Debates of November 28, 2007 (day 4)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll try not to forget my question halfway through this time.

---Laughter

My question is to the Minister of Human Resources. I’d like to start off by thanking him for his statement on human resource efforts and acknowledge all of the hard work that the staff at the Department of Human Resources have put in. Now, listening to the statement, something strikes me as being missing and that’s there was no mention of poor morale in the public service.

Through conversations with my constituents, it’s obvious that there are pockets of poor morale within this government. There are silos where there are problems. Is the Department of Human Resources going to conduct any surveys or studies on the public service as a whole to identify those silos or areas where poor morale exists and put in plans to address them so that the services that are being provided to the public are the highest quality? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Return To Question 42-16(1): Public Service Morale

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the honourable Member for his observations about morale in the public service. As I said, human resources are our most important asset. This is an area which is difficult to quantify. In the past we’ve used employee engagement surveys. This is something that we will be doing, I understand, in the near future. The last employee engagement survey that was undertaken was in 2006. At that time the results of the survey indicated that most of the employees were satisfied with the responsibilities of their position. I think that’s probably the best way to determine the morale of government employees. Otherwise we’re just relying on the observations from individual employees. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.

Supplementary To Question 42-16(1): Public Service Morale

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the problems I see with a survey that’s conducted over an entire public service is it gives you a general or an average, which would suggest that maybe morale isn’t awful, but maybe not that good. But it doesn’t identify those pockets where there are toxic environments. Is there any way that you can dig deeper into the surveys broken down by area in general to identify those areas where there is a toxic work environment where a significant amount of work needs to be done to bring up the morale and improve services to the public as a whole?

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. McLeod.

Further Return To Question 42-16(1): Public Service Morale

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly that's an area that we are looking at. I think we would like to undertake a process of many surveys so that we can, it will give us the ability to focus in on specific problem areas and help us to react to them more quickly. As the Member knows, the problem with engagement surveys is getting people to respond. Generally if we get a third of the employees to respond, we think we're doing good. If similarly we target specific areas, we would have to take that into account. But this is something that we are definitely looking at doing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.

Supplementary To Question 42-16(1): Public Service Morale

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I acknowledge the difficulties in doing those types of surveys and how often individuals who are upset or have poor morale may not be willing to respond to them because they don't feel that it will do any good. I encourage the Minister to get out there and have people get out and actually meet with staff, and go out and meet with those staff and encourage them to actively respond to those surveys under the understanding that they are confidential. Thank you.