GREAT PLACE TO WORK AT
Legislature gets good review
There was no missing the sense of relief last week as the legislature management committee fielded the final report of a workplace review prompted by allegations from Speaker Darryl Plecas.
MLAs from all three parties fell over each other in welcoming the mostly favourable findings from a Victoria-based firm with expertise in workplace health and conflict resolution.
NDP house leader Mike Farnworth: “I’m encouraged by how people seem to be quite optimistic and looking very much to the future.”
Green house leader Sonia Furstenau: “The report is very helpful, very informative. ... This has been one of the most enjoyable places that I’ve ever worked.”
B.C. Liberal caucus chair Jackie Tegart: “It is hard to believe that this report was written in a political environment. That is kudos to the staff that do the work (here).”
The key exchange in committee came when NDP caucus chair Jagrup Brar asked the authors of the report: “Where do we fall in terms of the similar or equivalent nature of other workplaces?”
The legislature workplace was “very unique in the amount of positivity,” replied Jessica McNamara, one of two partners from ADR Education who interviewed more than 150 legislature employees in strict confidence.
“I don’t think there was a single interview that didn’t either begin or end with some kind of positive appreciation for the workplace or the colleagues. I’ve actually never experienced that. There’s usually at least one person that has something negative to say without a positive side. So that’s quite unique.”
The other finding that set the legislature apart “is the amount of pride people take in being part of the organization. That’s also quite unique. The majority of people don’t feel that it’s just a job. They feel that the service is very important. There’s a level of passion there that is unusual.”
The other author of the review, Jamie Chicanot, noted how the legislature had gone through a major upheaval in late 2018 and early 2019 and survived.
“Not that it’s not part of their consciousness,” he said. “But having weathered the storm the way they did, could have also been a bit of a unifying experience, as bad as it was for a number of people. That is quite unique and rare, in our experience.”
The findings were remarkable in light of the allegations that prompted the review in the first place — the January 2019 report from Speaker Plecas that characterized the legislature as an “unhealthy” workplace, where employees were fired without cause and whistleblowers were fearful of speaking up.
The all-party legislative assembly management committee (LAMC) responded by commissioning the workplace review, albeit on terms that sidestepped a targeted review of either the unjust terminations or the silenced whistleblowers.
Instead, the report tabled July 2 was a mostly forward-looking exercise that reflected on the mood following the ouster of Craig James and Gary Lenz and the room for further improvement in the future.
“Fortunately, the workplace culture is overwhelmingly regarded as healthy, positive and supportive from a relational standpoint,” wrote McNamara and Chicanot.
“The primary areas of focus and ongoing development for the organization should therefore be concentrated around: enhancing governance and administration, becoming more strategically-oriented (and skilful) in decision making, and ensuring that workplace policies, procedures, employment standards and practices are transparent, fair and consistently applied.”
They closed with nine recommendations for an action plan.
“They’re all accepted,” announced Kate Ryan-Lloyd, who succeeded James as clerk. “We’d like to prepare an action plan with some specific timelines and deliverables.”
Though the workplace review didn’t directly address the most disturbing allegations raised by Speaker Plecas, he, too, found grounds for praising the report during the committee meeting.
“The report and the way you put it together is second to none. It’s all great,” he told the authors, before heaping credit on clerk Ryan-Lloyd and her staff.
“The staff in general at the legislature are pretty incredible in terms of being adaptable and responsive,” said the Speaker. “You’d have to search the world over for a more helpful work environment.”
Still, Plecas wondered about the almost 50 per cent of legislature employees who did not respond to the invitations sent out by the workplace review.
Might they represent “a cluster of unhappy campers and we’re not being respectful of the concerns that they might have?”
There might well be “pockets of discontent,” conceded Chicanot. But McNamara added: “We had not only a very good response rate, but we also had a very good dispersion across the organization. Frankly, in a couple of areas that we thought we’d get very little participation, we got quite good participation.”
In any event, additional concerns about conflict resolution could be addressed in the plan arising out of the report.
Of greater concern to Plecas is LAMC’s handling of another report, a review of the sergeantat-arms department produced by his chief of staff Alan Mullen.
The Mullen report was completed in January and submitted to LAMC soon after. Among its half dozen recommendations are ones that suggest substantial savings on staffing and overtime costs.
So far LAMC would appear to be in stalling mode.
“There are currently no plans at this point to make any changes,” Farnworth said recently. “We’ve seen a report and it is yet to be discussed.”
That has Plecas complaining about the province passing up potential savings of $1 million a year. But that is a topic for another day.