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American Society for Public Administration - Vol. 28 No. 5 - July 2005 |
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ASPA TIMES
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IPAC President Addresses SWPA at ASPA National Conference
Jocelyn Souliere Speaks on Issues Facing Working Women The following address was given at the annual Section for Women in Public Administration (SWPA) Breakfast, during ASPA's 65th National Conference in Milwaukee, WI, this past April by Jocelyn M. Souliere, president of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC). Souliere is currently the director of staffing and classification services, Saskatchewan Public Service Commission. "Workplaces that Work" Jocelyn Souliere
I'm going to talk about three things this morning and I hope that when I'm done I'll have drawn some linkages between these three topics.
First of all, I'm going to touch briefly on the issues facing working women in Canada, primarily because that's the topic I was asked to address. Then, since we are going to identify issues and barriers, I'd like to talk a bit about the context in which we are working today and what we might do to address these issues in our workplaces. And finally, I want to tell you a bit about the kind of workplace that I think will work for everybody--based on some very interesting research we've been doing on "my day job" at the Saskatchewan Public Service Commission.
I suspect the issues that face working women in Canada are very similar to the issues facing working women in the United States--income and earnings, the wage gap, childcare, harassment in the workplace, adequate housing for low income parents (who are mostly women), employment and training needs, women's care giving responsibilities for children and the elderly, balancing work and family, the glass ceiling, moving to the boardroom, attaining real 'power' and influence, and working in a man's word under our terms.
Put this together with the economic context in Canada, which once again I imagine is similar to that in the United States--Canadian employers are facing skills shortages, especially in the skilled trades. Baby boomers are starting to retire in large numbers, business competition is high within Canada and beyond it's borders. New occupations requiring new skills keep emerging. Traditional labor pools will not meet current and projected skills shortages.
I want you to know that I gathered material for this part of my discussion from a study called "Workplaces that Work for Women: Creating a Workplace Culture that Attracts, Retains and Promotes Women" by Denise McLean, at the Centre for Excellence for Women's Advancement, The Conference Board of Canada and that this study is available online.
Although women make up 46 percent of Canada's labour force they are still under-represented in many occupations and sectors facing current or future shortages. Women are still choosing--or are channeled into--what we think of as traditional "women's work." In 2001, in Canada, 70 percent of all women in the work force were found in teaching, nursing and related health occupations, clerical or other administrative positions or sales and service occupations. Only seven percent of the workforce in transportation, trades and construction work is female and only about one in five professionals in natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.
So, it makes sense to recruit and retain women in these occupations--and here I know I am preaching to the converted! People choose careers based on a number of factors, including early socialization, skills and aptitudes, how the media portrays certain work and industries; role models and personal experience in the workplace. We still don't tend to encourage our daughters (or nieces or granddaughters) into mathematics, science or technology professions. And, it appears that we don't encourage either our daughters or our sons to take up skilled trades.
The study to which I referred suggests "Supply and demand strategies must be implemented in tandem to increase the number of female workers available to employers and to encourage women to remain in these industries." Basically, we need to find out where the jobs are, encourage women to fill them, train them to do so and promote social acceptance of that choice.
Even if we are successful in creating a supply of women with the required skills, we need to create workplaces that work for women--workplaces that begin to address and overcome the barriers we identified right at the beginning of this talk. Workplace culture is both obvious and implied. It includes beliefs, attitudes, norms and customs ("how things are done around here").
A workplace culture that is inclusive of women is characterized by:
I would contend that workplaces that work for women also work for men. Everyone will benefit from workplaces that are inclusive and that practice good people management and physical safety. I want to tell you a little bit more about a study we did in Saskatchewan--a Midwestern Canadian province with a population of under one million--that leads me to believe that what women want in an employer is what everyone wants in an employer.
Saskatchewan's executive government, like every other public service and perhaps all industry sectors, are facing shrinking labor markets that will be characterized by competition for talent amongst and between the various players in the private and public sectors. To tackle this problem and position ourselves to compete effectively for talent, the Public Service Commission--executive government's human resources agency--decided to have a look at the attributes of a preferred employer as the first step to becoming a preferred employer. We needed to determine what people are looking for in an employer and whether or not we do, or could, exhibit those qualities.
In a little over eight weeks, with about $30,000, we undertook to review any and all of the literature we could find on the topic. In the end, we were able to find 32 Canadian studies that had looked at what employees and potential employees wanted from their workplace. Sixteen of these studies included public sector data, and eight of these studies actually ranked the preferred attributes. These look at the pool of potential employees in two pretty broad segments--those with higher educations destined for management and professional positions and everybody else. You can imagine that we will need to do further research on better defined segments, like youth, aboriginal peoples, visible minority groups, etc.
By happy coincidence, the Saskatchewan Public Service had already decided to conduct an employee satisfaction survey that explored, among other things, those attributes or values that had attracted or kept our own employees in the Saskatchewan public service, so we would have another set of data, from primary research.
This turned out to be even more important than we knew--senior executives across government had no difficulty accepting that other populations might want a particular attribute in an employer, but they were concerned that "Saskatchewan people are different." The data from the employee survey turned out to be significantly congruent with our findings from other jurisdictions and we were able to confidently conclude that the attributes of a preferred employer were just as valid in our setting as they were nationally.
So, what attributes do have an impact on recruitment and retention--"come and stay"--decisions? I'm presenting them here in ranked order from our findings. While I'm absolutely convinced this is the right basket of attributes, I'm less concerned about the order and I believe that might vary considerably for individuals. The attributes are:
These preferred attributes sound very much to me like the workplace culture women are looking for--respect, support, work/life balance and opportunities for advancement. I feel comfortable in concluding that workplaces that work for women will work for everyone.
Obviously, the next steps, which we have already begun, include:
We have still got a way to go to ensure we create workplaces that work for everyone--a work environment that encourages people to come and to stay. But, at least we know now what it is we are trying to create--and we are working on a blueprint to achieve this. It won't be easy and won't be quick, but I believe, just like the farmer in the Field of Dreams, "if you build it, they will come."
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