cpsrtest

Friday, 4 July 2008

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.”

Thursday, 3 July 2008

Round-Up: July 3

Media Search

David Zussman published am artiicle in the Ottawa Citizen entitled Governments need more, not less information to make decisions which outlines the state of Public Opinion Research in the federal government.

Blogs

David Eaves put up a nice post on The Open Source Public Service. Here is an excerpt:

"The main point is that “open” can work in policy development. So maybe it is time to set the public service free? To allow policy analysts to self-organize and focus their attention to where they believe they can best contribute, rather than having hundreds if not thousands of them babysitting files that simple don’t move?"

While Peter Smith wrote about online engagement strategies in his post Government Participation Online: Layers of Engagement.

Cheers!

Wednesday, 2 July 2008

Round-Up

Nothing in the news over the last two days, so a round-up is not really in order.

I would however check out this blog post on Public Opinion and Government 2.0 courtesy of Colin Mckay.

Tuesday, 8 July 2008

Round-Up: July 8

Monday, 7 July 2008

Round-Up July 7