Ottawa hoping to convince reluctant civil servants of the benefits of working from the office

2024/08/27 Leave a comment

Good luck trying to convince public servants that this is good for them even if it likely is in terms of career advancement.

But would be better for Christians Fox to be upfront and just tell public servants to “suck it up” given the realities of public opinion and that most private sector companies have also been introducing back to the office policies:

The federal government is preparing to welcome a frustrated workforce back to its offices on Sept. 9.

Under a new policy announced in May, federal civil servants will have to spend at least three days per week in the office, while executives will have to spend at least four. Currently, civil servants are required to be in their offices only two days per week.

Federal employees’ unions say most civil servants oppose the planned reduction in telework and report struggles with transportation and work-family balance. Many also say they’re more productive when they work from home.

Hoping to cool the discontent, a senior civil servant is making the case for spending more time at the office.

Christiane Fox, deputy clerk of the Privy Council Office, told Radio-Canada the new policy will improve the overall performance of the federal public service and help individual civil servants advance their careers.

“It’s to build a sense of teams that collaborate towards difficult public policy challenges,” she said.

Fox added the goal is to ensure that new public servants “understand the role of a public service and [are] in a position to learn by observation, by the things they see happening in their workplace.”

The government may also be hoping that bringing civil servants back to their offices can improve the public service’s reputation — which has been damaged by a perception in some quarters that employees are taking it easy when they work from home.

“Of course, we can’t ignore the perceptions and the comments that are made about the public service,” said Fox, adding that is not the rationale for the decision….

Source: Ottawa hoping to convince reluctant civil servants of the benefits of working from the office

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McLaughlin: There’s a troubling amount of churn at the top of Canada’s public service

2024/07/19 Leave a comment

Valid commentary.

Perhaps the recent example of Christiane Fox, who spent less than two years at IRCC, implemented a major reorganization at IRCC, and then left for PCO without having to live through the implementation nor see whether it was successful, provides an illustration:

…Fresh perspective on a task or mission is always useful, and promoting people into senior ranks is necessary for talent-building. But rampant shuffling has consequences. It commodifies deputy ministers. It devalues subject matter expertise and institutional wisdom in favour of management and system conformity. It weakens the crucial minister-deputy relationship that comes from longer periods of working together, and it does the same for the extensive stakeholder and delivery apparatus that surrounds modern government. It undermines the institutional memory and corporate knowledge that underpins the whole ethos of an independent, permanent public service.

Most importantly, it divorces senior officials from results. Individual responsibility for seeing things through is diminished when you know it will be your successor who will be carrying the can. This accountability serves as a form of collective protectionism – a kind of omerta – for the public service system as a whole.

Post-pandemic, Canadians are expecting that the institutions of government perform better. Right now, that is wanting. From procurement to service delivery to appointments, there are obvious institutional failures.

As voters increasingly clamour for change and accountability at the highest political levels, now is the time for the highest public service levels to adopt this same attitude as their own. Arresting the churn at the top should be at the top of that list.

Source: There’s a troubling amount of churn at the top of Canada’s public service

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