Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement. On October 1st of 2013, some eight months ago, we had a grand change in the way that we advertise for GNWT jobs. We weren’t going to advertise specific jobs any more, we were going to have generic ads, people had to have an e-mail address and they could apply online, and so on and so on. It was a grand improvement, we were told.
I’d like to know from the Minister, if it was such a great improvement, why the change that we’re now seeing in the newspapers in the North? What happened that we went back to some of the new and some of the old? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Some of the positions would be advertised in the paper. There were a lot of issues coming from some of the smaller communities that indicated they were having difficulty with e-recruitment. We recognized that we have a system where we have indicated to individuals that we would be posting jobs in various places throughout the small communities and offices, municipal governments, with government service workers, with career development officers and so on. But even at that point, there were still some requests to advertise some of the jobs back in the paper, so we’ve made some provisions for some special jobs back in the paper, but not at increased costs. We’re still with the idea that we had originally asked all people that we interview, where and how they had obtained the job ad to apply for the job. Only 3 percent of the people were getting their advertisements from the paper, so that was the reason for the original cutback. But the reason for the slight change is just to try to reach everyone that we intend to reach. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister for that response. I know this is why we went to the one big ad, having people access jobs online and so on. I’m pleased that there’s been a recognition that obviously some jobs need to be advertised specifically.
The Minister mentioned that there’s been no increased cost to have what I’m seeing as twice the amount of ads that we had before, so I’m finding that very difficult to understand.
Can he explain to me how we have gone from one ad and now we have one ad and sometimes six others? How is that not an increase in our advertising costs? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the department was seeing the cost of advertising escalating every year. Since we’ve gone to this system in October, we are able to stabilize the cost and we are within that cost and we’re not increasing the budget to add on some of the jobs. This is something that was discussed between our department and the papers.
Right now a lot of what we’re doing with advertising, we’re doing a lot of generic advertising. All the departments are cost-sharing, so we’re getting economies of scale on that. So that’s one of the ways that we’re bringing the costs down in that area in order to pay for specific ads that may go into the paper that’s needed. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. If I understand this correctly, as of October 1st the cost for our ads went down because we were placing fewer ads. So from a year ago, so I guess from the 1st of April of 2013 to the 1st of October of 2013, we had a cost for ads. After October 1st our cost went down. So now, if I understand the Minister correctly, he’s telling me we’ve increased the number of ads, so that presumably has increased our cost, but we haven’t gone over the cost that we incurred as of April 1st of 2013. Is that right?
So, we reduced our cost in October; now we’ve cranked it back up, but we haven’t gone over last year’s total, so that’s good. Is that right? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, unfortunately I don’t have all of the cost breakdowns of all the types of advertising that we’re doing. Our initial intent was to do a couple of things. One was to contain the cost of advertising and also not spend a lot of money on advertising that was not being used. Like I indicated, only 3 percent of the ads that were in the paper were the reasons that individuals were applying. So this is what we’ve managed to do. We’ve managed to maintain the cost. We’re not increasing the cost of advertising across the board, but we are making some special provisions to make sure that we’re reaching people who are indicating to us that were not able to see the ads. They can see the general, generic advertisement in the paper but aren’t able to access it online. In those cases, we are doing that without increasing our overall cost. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister, I think. I guess I would like to ask the Minister if he could provide some kind of analysis of the numbers of what the costs were prior to going to the big online ads and what we’re now incurring in terms of cost.
The Minister mentioned that there was reason for the changes, that we weren’t reaching a certain number of people. What kind of analysis was done by the department before they made the change to put job-specific ads in there? Who did they speak to? What kind of consultation or analysis was done? Thank you.
The only analysis that was done was to determine where people are getting their ads from in order to fill out their applications and apply for a specific job, and the answer was that only 3 percent was coming from the paper. So that is essentially the analysis. It was more that we looked at the cost of advertising. A lot of the cost was in print advertising in the paper for specific jobs, and only 3 percent of the people recruited had actually received their advertisement through the paper and applied because of what they saw in the paper. That was the analysis done.
Also, I am prepared to provide a cost comparison of what was there before October 1st, what has happened since October 1st, and if we had done specific job advertising, the cost of that as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
