By Ian J. Cook

“A good HR team quietly makes us all look good” – John Doyle, Auditor General of B.C.

Auditing government is not an easy job. The financial processes are complex and the organizational structures behind them are fluid. In times when the public purse is shrinking, organizations need to ensure that the money is well and wisely spent. Doing this well also requires that the organization behind the audit activities and reports is itself highly credible and an example of competent management.

When John Doyle became the Auditor General of B.C., he knew that sustaining and enhancing the Office would require a contribution from all members of his leadership team, including HR. Over the past three years, the HR group has made a substantial contribution in ensuring the effectiveness and credibility of the Office of the Auditor General of B.C. (OAG). To some, the actions they have taken and the results they have achieved might seem to be at odds. However, the results and details of how HR has supported the effectiveness of the organization are worth exploring.

The Best People in the Right Roles at the Right Time

One of the first organizational targets set by the Auditor General was to reduce the time it took to complete an audit project. Linking this back to HR, Marc Lefebvre, executive director, HR and administration and his team, (HR advisor Penny Limer, HR analyst Greg Clabrough, HR assistant Maria Timms and manager, training and development Christopher Jones), identified that their first goal was to make sure that the organization had the best possible people, in the right roles at the right time. Given the nature of auditing work, staff transitions or vacancies can significantly impact the quality and timeliness of the final product.

Rather than rushing into a recruiting campaign, Lefebvre’s first instinct was to understand trends of the organization and see what insight could be gained from its historical turnover data. He worked with a finance colleague with an actuarial background and was able to build a workforce planning model which is able to predict the number and level of staff exits in any given month. The model was built utilizing spreadsheets and has proven to be over 95 per cent accurate.

At the team’s first job recruitment fair, just a handful of grads came past the booth to ask who they were. The team was determined to use modern tactics and their existing graduate intake to change this. Three years later, the team is satisfied with the results. At their latest job recruitment fair, they ran out of collateral materials and were the first port of call for many of the top graduates from the Organization’s preferred schools.

Taking Time to Learn and Tell the Story

So what happened? Lefebvre and his team went deep into understanding what was working for those graduates who stayed. They spent time learning what was most important to graduates and what they were offering that would meet the interests of the section of the talent market they wanted to talk to; then they used a modern approach to telling the story of their value proposition. Not only did they ask their existing graduate intake what was important, they gave those grads the time, inspiration and a camera to create a YouTube video to capture this information. To the new generation of employees, nothing speaks more authentically than a video made by their peers.

Lefebvre and his HR team focused on delivering excellence where it counted. The team discovered that post finance grads are generally looking to achieve an accounting designation as quickly as possible after graduating. They are looking for their employer to support them in this and often make the decision about where to work based on the organization’s offering and its track record. So the team at the OAG put their expertise in learning and technology to good use and developed a highly flexible, highly supportive and highly effective learning pathway to the CA designation.

The ability to attract and land higher quality recruits and the improved learning process were clearly demonstrated when a graduate from the Office of the Auditor General achieved a score in the top 50 out of over 1000 CA exam sitters across Canada.

Several other tactics have also been deployed by the HR team. For example they have taken advantage of the tough business environment and, by emphasizing the relative stability of a job in the public sector including the lifestyle available in Victoria, they have been able to attract and retain more experienced talent from the private sector who would previously not have considered this type of role.

The outcome of this strategic approach to talent supply is that the project risks related to vacancies and under-experienced talent, although impossible to remove, are being effectively mitigated and reduced to a minimum. This is evidenced by the change to the turnover experienced by the OAG which has reduced by 50 per cent in the last two years.

Revisiting Performance Management Processes

Not content with progress on the talent supply side, Lefebvre and his colleagues set about improving the way that performance was monitored and managed inside the organization. Their start point was the same as many organizations: a paper-based form that few people used effectively and HR spent most of its time tracking, whether or not the form had been completed.

This team identified that they needed an IT solution to make the distribution, completion and tracking of performance data quick and simple so that they could spend their time analyzing the outcomes and coach managers on how to manage and improve the performance of their people.

Lefebvre also knew that he needed senior level support to shift habits relating to performance management. While structuring and presenting this program, he was conscious to demonstrate the value of improved reporting, the time savings from effective IT and the opportunities to further enhance the overall productivity of the organization. Support was agreed to and the HR group went to work implementing the IT system and, more importantly, training their managers and employees on the fundamentals of good performance conversations. Much as they needed the IT system, this was not the focus of the project. The training was 20 per cent on how to use the IT and 80 per cent about how to set goals, provide feedback, solicit input from employees, deal with differing views of performance and included material on career development.

A Measure of HR Success

The HR team at the OAG is modest about what they have achieved and still believes the organization has a long way to go before they are satisfied with the level at which performance is discussed. Lefebvre and his team believe they need to maintain a firm and steady approach to ensure that the performance process achieves full acceptance and continues to support a change in culture. However, the organization has given the team a much higher grade than they give themselves. There is a common approach to measuring engagement within the public sector. Between 2010 and 2011, whilst the new performance processes were being rolled out for the first time, the organization’s engagement score increased by 10 points or 16 per cent.

There are many factors that go into shaping an engagement score so Lefebvre and team are reluctant to claim all the glory. However, three of the major areas that increased in the time frame are staffing practices, recognition and empowerment. The HR team are not surprised by the shift. They knew existing staff and new staff were high-performing individuals, who were ambitious and keen to make a difference. Through the performance process, these staff have started receiving personal recognition for what has been achieved and received guidance on how they might contribute more, and further their career. It is clear from the engagement results that this is what the staff group were looking for. It is still too early in this cycle of change to point to direct organizational impacts, however, the organization has continued to make progress in delivering a high quality outcome, on time and on budget.

The story of the HR team at the Office of the Auditor General of B.C. is a real success. However, it has not come through a single activity or a single program. What is most telling is the concerted effort of the whole team over a targeted series of initiatives, all of which aligned to the strategic objectives of the organization, has clearly been shown to make a difference. In the end success came not from doing one thing, but from identifying the right cluster of activities and delivering each of these in an integrated fashion.

A global citizen, Ian J. Cook, MA, MBA, CHRP (ijcook@bchrma.org) has chosen to make his home in Vancouver where he heads the growth of BC HRMA’s research and learning service.

PeopleTalk Summer 2012