Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I stated in my Member's statement, my questions are for the Minister of Finance, which human resources falls under.
Does the GNWT have a document to educate hiring staff on how to measure education equivalencies? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Minister responsible for Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, certainly anyone that is involved in hiring does have opportunity to access training through the Department of Finance. There are information packages online that can describe some of this, and the Department of Finance is often, if not always, involved during a recruitment and retention process so that they can also provide some strategic advice on how to do the evaluation equivalencies. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Minister for their response but I've been in hiring process through the education boards, I've been in Health, in other areas, hiring teachers, nurses, you know, and every HR person that I received information of gave me a different way to do it.
So there isn't one strategic way or document that everybody does it equivalently through the Northwest Territories. I just wanted to put that on the record.
Does the GNWT currently use lived experience and cultural experience into equivalencies and if not, will the Minister direct her department to find a way to do this equally across the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is one of the commitments that is under the Indigenous Recruitment and Retention Framework. And I certainly recognize that the passion is being brought to it for exactly this reason, that there does need to be, you know, a better way of doing this to achieve the goals that we have of having more inclusive public service. So it's included already in that action plan.
There is the new job description guide. I ought to have mentioned it in the last response.
The job description guide is meant to be a place where there can be more cohesive approach to how, in fact, job descriptions are being done and where evaluation of the combinations of education and experience can be considered and some guidance, indeed, on how to achieve that through job descriptions now, again, utilizing that guide in the context of the framework. So once that is now underway, Mr. Speaker, that will be part of the commitments that we've made in that framework and hopefully we'll see success in that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and the Minister's answer, thank you for that. And it leads kind of right into my next question.
Is the GNWT reviewing all job descriptions to remove barriers and add cultural and lived experience to be measured when a job evaluation is scoring how they rate the pay? This is something that must be valued in our territory. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it's Action 1.1 of the framework where it speaks to the importance of the job descriptions and, specifically, that all departments and agencies are now expected to conduct a detailed review of all job descriptions specifically with keeping in mind systemic barriers that may exist. And the point is to precisely do that, to remove those systemic barriers.
Every department and agency is responsible for their job descriptions. They certainly can seek strategic advice from human resources. But that is the individual requirements for each department, knowing themselves some of the particularities of those jobs.
But of note, in terms of when we're going to get there and how they're going to do that, we are now all collectively expected to be reporting annually on the completion of those tasks, including job description reviews. And performance measures for the framework includes having job descriptions reviewed over the next two to three years so that we get through, indeed, all of them just as is being asked. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister. And I'm glad that you added at the end that there is kind of a timeline that these need to be done so we're not sitting here and some of our pages are the MLAs at the time asking the same question 20 or 10 years from now.
Will the Minister commit to creating these documents, like I had mentioned in my first two questions, for hiring staff to measure education equivalencies and cultural and lived experiences into equivalencies, and will the Minister commit to releasing these documents for the public and hiring managers and any staff that are involved in hiring on their websites to be more transparent and to commit that ensuring that HR ensures the departments are reviewing all their job descriptions. And you said that already so I thank the Minister for that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is one resource that I would certainly encourage prospective applicants to take a look at. It is on the website. It's GNWT hiring Q and A. It describes some of the information about who's on a hiring committee, what equivalencies what kinds of equivalencies might be considered, how that's defined. But it does not go through job by job providing individual equivalencies.
I had the opportunity to speak with the Member before sitting today. I understand, we don't want people to selfscreen. We don't want people to think that they won't meet an equivalency and not even apply. That doesn't benefit the process. It doesn't benefit the public service. You know, the ideal is to have folks coming forward because they think they have the right equivalencies and then we can go through that process of the hiring process.
That said, Mr. Speaker, I can certainly go back and see if we can get a bit more information on to this Q and A so that people have a sense of where they stand and so that they aren't screening themselves out and they are applying to jobs to which they had a proper equivalency. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.
