives meet the language requirements of their positions.
  • Agency's objective is to further improve these results as it is stated in the CRA's Action Plan for the Renewal of Official Languages for 2005-2008, through, for example, the Committee of Official Languages Champions.
  • Official Languages – Percentage of employees and supervisors meeting bilingual requirements of their jobs
  • Do Employment Equity representation rates for employees and executives match or exceed labour market availability?
  • As of March 31, 2007, the representation rates for each employment equity groups in the CRA have increased from the previous year, continuing to equal or surpass labour market availability (LMA) at the national level.
  • Aboriginal Peoples and persons with disabilities, have remained fully represented in every Employment Equity Occupational Group for the second consecutive year.
  • CRA continues to bridge the under-representation of women in the Professional, and in the Program Administration and Senior Clerical Personnel Groups, and of visible minorities in the Middle and Other Managers, and Supervisors Occupational Groups.
  • CRA has surpassed its LMA rates for the Executive Cadre (EC) Group for three designated groups.
  • As of September 2007, the representation of visible minorities in the EC was 7.1%, compared to 6.4% as of March 31, 2007, while their LMA is at 11.3%; Senior Management has made a commitment to reduce this gap by increasing the number of qualified visible minorities appointed to the EC group by March 31, 2008.
  • Employment Equity – representation rates compared to labour market availability
  • Strategic Direction for Employment Equity
  • Does the CRA adhere to safe workplace conditions according to the Canada Labour Code?
  • As an ongoing commitment to maintaining a healthy and safe work environment, and in keeping with the Canada Labour Code, Part II (CLC, Part II), the CRA has a joint Union-Management National Health and Safety Policy Committee (NHSPC), which meets quarterly.
  • NHSPC is responsible for overseeing the development of the CRA Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) program and policies at the national level, and addressing OHS issues that are national in scope, as well as unresolved local issues that are referred to it.
  • CRA established local Work Place Committees, or Health and Safety Representatives at all work locations, as required by the CLC, Part II, which are responsible for addressing health and safety matters.
  • Canada Labour Code – data on occupational health and safety completing, work refusals, and injuries, as well as harassment complaints
Rating Scale
Board's Assessment and Related Comments
Next Steps
Strong
STRONG
 
Acceptable
Opportunity for improvement
Attention required

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