Revamping public-sector job performance system may threaten job security

The Conservative government's plan to revamp its employee job-performance structure could threaten one of the cornerstones of working in the public service, job security.

The Globe and Mail reports Treasury Board President Tony Clement wants to strengthen the "performance management" system used to assess employees.

“I think it is perfectly reasonable for management to work with an underperformer, try to get him or her up to performance standards and, if that fails after successive tries, then I think that we have the right to say that perhaps this job isn’t for you,” Clement told the Globe.

"That goes to the management function that hasn’t been looked at recently, to be honest with you.”

You could interpret that to mean if an employee doesn't measure up under the system Clement's musing about, they could be fired.

Historically, public servants earned lower salaries than their private-sector counterparts but the trade-off was job security and the prospect of a pension at the end of a long career. Collective bargaining helped boost wages and benefits in the latter part of the last century, but job security remained strong, barring periodic workforce cutbacks.

The Financial Post reported last year that a survey by international research firm Universum found employment protection was a key factor in attracting Canadian business students to public-service careers. They rated the federal government ahead of Canada's big banks and companies like Bell Canada and Microsoft as an ideal employer, behind Apple and Google.

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Regular performance reviews help ambitious employees to rise in the public service but if you want, you can spend a lifetime working contentedly at the lower levels as long as you don't commit some major transgression. Mediocrity is tolerated, as it is in many corporations, as long as overall goals are met.

Clement doesn't seem content with that and told the Globe he thinks he has allies within the public service.

“Other people say, ‘Why am I working hard when this other person is not achieving the goals of the organization and there seems to be no accountability for that?’ " Clement said.

"These things have a degrading effect on performance in the public service, and that’s why it’s important for everybody, including other public servants, that we review these issues."

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He's not the first minister to tackle the issue. The Globe noted the Treasury Board has promised reforms several times, adding a 2011 survey of federal public servants found most thought the existing performance-assessment structure worked well.

Clement's thinking on job performance came as unwelcome news to Public Service Alliance of Canada, the largest federal union. It's reeling from two years of budget-driven job cuts and upset this week over the Conservatives' bid to take a larger role in contract negotiations at independent Crown corporations such as the CBC, VIA Rail and Canada Post.

“If the government is interested in performance management, it is going to have to make a serious investment in training its managers so that whatever system is developed is not used to further downsize or penalize employees in a discriminatory manner,” said union president Robyn Benson in a statement reported by the Globe. “Our members are proud of the work they do and would welcome feedback.”