Mr. Chairman, on page 2-63 of the Compensation and Benefits section we recognize that one position has been deleted. My first question on this specific area is: what position has been deleted? Furthermore, what analysis was done to come down to the fact that this position has been deleted, and was it filled at the time that the decision was made to delete it?
Minister McLeod.
The position was a human resources assistant. It was filled with a casual at the time, and it was felt we could spread the workload among the other three people.
Mr. Chairman, does the Minister mean an analysis was done or an assumption was done?
Well, I guess the analysis that was done was identified as an area in which we could get away with one less person, so I guess you could call that an analysis. I am not sure how detailed an analysis the Member would have been looking for, but we did look across the department to see if there were areas where we could make reductions, and this was one area.
I guess what I am getting at is the fact that you define a position by looking at dollar value and make an assumption that because it is an assistant position, maybe it’s not that important. And they ask themselves — well, whatever they probably do. And when I say “whatever,” I assume you know what they do.
I’m just saying I’m sure we could divide these up and make people pick up those duties, versus an analysis, which, in my interpretation, would be where they actually break down what this person specifically does and then try to put some time allocations behind it before they then saddle someone else with those responsibilities.
Mr. Chair, I guess we didn’t want to create more work than we needed to. Based on the knowledge of the programs, we felt we knew in what areas we could make reductions. I guess, essentially, we did an analysis without formalizing it.
Mr. Chairman, I didn’t think Donnie Days fell under this, but another Member raised it and I just want to seek some clarity, if I can, because the Minister did respond to those questions earlier. My area of concern, just for clarity, is: does the contribution a member pays into Donnie Days — in other words, they get reduced salary but theoretically take those days off with pay…. How does that affect students, terms and casuals? Would they pay into that reduced-salary pool, which would theoretically guarantee them those days? Or are they losing salary? And if they are, is there a way for them to recoup that potential loss? I ask because they don’t necessarily qualify for those days.
Mr. Chair, the way it works for full-time indeterminate employees is the reduction is taken off the top, and then the employees are paid over the 12 months of the year, so they really don’t notice the difference.
For casuals and summer students who work less than four months, it doesn’t apply to them.
Mr. Chairman, in this section, you do supports for human resources planning and employee recognition. I’m wondering how much work has been done in this section to date. I don’t want to go back to its fruition or over the last 20 years, but how much work is being done to identify employees who are in the twilight of their career? When I describe it that way, let’s make the assumption that they’re a short couple of years away from retiring, so that’s the type of people I refer to as “twilight.” How much work under the resource planning area are you doing to recognize that type of staff and that number of staff?
Mr. Chair, we have an employee recognition program that recognizes staff when they achieve certain levels of service in terms of longevity.
We also have an employee recognition program where employees or teams can be recognized by their peers. We call it the Premier’s Awards of Excellence. We provide for long-service awards for each department on an annual basis.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that detail from the Minister. If he could provide some further detail: when we have a section described as supports for human resource planning in the management and the recruitment services area, that would be part of their duties. I’m just trying to get a sense of identification. What work are they doing to help identify those folks who are defined as being in the twilight portion of their career, in the context of numbers? Were they followed in departments, in the sense of how many employees have one year left, how many have two years left, in the sense of the description of those who are looking at short days?
Ms. Alexander.
Mr. Chair, we do a couple of different functions with respect to human resource planning. In the management and recruitment services division, the client service managers provide assistance and guidance to program managers in their human resource planning. They work with the human resource succession and workforce planning individuals who are in our corporate structure to provide departments with information on exactly what their workforce is made up of, the composition, the number of employees who could certainly reach retirement or be eligible for retirement in the next five or ten years. Then they work with managers on looking at how they are going to plan to fill in those jobs as individuals leave.
As part of their human resource planning, the client service managers look at what the appropriate method is to assist them in filling vacancies as they are coming up.
Thank you, Ms. Alexander. Next on my list, I have Mr. Ramsay, Mr. Beaulieu and Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of questions on this section. The first question is: where are we at in terms of the development of a comprehensive human resource strategy government-wide?
I think HR should be the lead department in this, for obvious reasons. I don’t think departments should be going off and haphazardly adding positions in areas of our operation. If we don’t have a comprehensive human resource plan, we don’t know whether or not we should be hiring more people in the social-envelope areas, or policy analysts in offices in downtown Yellowknife. We haven’t gotten to that level of detail.
We don’t know where we should be growing our operation. We don’t know if we should be looking at scaling back hiring in certain areas. We just let departments do what they want and, to me, that’s not good enough. I think we need a comprehensive human resource plan government-wide — a road map, something to follow.
Especially with the implementation of self-government and land claims, we should be looking at areas of our operation where we can devolve positions to aboriginal governments across the land, and we’re just not doing that type of work. That would come out of a plan. If we had a plan, it would fall out of that.
So the first question I have, Mr. Chairman, is: where are we at in terms of the development of a comprehensive human resource plan?
Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we have been working on the development of a comprehensive human resource plan. I think we have a number of drafts. We have a deputy minister–level human resource committee that works with our department, and it’s something we’ll be putting a lot more effort into completing.
We have been spending a lot of time on modelling with regard to trying to determine what the impacts of self-government and land claims will be in the event that — when and if — aboriginal governments start to draw down on the delivery of programs and services. We’ve been in discussions with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations and others — the Department of Executive — to talk about how self-government would affect us.
Part of our delays in dealing with the impact of self-government on the Government of the Northwest Territories was the fact that we needed some clear indication from the federal government with regard to the Labour Code of Canada, as to whether successor rights would have to be extended to GNWT employees who go to work for aboriginal governments when programs are drawn down and delivered by aboriginal self-governments.
Those are areas that are starting to take form and will certainly be a large part in the human resource strategy we will be developing.
Mr. Chairman, I thank the Minister for that. I think it is only a matter of time before the aboriginal governments that are out there, and the ones that are going to settle land claims, begin drawing down their authorities and powers under the land claim agreements.
Any work the Government of the Northwest Territories can do at the onset, and that’s today…. If there’s some work already been done…. I think the more work we do in this regard, the better off we’ll be tomorrow in an effort to save us resources.
And that’s just the thing, Mr. Chairman: resources are scarce. In a territory the size of the Northwest Territories, with a population of 42,000 people, we can’t afford to duplicate efforts in looking after our people, whether it’s an aboriginal government or the GNWT. We need to be on the same page when it comes to delivering services for the people we represent.
I want to thank the Minister for his response and I certainly would…. I know I haven’t seen any of this type of work come through any committee I’ve been involved in, and I’d certainly like to see where that work is at. If the Minister could share some work with committee, I’d certainly like to see it.
The other question I have, before I wrap this up: I’d like to know if the government has any type of idea about how many unfunded positions there are government-wide. I think there were 26 just at Stanton alone. What is our strategy to deal with unfunded positions?
Acting Deputy Minister Ms. Alexander.
Sorry, Mr. Chair. This is something we try to deal with on a regular basis. For administrative ease — and dealing with some of the ins and outs of staffing and people moving and people going on transfer assignments — it’s a lot easier, at times, to create positions. Generally, as a department, we work with all of the departments to try to clean that up on an annual basis, so we go through and eliminate these vacant positions that are just on the books. They’re not really doing anything, they’re not costing us anything; it just makes it a lot cleaner, administratively, to remove them from the books.
Mr. Chairman, I’m not talking about actual vacant positions. I’m talking about unfunded positions that actually have bodies, warm bodies, in positions that are unfunded. There’s nothing on the books for these positions, yet they exist and they have people in them. Like I said, there are 26 at Stanton. I’m wondering if the Minister knows how many positions are like that throughout the government’s workforce.
Mr. Chair, this is something that…. I think every department has unfunded positions, and different departments take different approaches to it. Some departments only cost out positions at 75 per cent or 80 per cent; other departments just rely solely on turnover in staff. As a government, I think, we have 20 per cent turnover. Sorry; I stand corrected. It’s 14.2 per cent turnover, so you can generally count on at least that much. As another rule of thumb, generally some departments sort of go with about 10 per cent unfunded positions.
We’ve been trying to stay on top of it, but I don’t think we know exactly how many unfunded, staffed or filled positions we have within the government.
Mr. Chairman, that’s information I could get a later time. If the Minister doesn’t have that at his disposal, that’s fine.
One other thing before I go — I’ve got a minute left. I just wanted to touch on the Hackett Report. One thing that was contained in the Hackett Report was…. When they looked at the business processes at the Department of Human Resources, one of the things that stuck out for me was, in an organization comparable in size to the GNWT they would need four times fewer employees to deliver services to the workforce. That always stuck in my mind. If a comparable-sized organization can deliver the services, and deliver them effectively, with a third less of the workforce, then what are we doing? And how are we addressing that?
If we can take a look at this area, I think it’s something we should be doing. We’re going to self-service; we’re going to self-reporting. Maybe there are ways and means. Again, this gets back to that analysis we talked about. If there is an analysis out there, and we can reduce in certain areas, and we can make a case for it, then that’s something I’d be willing to look at.
Maybe I could ask the Minister what plans they have in that department, in Human Resources, to take a look at that Hackett Report and try to compare themselves to other organizations of similar size and how they’re delivering services to the clients.
Mr. Chairman, as I recall, the Hackett Report — and I’d have to look at it in more detail — when comparing to other organizations…. I think they were comparing it to similar-sized organizations in the United States, or larger centres that readily have access to fully trained, fully certified human resource professionals and, also, have lighter workloads and variety of job requirements than we have here in the Northwest Territories.
Certainly, that would be an area we would aspire to. I think that if the infrastructure in the Northwest Territories — or the technology — improved so that we could rely a lot more and be a lot more dependent on computer technology and wireless technology, all of those things would go a long way to reducing our human resource requirement.
Also, what we’re finding is that, in the Northwest Territories, we have to spend more time on training and so on. To get to the ultimate, I guess, as the Hackett Report pointed out, we would need a very stable, highly trained workforce. This is something we’re aspiring to and we’re working toward.
Next on my list I have Mr. Beaulieu and then Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m kind of waiting for the right spots in the budget to come up, in order to ask some questions, but I think the questions have been fairly general, so I’ll go through my list here.
First, I’d like to talk a bit about the self-service system that’s in place with the GNWT. I feel like the self-service is an exercise of frustrating employees. I wanted to know if the department has done anything to evaluate the feasibility of going back to the simple system that was in place previous to the self-service system, or if they’ve looked at other options that are more economical and easier to operate — “other options” meaning other systems that maybe can just be purchased and it works; it doesn’t have to be purchased and then all of the support services that surround the self-service system would have to be purchased and committed to, and all of those things.
I’d like to know if the department recognizes the fact that the self-service system is frustrating employees all over the GNWT; and secondly, if they’ve looked at other systems or considered going back to the old system.
Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ve had self-service in place for over a year now. I think it would be worthwhile for us to review it to ensure it’s working properly and also to make sure it’s accurate. We’ve found that after some initial periods of growing pains and getting employees to try it and to realize it wasn’t as hard as it was made out to be — all they had to do was get on-line and start trying it — they could deal with self-service on a regular basis. What we’re hearing is that people on shift work and so on are paid in a more timely and accurate manner. Because of the different things we’re hearing out there, I think it would be worthwhile to do a review.
I don’t think there’s any turning back. The old systems that were in place were customized systems that I don’t think could be resurrected, if we wanted to. I think we’ve got past the point of no return with regard to self-service.
Thank you, Minister. I think the self-service system is more than just pay. I think that’s the only time I’ve heard anything positive said about it: that it’s easy and it’s timely for shift workers to get their pay. There are all kinds of other problems with the system that can’t pick up a person who works through a holiday without that person having to enter into the system and so on.
Also, within the management of the GNWT, unless you have another backup system — a pack of paper system, which is what we had already before we spent all this money on this system — you really can’t keep track of your employees unless you keep going back into the system. It’s time-consuming and not easy to manage. I’m not really seeing this system improve, but I’m not working with it now, either.
From what I hear from GNWT employees, this system is not good. It’s another one of the things, I think, where the government has committed to spending a tremendous amount of money on a system that wasn’t necessary. We have a whole bunch of things like that that have happened in the government, such as TSC and amalgamation of Human Resources — period.
In any event, I want to go on to another line. The Department of Human Resources is providing support for HR planning along the lines of what the Member for Kam Lake was talking about. Specifically, I want to ask the department how many departments in the GNWT actually have comprehensive human resource plans.
I think every department in the past with their business planning has had to have a human resource section, which would lay out statistics and also some other intentions.
I’d like to know how much involvement in human resource planning the Department of Human Resources has. I don’t see a human resource plan as something that has some statistics in it and some intentions. I see a human resource plan as something that’s comprehensive, that looks at career development, internal careers — looking at exactly what types of human resources will be needed to continue operations and so on — a comprehensive human resource plan. The support for human resource planning….
Maybe I should I get the Minister to answer that. How much involvement is in human resource planning? What is meant by human resource planning that the department is supporting?
At one time we were set up where we had a human resource planner for every department. What happened was that we expected the departments to take the lead on developing human resource plans, because unless management develops their plans, there is no ownership.
So as such, we work with departments — generally, departments that have staffing problems that need to address specific issues. We work with them on planning with regard to comprehensive human resource planning where we would have a specific plan to deal with employees from recruitment to retirement. This is something we provide advice on, but we don’t have specific comprehensive plans for every department.
I don’t have much time left, so I’ll be more, I guess, to the point with this question. Human resource planning: is there an across-the-board standard the department provides to other departments — including such things as an affirmative action plan or policy inside the human resource plan, any sort of cross-cultural training that may be required for southern recruits and so on — like you said, from the time they start their career until their career is over?
That’s good. That’s, I guess, some career-pathing. I guess my question is: does Human Resources have a standard or a framework that each of the departments can follow when they develop their human resource plans?
Mr. Chair, I want to point out that when it comes to human resource planning, it’s a shared responsibility between the departments and Human Resources. We work with the departments, generally at their request. So we work with a number of departments.
We don’t have any specific standards, because generally we deal with developing plans to address some specific human resource situations.
Mr. Chair, I have another line. First of all, just before I close off on the human resource planning, I think it’s essential that all departments that develop human resource plans are operating with the same system. If one department has a comprehensive section in how affirmative action is applied and how they apply affirmative action, then all departments should do it. If one department has a requirement to cross-culturally train their employees who come from the south, who are hired from the south, then every department should have it. Okay? That’s enough said on human resource planning.
Some more cost-cutting measures I would like to propose — that is most likely, again, in the overall human resource section — are awards. I don’t agree with all the awards: the Premier’s award, the deputy ministers’ awards — all those awards.
I find those awards create more of a problem at the employee level than is beneficial. I don’t really believe that employees in the GNWT strive to win the Premier’s award every year. However, somebody gets selected to win that award. So that means that in a department where you have 50 people, one guy gets a Premier’s award, is blessed with the Premier’s award, and everybody else gets nothing.
I think that if there’s any cost at all to the awards, deputy ministers’ awards…. Any of that, I think, should be completely taken out, because it causes more problems than not. I think the GNWT people would be just as happy to see those things gone.
I guess in Human Resources it’s understood that employee recognition is one of the biggest motivators in a workforce. Most employees would prefer that their work is recognized rather than get an increase in wages or monetary rewards. So on that basis, I think the Employee Recognition Program we have is relatively cheap for the amount we gain by it. The employee recognition programs are reviewed on a regular basis, and certainly we’ll take the Member’s recommendations into consideration.
We do know that whenever employee recognition comes up, there’s always the discussion that some employees are recognized and others aren’t. I guess another way of looking at it is maybe to restrict it to generic employee recognition, but that’s something we’ll look at the next time we review the program.
Next I have Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to just follow up on the last question from my colleague to my right. I fully support employee recognition programs. I think there’s a lot of value in them. But there are many ways of recognizing employees, and I have to agree with Mr. Beaulieu; I don’t think the Premier’s awards are sought after. I don’t think they’re high on many employees’ lists of coveted awards. So I would agree that probably ought to be dropped, and if necessary, if you want to keep the money, put it into other methods of recognizing employees.
There are a couple of things I’d like to ask. It’s been mentioned; we’ve talked about human resource planning, and I sense the department doesn’t orchestrate human resource planning, but it does indicate they support human resource planning for various departments. I’d like to ask some questions about the costs that are involved in hiring local nurses. I think it’s well recognized — it’s been mentioned by other Members — that we pay, it seems, an exorbitant amount of money to provide enough nurses in our health centres, in our hospitals. Many of them are not hired on a permanent basis. They fly in; they fly out. We pay their costs in pretty much every area. I’d like to know whether or not the department has worked with the health boards, the various health authorities, to try and increase the pool of float nurses and what sorts of efforts the department has put into trying to reduce the costs for locum nurses at all health authorities.
Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is an area in which the department has been working very closely with Health and Social Services and Stanton to not only reduce the rapidly growing costs but also to develop our own northern workforce. I think that over the past three years or so this program has been in place we’ve been very successful. Agency nursing fees are down 70 per cent. Projected costs have decreased by about $1.5 million. We do have 422 nurses in the casual nurse float pool. These are further broken out into two categories: a pool to cover the community health nurses and also hospital nurses. I think one of the biggest successes has been the Aurora College nursing program, which generates about 20 fully trained nurses on an annual basis.
I applaud the department for reducing the agency fees and the efforts they have put in to try to reduce these expenses in the last few years.
To the comment about Aurora College nurses, I have heard via the grapevine and anecdotal information, I guess, that although the nurses are graduating from Aurora College, they are not necessarily being employed. So there is a bit of a negative to the fact that these kids are graduating.
You mentioned casual nurses, and I need to know if those are casuals employed by GNWT, or if locum nurses or agency nurses — whatever you want to call them — are considered casual or not. I’d like to know how many nurses we are currently flying in, flying out and paying all of their expenses. I’ll leave it at that.
Mr. Chair, at my constituency meeting, when we talked about nurses graduating from Aurora College, I was subjected to the same comments that all of them were going south because they weren’t being offered appropriate jobs within the health care system. When I checked into it, I found out there were maybe two or three that hadn’t accepted jobs within the NWT, and two or three were going south for different reasons.
As to the number of agency nurses, there used to be 13 or 14 on an average day, and now there are maybe three or four coming in from the south.
Three or four a day is still an awful lot.
I’d like to ask the Minister about questions raised earlier about Donnie Days and pay for Donnie Days. I have a specific question with regard to affected employees. If an affected employee happens to be terminated — if this budget is passed and an employee happens to be terminated in October, or whatever the date is…. This employee has been having their salary reduced from, let’s say, the first of January to the first of October. If they are terminated as of the end of September, they will presumably be due funds for a portion of the Donnie Days they are not going to be using — sorry; all of the Donnie days, but it’s a portion of their salary. I’d like to ask the Minister whether or not that’s been considered by the department and what recourse the employee has.
We do have the benefit of previous arbitrations that have ruled that when an employee terminates, they are not entitled to those funds that are attributed to Donnie Days.
Okay. Thank you for the information. That surprises me. I expect you might get one or two more grievances.
Lastly, I’d like to ask the Minister…. It was mentioned yesterday — it has been mentioned again several times today — that there is evidence of a report called the Hackett Report. I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not that is a document that is available to the public.
Mr. Chair, we’ll check into whether that report was released publicly. It appears that some of the Members may have seen it. Certainly, I would want to share it with the Member. I just have to confirm whether there are any restrictions on the circulation of it. I don’t see why there would be, but I’ll just confirm that and let the Member know and give her a copy of it.
I guess if it hasn’t been released as a public document, I would request of the Minister that he consider releasing it to me and other Members as a confidential document, for our eyes only.
Mr. Chair, I’d be pleased to do that. I’d just give advance warning that the document is about ten inches thick.
We’re on page 2-63, Management and Recruitment Services, Operations Expenditure Summary: $7.341 million. Mr. Hawkins.
