Pay system a small part of a big problem
I have some questions for the prime minister. Why would the head of the federal pay system declare that the pay “system is working”? Would the recent explosion of complaints suggest the system is working? Moreover, if it works technically, does that mean it is working as a system?
People need to be connected to technology in the right way. This is not something the leadership of the public service does well. Examples abound. Look at the heart of modernization, Shared Services Canada, another huge IT project rife with confusion, delay and disgruntled employees. Look at the last results of the Public Service Employee Survey. How happy do people seem in this the “workplace of the future”?
The pay system, despite the recent attention, is a small part of the problem. The bigger part is the highly unbalanced approach to modernization itself. Modernization should encompass the most important innovations in organizational management, such as integrated planning, the learning organization, employee engagement and, crucially, leading and managing people through change.
The public service leadership throws these terms around. But you will be hard-pressed to find useful definitions for any of them, much less a leadership plan spelling out how these innovations will be incorporated into the management culture.
Going back to the Public Service Employee Survey, review the results on shifting priorities and departmental leadership, and ask yourself whether they suggest a capacity for handling large-scale change?
Next time you get a report from an advisory committee calling for public service organizations to become flexible, adaptive, et cetera, ask yourself this question: How do we build these traits into a bureaucracy? Which magic wand will transform bureaucracies into dynamic organizations marked by integration, engagement, a learning culture and the leadership capacity to handle large-scale change?
Until you take up these questions and think them though, the modernization of the public service, in the broader sense I have outlined here, will remain little more than happy dream.
Doug Dollinger, Chelsea