October 2023

In This Edition

• Celebrating the 2022 MCC Recipients
• NEW! HR Community Managers’ Corner
  • Are you looking for PE-01 talent?
• Community of Practice Spotlight: Federal Informal Conflict Management System Network
• Have Your Say: HR Professional Development Needs
• What’s New?
  • HR Council Community Development Updates
  • New Additions to the HR Learning Lounge and HR Resources Centre
• Did You Know?
  • Now Playing! Fall HRC Smartshops
  • In Case You Missed It…
  • Level Up Your Digital Competencies
• What’s Upcoming?
  • HR Council Events
  • Events of Interest for the HR Community
  • Important and Commemorative Dates
• Contact Us
• Subscribe

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Celebrating the 2022 MCC Recipients

Stay tuned for the recording of the September 27th ceremony, which will soon be posted on the HRC GCXchange page. In the meantime, get inspired by the remarkable accomplishments of all nominees and recipients featured in the Nomination Booklet.

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NEW! HR Community Managers’ Corner

A good manager is someone who has a sense of responsibility, who trusts and is trusted, and who knows how to motivate and inspire each member of their team. The good news is that being an effective manager is not necessarily innate, rather it is a set of character traits that one may develop over time with training, experience and practice.

With respect to training, a number of resources are available to support you. The Canada School of Public Service is a prime example; in addition to a series of online courses, videos and tools, the School offers you the opportunity to join development programs:

• Supervisor Development Program
• Manager Development Program
• Future Directors Development Program

These programs will help you acquire the knowledge you need while coaching you in a virtual environment, so don’t hesitate to discuss your eligibility to participate in one of these programs with your manager.

It’s important to keep in mind that becoming an effective manager takes effort and determination, not just training. With that being said, you’ll be rewarded for your hard work when you witness evidence of your impact on the people you work with. It’s no surprise that effective management can help reduce employee turnover within an organization as well; it’s a win-win situation.

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Attention hiring managers!

A diverse talent pool is available to meet your needs – including 20 fully assessed candidates who have successfully passed the Remote HR Consultant Simulation and reside in Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec. Most of these highly competent candidates are bilingual and have self-identified as a member of one, or more, of the four employment equity groups. Please note that all fully assessed candidates from the NCR have all been placed. So, before you embark on your own selection processes, take advantage of this convenient opportunity to quickly find skilled and qualified individuals for the next generation of HR professionals!

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• Employment Opportunity for Students with Disabilities (EOSD): New intake for the Inventory of Graduates with Disabilities was completed and updated on the Virtual Door GCPedia site. 

• Post Secondary Recruitment campaign to recruit Data Scientists: A pool of qualified EC-03 (or equivalent) candidates across Canada, including members of Employment Equity groups, is now available.

• Hiring of Persons with Disabilities Initiative (PwD): The Careers in Biology for Persons with Disabilities (BI-02 and SR-CFIA-2) pool is now available to hiring managers. 

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Amendments to the Public Service Employment Act: Overview for Hiring Managers

This informative event provides hiring managers with an overview of the amendments to the Public Service Employment Act, including new sub-delegated staffing authorities and the requirement to conduct an evaluation of assessment methods to identify and remove biases and barriers or mitigate their impacts, among other important changes.
November 2, 2023 | 1 hour | Webcast (English session)

Register now!

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Community of Practice Spotlight

Did you know that there are now 20+ communities of practice (CoP) established across the various HR disciplines to facilitate collaboration towards a common goal of excellence in people management?

Check out the incredible work of this edition’s featured CoP below!

The FICMS Network is a group consisting of professionals who are active, in varying capacities, in applying conflict management practices within federal departments, agencies and Crown corporations. We focus on communicating to and engaging with practitioners and stakeholders. Our vision is to build a competent, connected, vibrant and strategic community of practitioners.

In providing operational leadership, the network’s mandate is to work with management representatives, unions representatives and their key partners to strategically influence, promote and integrate informal conflict resolution into the public service and thus foster healthy and harmonious workplaces.

Informal Conflict Management practitioners support all employees, in all roles and at all levels, to address conflict promptly and constructively, in a safe and accessible environment, with a spirit of respect, while using a collaborative, interest-based approach. Informal conflict management is an efficient, fast and cost-effective way to solve issues in the workplace.

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Have Your Say: HR Professional Development Needs

Do you have any creative, innovative (yet realistic) ideas for tools, resources, events, SmartShops and/or initiatives that would help you to improve your skills, knowledge and experience to help achieve your professional goals and advance your career in HR? Share them with us!

HR professionals across all groups and levels are invited to complete this survey by November 24th. We thank you in advance for your participation and look forward to hearing from you!

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What’s New?

HR Council Community Development Updates

Update on the HR Competency Development Framework Under Development

• On December 12, 2022, the Human Resources Council’s (HRC) HR Community Development Steering Committee approved the expansion of the PE Competency Development Framework (which previously targeted only PE-01s and PE-02s, with specific training plans associated with the following areas of expertise: staffing, labour relations and organizational design and job evaluation) to the whole HR Community.

• To make the new HR Competency Development Framework as inclusive as possible for all HR professionals, its content will now be organized by competency levels, rather than by classification groups and levels. The Framework will comprise the following four competency levels:
  • basic (beginner);intermediate;advanced (expert);
  • supervisor/manager.

• In the spring of 2023, HRC’s representatives met with the leaders of all other HR CoPs to engage them in the development of content specific to their own areas of expertise for the first two levels of the new Framework.

• Since then, the CoPs have been working on reviewing the proposed common content applicable to all HR professionals and developing content specific to their respective areas of expertise for the first two competency levels.

• The initial version of the PE Competency Development Framework will remain in force until the expanded version for the entire HR Community is launched. Further details on the anticipated launch date of the new expanded version of the Framework will be communicated at a later date via this Newsletter and/or future HRC Updates.

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By taking a close look at the responses of 10,695 members of our HR Community who responded to the 2022/2023 PSES, we have found that the perceptions of HR professionals are improving or holding steady in many areas. There were also some areas where the HR Community’s results were less positive than in 2020.

• HR Community respondents were more likely in 2022 (88%) than 2020 (85%) to agree that they the tools, technology and equipment they need to do their jobs.

• They were also more likely to feel supported by their immediate supervisors in the achievement of their career goals (83% in 2022 compared to 81% in 2020). Similarly, they were also more likely to feel positive towards their organization’s efforts to support employee career development (69% in 2022 vs. 68% in 2020), however that leaves almost 1 in 3 HR respondents who reported more negative view points.

• The number of HR employee respondents who felt most positively towards the statement “I like my job” remains strong at 85% since the last survey cycle.

• When it comes to training, the number of HR community respondents who believed they receive the necessary training to do their jobs is holding steady at 79% since 2020. This means however, that approximately 1 in 5 HR respondents shared more negative perceptions on their training.

• In 2022, respondents from our community were less likely to report feelings of confidence in the senior management of their organizations (69%) in comparison to 2020 (74%).

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Update of the Interdepartmental Standardized Job Descriptions (ISJDs) for the Informal Conflict Resolution (ICM) Stream

In collaboration with the Federal Informal Conflict Management (ICM) Network, the Organizational Design Job Evaluation Council (ODJEC) and the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer (OCHRO), the HR Council is pleased to announce that the suite of ISJDs for the Informal Conflict Management (ICM) stream has been updated. The new and revised products will be released to organizations early in the new year 2024. Stay tuned for more information!

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Coming Soon! Former HR Professional Inventory

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New Additions to the HR Learning Lounge and HR Resources Centre

Have you joined us on GCXchange?

The HRC GCXchange page is your go-to website to access a variety of useful resources to support and simplify your day-to-day work and development as an HR professional, including:

• The HR Resources Centre, a one-stop-shop for legislation, policies, contacts, best practices, trends and tools related to the HR function; and

• The HR Learning Lounge, where you will find suggested learning resources aligned with the HR competencies to support you in the development of your skills as an HR professional.

Check out the latest Canada School of Public Service additions to the Lounge:

• The fifth recorded session from the Government of Canada Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Conference 2022 is now available. This product, along with recordings of sessions one through four of this conference, is featured in the Lounge as a resource for developing the KNOWLEDGE OF LEGISLATION, POLICIES, TRENDS AND PRACTICES IN HR MANAGEMENT competency.

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Did You Know?

Now Playing! Fall HRC Smartshops

The September 20, 2023 HRC SmartShop Hiring 5,000 New Persons with Disabilities by 2025 recording is now available in English and in French.

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In case you missed it…

• 2023 Staffing and Non-Partisanship Survey: The survey is a valuable tool that reveals the extent to which public servants feel they are equipped to exercise their legal rights and responsibilities related to political activities and non-partisanship within the public service. The survey will be conducted until November 17 and results are anticipated to be available in spring 2024. 

• The Centre of Expertise on Mental Health in the Workplace  has moved to the GCXchange platform, allowing members to easily access promising practices, tools and resources, meeting notes, mental health information bulletins, mental health support available and more.

• Coping with Eco-Anxiety and Understanding Workplace Impacts: As the natural environment is changing, many are feeling restless and overwhelmed. The Mental Health Commission of Canada offers an important resources for strategies to help workplaces take action in identifying, assessing, controlling and monitoring climate-related hazards.

• Decommissioning of Public Service Commission (PSC) tests, including the HR Consultant Simulation: As per the June 19^th letter to heads of human resources regarding the Decommissioning of PSC tests (23-02), a number of assessment products were decommissioned as of June 30, 2023. The Human Resources Consultant Simulation Exercise 410, which facilitated an evaluation of a candidate’s HR professional abilities in alignment with the PE Competency Profile, was included in this decommissioning exercise.  

• Through the HR statistics website, users can now access federal public service (FPS) workforce statistics as of March 2023 and for the first time, the FPS executive population by level. Additionally, March 2022 core public administration employment equity and workforce availability data (based on Canadian citizens and permanent residents) are now available on the Diversity and inclusion statistics website, including executive employment equity data by level. Users can now also access and manipulate core public administration demographic data as of March 2023 as well as March 2022 employment equity and workforce availability data via the data visualization tool.

• Message from the Clerk: Bringing our values and ethics to life in our changing environment: John Hannaford, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet, announced the creation of a task team of senior officials to design and lead an exercise to advance a broad conversation with public servants on how to bring our collective values and ethics to life within a dynamic and increasingly complex environment.

• National Student Paper Competition: Do you know a talented Canadian graduate student looking to connect with senior public servants, expand their networks, nurture their leadership skills and explore employment opportunities with the federal public service? Applications for 2023-24 are now being accepted. 

• On October 19, Reports 5 to 9 of the Auditor General of Canada were tabled at the House of Commons.

• Phoenix procedures, job aids and instructions: Public Services and Procurement Canada maintains a searchable catalogue of procedures, job aids and other instructive communications related to pay and benefits for the Government of Canada by role and topic.  

• The new rates of pay for certain excluded and unrepresented groups and levels have been published. 

• Standard on Employment – Public Review Draft: This standard is currently open for public review. You can submit your feedback until 3:00 PM EST, on November 14, 2023.

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Level Up Your Digital Competencies

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What’s Upcoming?

HRC Events

HR Community Speed Mentoring Event

January 25, 2024 – In celebration of #MentorMonth coming up in January, the HR Council is hosting its first speed mentoring event for the HR Community! Stay tuned for more details and registration information to come.

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Events of Interest for the HR Community

If you’re a young or new public servant looking for career development, looking to gain invaluable insights on government job processes, and connect with like-minded individuals, you won’t want to miss this full day learning event.

Winnipeg, MB – October 31 & Saskatoon, SK – November 2

• Maximize GC Jobs: Stand out with insider tips for the GC Jobs platform.
• Future Shaping: Influence the GC’s future direction in a dynamic discussion on the future of the public service.
• Turn Setbacks into Success: Learn to leverage rejections for growth.
• Expert Insights: Get personalized career advice from experienced leaders during speed mentoring.
• Network Power: Connect with local new professionals for mutual growth.

Invest in your career: Register Now!

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Join FYN for their newest series where they choose the theme and you choose the topics they discuss by sending in your questions to their diverse panels of seasoned public servants.

• November 14: Networking and GC Communities
• December 12: Ask Us Anything All-Stars!

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November 15: GC Students and the Federal Youth Network (FYN) are pleased to invite you to their event on career planning for students and graduates. This session, entitled “Plan Your Career”, will inform you about HR topics such as appointment processes, student bridging, types of employment, ways to find a job and multitude of tools to continue your learning. Visit GCStudents for relevant details and registration.

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November 21: 2023 Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign: Quiz for a Cause – DM Trivia National Event
The Quiz for a Cause – DM Trivia Event features deputy ministers from participating departments, agencies and crown corporations who will put their trivia knowledge to the test and compete for the title of 2023 Trivia Master.
1 hour | Webcast

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Important and Commemorative Dates

October

November

• November 8: Indigenous Veterans Day
• November 11: Remembrance Day
• November 20: National Child Day and Transgender Day of Remembrance
• November 20 to 26: Canada History Week
• November 25 to December 10: 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence

December

• December 3: International Day of Persons with Disabilities
• December 6: National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women
• December 10: Human Rights Day

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Contact Us

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