CPSRENEWAL.CA Weekly: In Conversation with New Public Servants

I had lunch recently with 3 young public servants, all of whom were relatively new to government. I have known the first for just over a month, the second for about two weeks, and the third I met on the spot. Needless to say, I didn’t know them too well, but was amazed at how open the communication was between us despite our relative unfamiliarity. Our conversation flowed freely and almost immediately gravitated to our common experience of work cultures, work loads, recruitment, competitive processes, and of course, management.

Communication Breakdown

Each individual conversation consistently gravitated to a single problem: the inability to raise their concerns with their manager, or worse, the perceived inaction of a manager upon hearing those concerns. Having had similar experiences in the past I offered what advice I could, but what is interesting is not the advice I gave, but what they had said:

“I feel like I got cheated. There was so much emphasis during the recruitment process on wanting the best and brightest, independent and analytical thinkers, to fill challenging positions and make a difference and now … well now I sit around, being underutilized. How do I bring that up to my manager?”

“When I raise my concerns, I’m told to appreciate what I have or how much better off I am than [my manager] was when she started. That is completely beside the point? I want to be challenged, how do I ask for more work? What if she refuses to give me any?”

“Who is doing the actual work around here? I never included and when I am, I’m at a complete loss because I was kept in the dark for so long. Everyone else seems to have enough work to do. I want to make a contribution but I can’t when I am systematically excluded. How do you tell your manager that you want more work, when your manager’s judgment of your group and level determines your workload as opposed to your ability or competencies?”

(Comments above are reproduced with permission.)

I think it is important to note the sharp contrast between the ease of communication between what amounts to a group of relative strangers compared to the difficulty of communication between employees and their managers. Could a new hire really look at their manager and say, “If things don’t improve over the next year I am gone” and expect their situation to get better?

[Aside: I could not help but recall chapter two of Etienne Laliberté’s paper an Inconvenient Renewal in which he discusses the critical link between management and employees’ decision to stay in or leave an organization. I would suggest reading it (again) at this point.]

Difficult Conversations

Generally speaking, I think there is an implicit level of trust among new workers that has yet to be developed between managers and new workers. It is not at all surprising given generational differences and power dynamics between new hires and managers. In some cases new employees, especially contract or term employees seeking permanency, avoid the risk of alienating their managers at all costs because they fear the repercussions of the power dynamic: (further) reduced workloads, withholding references, poor references, expired contracts, negative feedback spread by word of mouth, to name a few.

The result is that new hires lack the sure footing (i.e. experience) required to approach their managers to resolve issues around workloads, processes, greater involvement and career advice. This isn’t the case across the board so there is no need to hit the panic button, however, in my experience it is widespread enough to be of some concern (just ask the three people I spoke with).

Since new hires are unsure about how to approach the situation, managers having considerably more experience, should step up and fill the gap. Managers should take the lead, set the tone early, have conversations (like the one I had), provide feedback and ask for input. This is not an easy task. However, managers that are actively (and effectively) managing files, people and careers are the same ones that are attracting all the top talent (precisely for those reasons).

Every new hire is looking for that manager. Every new hire will continue to hum and haw and shuffle around the public service until they find one. David Eaves' latest blog post speaks directly to this when he says:

“[W]here you work in the public service (and often who you work for) is far more important than what file you work on.”

I wanted to end this column with another interesting point of consensus from around the table at my discussion with my colleagues. It is one that needs no elaboration, no explanation, and the implications of which should ring loudly in everyone’s ears:

“I’m willing to stick it out for a year then I’m gone.”

CPSRENEWAL.CA WEEKLY: Pay Attention to Retention

The Public Service Renewal focus has been (and perhaps still is) largely on recruitment. While this focus has led new recruits to the water, it has not necessarily made them drink. I have had numerous conversations with young public servants. A recurring topic of discussion is: “I am not sure the Public Service is where I want to spend the rest of my career.” Inconsistency between the message of the recruitment effort and subsequent experience delivered to new hires is often cited as one of the contributing factors. In short, outcomes have not aligned with expectations. If we are to retain our talent then we must develop retention strategies aimed at both new recruits and more experienced workers.

New Recruits

It is imperative to keep new recruits interested, challenged, and engaged while providing opportunities to remain mobile both vertically and horizontally. In practical terms, this could mean introducing structured interdepartmental development opportunities, lateral job swapping, job shadowing, private sector internships, or informal employee exchanges. Providing new recruits with mobility within the Public Service could bolster their experience base, keep them fresh, and maintain their interest while keeping them within the functional community. The opportunity for mobility within the Public Service is one of its key attractors to new hires that is often lost when we talk about having new hires commit to working the rest of their lives for the amorphous Government of Canada. Perhaps the cruel irony is that too much mobility in Senior Management has been repeatedly identified as a problem – most recently by the Public Policy Forum.

Given the anticipated breadth of opportunities available to future hires, Public Service employers looking to recruit, retain and develop their own staff, could provide new hires with a handful of road maps indicating likely career paths. The guide would be a valuable resource for new hires eager to plan ahead or understand advancement opportunities within their department. This could easily be incorporated into already existing orientation processes. Subsequently, managers and new hires could use these documents to streamline the development of performance learning agreements for new hires in a timely manner. Incorporating this into the on-boarding process would communicate a commitment to career development on behalf of the organization and its management to its new hires. They also provide a common understanding of how performance will be managed and evaluated.

Functional communities could work together and reinforce the importance and opportunity their work offers by supplying testimonies by dynamic people who have chosen to make careers of public service. Driving home the message of each functional community could encourage new recruits to narrow their options and filter out career opportunities that lie outside those communities, or more importantly outside the Public Service. One of the underlying principles of Public Service retention strategies should be that rational drivers of employment choices (e.g. salary, benefits, location, etc) are not as important as they used to be. Furthermore, emotional drivers (e.g. feeling valued, finding meaning in one’s work, excitement level, etc) must be appealed to in order to retain talent.

New hires are potentially our best and worst source of advertising. While it is perhaps cliché that someone who has a negative experience is likely to tell ten people and that that same person, having a positive experience, is likely only to tell one person, it is nonetheless a fairly accurate depiction of how important first impressions are – especially in an information age where new hires are more connected then ever before.

More Experienced Workers

Engaging our more experienced workers is therefore critical since it will be they who, through their leadership and actions, will drive the opinions and experiences of new hires. Retention efforts aimed at more experienced workers should give them the skills they need to lead new hires through the transition, facilitate knowledge and corporate memory transfer, while keeping them interested in their substantive work. In practical terms this could mean investing in training programs to bolster key competencies that are typically improved through traditional training methods (e.g. evaluating and improving services, facilitating group discussions, planning and organizing, thinking strategically). Additional training should be coupled with proportionately reduced workloads in order to avoid overburdening experienced workers. Overextending more experienced workers could be met with consequences that range beyond employee burnout or elective early retirement. Overextended employees have less time to implement received training and are more likely to default to past practices when time is continually a scarce resource. Moreover, visibly overextended workers could send new hires the wrong message about how the organization feels about work-life balance. Experienced workers must be given the time and space they require to put training into action.

Experienced workers could work with management coaches to help them develop their capacity to influence and engage others and model appropriate behaviour. Accessibility to experienced workers is important to new hires. They see the experience and skills of experienced workers and want to tap into it but often lack the means, opportunity, or understanding of how to do so. Interpersonal skills (i.e. soft skills) and accessibility allow more experienced workers to connect with new hires. They should be able to pique the emotional drivers of new hires and convince them to make the regulatory community their home. Experienced workers set the tone, inform first impressions, and offer the guidance upon which new hires make their career decisions. An observable lack of interest on the part of experienced workers sends a strong negative signal to new employees. More must be done to inform experienced workers that their work is of the highest value and with considerable meaning; their importance is often overlooked in discussions of renewal. In practical terms, this could mean offering more experienced workers new opportunities (job swapping, mentoring opportunities, etc), inviting them to deliver testimonies to new hires, and holding intergenerational forums that explain why their continued leadership is critically important and other engagement activities.

Retention efforts should facilitate an employee’s shift from new hire to experienced worker. It should help manage expectations, workloads, and activities. Any comprehensive retention strategy would require high levels of cooperation within the Public Service, understanding of the need to provide mobility within it and considerable engagement in managing the careers of both new hires and more experienced workers. Finally, it is essential that retention efforts communicate that it is to everyone’s benefit to do invigorating work, in a lively workplace, with competent employees and managers, regardless of age or tenure.

What we need to do, is pay some serious attention to retention.