Module #1: Base Camp: People Management in the Public Service
The Base Camp session provides a refresher on people management and establishes a shared understanding of the legal and policy frameworks, roles, systems and structures used in managing a public-sector workforce. Participants will also focus on responsibility and accountability for people management and discuss activities that add value to a workforce.
Module #2: Workforce Profile and Workforce Planning
This module will show participants how to describe a workforce in terms of demographics, metrics and behaviours. It aims to build comfort with the use of workforce analytics to build a profile that can be used to establish alignment and coherence between strategic priorities and workforce capabilities and capacity.
Module #3: Recruiting, Deploying and Retaining a Workforce
The focus of this module is to understand the practical challenges in recruiting and deploying the right people and on how best to attract scientific, professional and managerial talent, including using social media. The conversation then shifts to a discussion of the tools and techniques used to deploy talent through staffing activities so that capabilities are available where and when needed. A closing section looks at the challenges of retaining talent.
Module #4: Study Tour to observe Best Practices in People Management
The program includes a three-day study tour within Canada organized as an action-learning event. Participants will consider best practices in people management in the public, para-public and private sectors, and then experience them first hand by visiting best-in-class organizations and learning from their senior leadership how they lead and manage people for success.
Module #5: Engaging and Developing a Workforce
This module begins with a discussion of the challenges of engaging people so that individual employees are empowered and focused on adding value to their jobs through effective performance. This conversation leads to a discussion of how to develop capacity and capability in a workforce. Participants will learn about the connections between behavioural competencies, performance and workforce capabilities and how to evaluate a strategic priority to identify the behaviours needed to achieve it. A closing session will address the challenge of working with organizational cultures as a key element of organizational development.
Module #6: Supporting and Sustaining a Workforce
In this module participants will examine how workforce climates and organizational culture influence performance. A discussion of how to assess workplace climates will include consideration of mental health and other challenges in the workplace, how to identify factors that cause toxic workplaces and how to assume accountability for creating a healthy workplace. This session will also explore how compensation affects performance and include a discussion of the principles, structures and processes used to manage relationships with unions and bargaining agents.
Module #7: Workforce Change and Transformation
In this module participants will examine how workforce climates and organizational culture influence performance. A discussion of how to assess workplace climates will include consideration of mental health and other challenges in the workplace, how to identify factors that cause toxic workplaces and how to assume accountability for creating a healthy workplace. This session will also explore how compensation affects performance and include a discussion of the principles, structures and processes used to manage relationships with unions and bargaining agents.
Module #8: Workforce Performance
In this module, participants will focus on measuring and managing workforce performance. The module covers both the central policy architecture that shapes how performance is managed in the public service and the practical measures and approaches that senior leaders have found most effective. Participants will have an opportunity to integrate these discussions with learnings from earlier program modules by reflecting on the people management activities that have the greatest impact on the performance of a workforce, are easiest to change and provide the greatest potential payoff for innovation.
Module #9: Capstone Event & Graduation
In the final module of the program, participants will be invited to share what they have learned through the completion of their Workforce Profiles and, building on the eight previous modules, to articulate an overarching perspective of how best to develop, lead and manage a well-performing workforce. The program finishes with a celebratory event at which, accompanied by their sponsors, they will have the opportunity to take stock of the progress they have made and to reflect on what it means for them in the context of their own organizations.
