Debates of October 24, 2006 (day 14)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions as well are to the Minister of Human Resources and in my 20 years on government as a manager and superintendent, acting regional director, even as a carpenter’s apprentice with the union, and in this House here, all the Assemblies, I have been very interested in human resources. In fact, I know some of the Members here from the 13th Assembly, we did not speak in favour of the disbanding of the Personnel department of the day and it’s taken nine years for the government to come back to realize that they do need a centralized human resource function which is so critical to government. I know as Minister of Health and Social Services and ENR I thought we got very good service.

My question to the Minister is just to give a sense of scale here. Can the Minister indicate firstly how many employees do we have and could he give us a ballpark figure of how many transactions in any given week or month that we would probably do or deal with with the various employees in the various forms?

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Roland.

Return To Question 177-15(5): Management Of The Human Resources Department

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to actually get a breakdown of the full amount of employees and break them down whether it’s casual employment or indeterminate would take a bit of work. But I know on average there are over four and a half thousand employees across the Northwest Territories that we run payroll for. So you do your payroll. In fact, for example, when you deal with terminations there’s a lot of people coming and going within government and an average monthly…For example, in the last nine months, Mr. Speaker, the average monthly termination process we’ve dealt with have been 357. So that’s a fair bit of workload dealing throughout that exercise. We’ve had to deal with the new hires, recruitment, as well as dealing with our backlog situation as I made mention of earlier. In fact, I believe we are starting to come around to now start focusing on not just dealing with past issues, which has slowed us down substantially, but now look at how we really deal with our human resources going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Supplementary, Mr. Miltenberger.

Supplementary To Question 177-15(5): Management Of The Human Resources Department

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I know that there’s also concern for some of the facilities and how they’re currently operating and I’d just like to ask, get some assurances from the Minister that while there may be some complaints from a small number of employees, will whatever work is done in terms of making sure we do employee satisfaction surveys that it will involve as well the hundreds of employees that I would consider the silent majority so that we do not have our policies and direction for Stanton set just on small numbers of employees that may raise specific concerns. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Roland.

Further Return To Question 177-15(5): Management Of The Human Resources Department

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as issues arise with our human resources side of government we have to look at all factors, no matter the small amount of people that would raise concerns. We have to look into them to ensure we are doing what we can to try to deal with those. Obviously as we do some changes for one group it affects another group and that can raise issues on its own. We are doing a better job, I believe, when we look at most of our facilities. When we do a comparison across Canada with our health facilities, the shortage of nurses is still a thing that affects all jurisdictions. As I’ve stated earlier, we have now focused a unit within Human Resources and dealing with hiring of new nurses to bring them north. We have also, Mr. Speaker, created a float pool of nurses that helps us deal with the filling in of nurses who would either go on holidays or take time off. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Supplementary, Mr. Miltenberger.

Supplementary To Question 177-15(5): Management Of The Human Resources Department

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d also like to publicly clarify the issue of the concern about reprisals, and the Minister will know that I’ve approached him on this issue as well to be able to ensure that anybody that comes through the door of an MLA can come through the door and speak on issues without any fear that there’s going to be a backlash because they’ve come to their Member of the Legislative Assembly. It’s a fundamental requirement of our ability to do our jobs as Members of the Legislative Assembly. So I’d just like the Minister to clarify on that issue as well.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Roland.

Further Return To Question 177-15(5): Management Of The Human Resources Department

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as the Member stated, our job in this Assembly is to deal with the constituents that come through our doors on any particular issue. So there’s no fear there. As well, our employees have to realize that because we’re within a union, there’s a process of dealing with issues. As Members come to our door or come to my door on a human resources issue, my first response would be where it is at in the stage of dealing with our systems in place with the union and follow that process through. Mr. Speaker, just for stability of our workforce, we do have to follow a chain of command as we deal with our issues. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Miltenberger.

Supplementary To Question 177-15(5): Management Of The Human Resources Department

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the final question is just a clarification in terms of timeline for the much beloved PeopleSoft system that came into effect many Assemblies ago and has been a burden on us over the years. The Minister has indicated a substantial investment in this and getting a vanilla version that is integral and integrated and intact, and hasn’t been tampered with by our staff. Can the Minister indicate when in fact that system will be fully operational? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Roland.

Further Return To Question 177-15(5): Management Of The Human Resources Department

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we just went through the first phase of that, recognizing what needs to be done to clean up our older version of 8.3. It was significantly customized, as we call it, where we changed the programming to fit our criteria, which lead to further problems. So we’ve had to go through that phase. We are now entering into the next phase of beginning the work to convert towards 8.9, the vanilla version, as I stated earlier. Hopefully, as we proceed this year, I’m looking towards, I believe it would be April 2007 that we would be able to be fully into the 8.9 process as 8.3 will no longer be supported. Thank you.