Ministry Of Citizens’ Services

Challenges with Millennial Recruitment

Question:

Discuss about the Hr Practices In Bc Ministry Of Citizens’ Services.

The Ministry of Citizens’ Services offers an extensive range of services to the British Columbians across the province, both in person as well as online. The Ministry caters around workforce planning, succession management, learning and development, and further provides human resources knowledge and expertise to clients within the Ministry. As per Karandeep Manak, the Strategic Workforce Planner, majority of the transactional human resources services such as compensation and benefits are executed within the BC Service agency, which is referred as the Government HR domain (Lindquist, Vincent & Wanna, 2013). The BC Ministry’s Public Services formerly known as Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services executes a dynamic role in the government sector to support corporate, general public, government ministries along with the wide range of public sector organizations. The Ministry further accomplishes the changing desires of its public sector stakeholders in a cost effective, approachable and accessible manner. Majority of the services of the Ministry lies with the Ministry partners by providing cyber security and workstations (Eagles et al., 2013). However, few of their services involve development of corporate strategies, legislation, operations, training and development and compliance. Comprising a workforce of seventeen hundred people, the Ministry is spread through the British Council catering mainly at Victoria, comprises of seven varied divisions namely corporate information, corporate service division, office of chief information and more. The Ministry provides ample of facilities to retain the employee base and its efficiency and is regarded as one of the largest organizations of British Council and one of Canadians’ top and greenest employers (Charter, 2017). However, the Strategic Workforce Planner of BC Ministry of Public Services Agency stated that the lucrative and benefits of this agency is not prominent amongst many in comparison to the other employment sectors. Its services are unknown to a large portion of the millennial.

In recent times, the generation born between years 1980 to 1995 known as the millennials have comprised the majority section of the Canadian labour force. However, they are finding this workforce extensively complex as well risk taking in order to sustain in the public service domain. Certain researches have revealed that the federal public sector has been experiencing increasing rates of disputes and challenges in the context of millennial recruitment that at present comprises of almost forty percent of the largest generational contribution of Canadians workforce (Ng & Gossett, 2013). On the contrary, only one-fourth of BC Ministry of Public Service is constituted by the millennials and the rest is still predominant by workforce aging from forty to sixty years.  The Ministry must implement effective tools to attract a strong assemblage of millennials by incorporating meaningful work, lateral mobility, work life balance facilities and rewards which the millennials are looking for (Melnychuk, 2013). The hiring manager or HR management team of the Ministry must bring the appropriate amalgamation of new millennial employees who can merge absolutely with the existing ones and further influence and be the reason for effective productivity of the Public service sector. The role of advanced social media platform and mobile technology play a vital role in the lives of millennials (Broughton et al., 2013). The hiring manager concentrates on social networking trends to comprehend the candidate landscape and exclusively communicate with the candidates. HR professionals must focus on social media outlets and SEO to explore the available vacancies (Chan-Olmsted,  Rim & Zerba, 2013). Technology is one tool, which drives the major section of the millennials. The millennials being raised up computer technology and hence intensely embedded with social media. Through services such as LinkedIn, the majority of millennial skills are being bombarded with several new job offers thus encouraging Millennials to shift to innovative employment offers and better remuneration.

Strategies for Successful Millennial Recruitment

Talent development can be considered as another approach to improve the Ministry’s millennial talent hiring. It must be noted that around seventy percent of millennials being dissatisfied with the organization’s leadership techniques leave the organization (Orpwood, Schmidt & Hu, 2013). Thus, effective training and induction is regarded as a significant tool to retain millennial that must be implemented by the HR department of the Ministry. Unlike the baby boomers, millennials with their intense connectivity with mobile technology believes in approaches related to it. Thus, micro learning can be a way to provide satisfaction to the learning expectations as well as preferences of the millennials (Espinoza & Ukleja, 2016). This type of learning involves small learning units with minimum time duration which can be executed in a convenient and reachable manner. Learning and development is considered as a significant perk by the youth in order to evaluate prospective employers.

The third way in which the rate of millennial hiring can be improved by the BC Ministry is rewards and recognition. The millennials are more inclined towards rewards and financial rewards than job security.  Millennials devalue employers who fail to encourage and recognize appropriate talent and skill (Pease et al., 2014). They seek for feedback and acknowledgement for the work they perform. The HR professionals of Ministry must work on implementing rewards and acknowledging young recruits to retain their engagement and satisfaction towards the public service sector. One of the effective methods to ascertain the organization’s growth is to truly motivate and identify specific actions and attitudes of the millennial workforce. Deloitte, one of the big fours, has successfully implemented a comprehensive on boarding programme to encourage the work of their millennial recruits who comprises almost half of the client facing labour force (Ozcelik, 2015). With the majority of millennials winning over today’s private sector, Ministry must begin to implement the aforementioned methods to enhance the millennial personnel in public services.

BC Ministry of Citizen’s Services typically uses its job seekers page of their website to follow their recruitment procedures. It consists of a very structured selection process and is rigorously maintained for all roles and divisions across the ministry. Primarily the hiring manager conducts this procedure. There are six key phases included in the employment procedure which ranges from looking for the posting the criteria until candidate selection.

Selection of Recruitment Options- The hiring manager must take in account a wider array of choices for effective staffing productivity and flexibility as well as address the major concerns related to employee development, succession strategies and talent shortcomings.

Hiring Process of Ministry Public Services

Defining Selection Criteria: The hiring executive must concentrate on defining the selection criteria based on the current requirements of the job. Properly structured requirements will permit candidates to determine whether their expertise would match the desired requirements ("Steps in the Hiring Process - Province of British Columbia", 2018). The primary concern of the hiring manager must be to reconsider the minimum educational qualification, skills, competencies, experience of the applicants along with the preferences required for the position.

Job Posting: The hiring manager selects the most appropriate selection requirements from the hiring request form.

Recruitment Documentation: Documentation and maintain credentials of the whole recruitment process and further sustain a complete file for every hiring action is required by the Hiring and Deployment as well as government records management policy.  The hiring manager retains an appropriate record based on the decision for which public service workers can be taken into account.

Evaluation and Selection: The recruitment decisions are based on the principles of merit and experience in order to ascertain the unbiased and unprejudiced aspect of the Ministry ("Steps in the Hiring Process - Province of British Columbia", 2018).. Several screening and evaluation tools are implemented to select the appropriate applicant for the required position. Several managers prefer ton conduct written assignment which consists of a pass or fail threshold prior to the personal interview for the selected ones. However, past experiences are also considered in this phase of hiring.

Extension of Offer: The applicants selected via the Recruitment Management System, are provided with the offer letter. However, offering as well as providing necessary suggestions and feedback to the unsuccessful candidates is one of the vital aspects of the Ministry’s hiring process. The applicants are set Consent for Disclosure of Criminal Record Information for security screening process ("Steps in the Hiring Process - Province of British Columbia", 2018). Under the Public Service Act, the hiring manager must notify all the unsuccessful applicants of the decision and further provide feedback with thorough explanations of not being offered.

According to Strategic Workforce Planner, Karandeep Manak, one of the key strengths in the selection process of Ministry lies within its immense commitment in the recruitment and development of expertise, extremely talented and efficient public service domain which performs as a representative of the diversity of the citizens of British Columbia. It encourages employment justice as well as diversity in the administrative centre and further acknowledges applicants belonging to diverse groups which embrace women, visible marginal sections, indigenous communities as well as people belonging from diverse sexual orientation and other who can be a part of the BC Public Service Agency ("Steps in the Hiring Process - Province of British Columbia", 2018. The ministry believes in recognizing innovative and unique approaches to support a diversified, considerate and collaborative work ambience. The BC Public Service is dedicated to the principles of diversity, inclusion and value. Thus, it participates in employing labour who represent the population the Ministry caters in, eradicate obstacles which causes prevention to equitable employment, encouraging honourable work environment where each employee is aware of the performance of the others.

Diversity and Inclusion at BC Ministry of Citizen’s Services

The second strength of the selection procedure lies on the unique work environment strategy of the Ministry. The Ministry acknowledges culture, which promotes work-life balance. This results the Ministry to be rewarded with immense efficient, loyal and committed employee base. The employees however need to ascertain the Ministry regarding the productivity of their services ("Steps in the Hiring Process - Province of British Columbia", 2018). The Ministry encourages its employees to work for a scheduled period and further spend time with respective families. This has led to the growth and increase productivity, less stressed labour force, greater level of employee satisfaction and loyalty. The Ministry also encourages ‘Mobile working’, which encourages employees to work from their own comfort zones or from their places.

The Ministry, in recent times has introduced a new three year Diversity and Inclusion Action Strategy that can be considered as the third strength of its selection process, which assists in recruitment, growth and retaining a diversified influx of skills and talent that further provides an idea of citizens the Ministry serves. The Ministry introduces has introduced certain Public Service Agency Campaigns and Plans which facilitates to the capacity development and enhances the competitiveness and supervising outcomes ("Multiculturalism & Anti-Racism - Province of British Columbia", 2018). Some of the programmes and strategies implemented by the Ministry are as follows

Aboriginal Youth Internship- It refers to the work knowledge program that establishes the Aboriginal youth’s professional as well as leadership expertise.

Early Intervention and Return to Work Program- This program enables executives and the workers to be in contact with occupational health nurses as well as early intervention and return to perform in order to support an employee to continue working or to resume at the earliest ("Multiculturalism & Anti-Racism - Province of British Columbia", 2018).

Occupational Health and Safety Program- This program is considered as an essential bylaw workforce program that envelops the actions required for illness and damage prevention at the workplace.

Provincial Employees Community Services Fund (PECSF)-  Program introduced to concentrate on the payroll deduction process is to aid charitable giving executed by the Ministry.

One of the key criteria, which the Ministry emphasizes on, is core knowledge base that is experienced employee base. Employees who have been working in a particular domain for a relevant period are immensely valued in the recruitment procedure of the Ministry. It believes in the strong knowledge base that further results in increased productivity with minimal errors. The Ministry, being an organization that provides services to the public, has great reliance on employees who understand and comprehend the work culture and improve the morale and principles of the company. Another factor that is the retention strategy further influences the slow recruitment process of the Ministry largely (Noon, Blyton & Morrell, 2013). The hiring management believes that long-term employees are loyal towards the organization and can easily be motivated through competitive health insurance as well as retirement schemes, which is indeed a unique feature of the Ministry. However, the HR department of the public services must focus on hiring new and ambitious talent rather than solely concentrating on previous experience (Durocher, Bujaki & Brouard, 2016). Millennials characterize the hunger for learning new skills, innovation and never dithers to face any sort of risks or challenges. They Majority of the millennials are engaged in professional networking sites and can easily comprehend any new technology. As per records, four out of five millennials are aware of advanced technologies which would be a productive contribution to the public service sector.

Lack of Human Capital Tools Usage can be regarded as another factor which is waning the employment process of the Ministry. The Canadian government recently is experiencing a number of risks and challenges to execute the most of the human capital tools and techniques. The Ministry must work on employing skilled recruits with acquired expertise of implementing these tools effectively and perform better work resulting in growth of the public sector. The public sector because of its lack of collaboration and coherence is lagging behind in proper operation of these tools. However, with the use of Human Capital Management software the Ministry might recover the trailing recruitment procedure (Australian Public Service Commission, 2013). This strategy will not only select the ideal candidate for the required position and ability to form job descriptions with proper consultation from its stakeholders.

Evaluation of applicant forms can be referred as the third limitation of the hiring process of the Ministry. The HR department of public services agency usually carries out screening of applications that has no association with the hire as well as no specific expertise related to the vacant position (DiMaggio, Nag & Blei, 2013). The responsibility yet lies on the hiring department to evaluate the applications often results in losing many skilled or talented recruits who might have been suitable for the desired role. The Ministry can focus on social applicant screening which is regarded as one of the most essential applicant screening technique that minimizes the probabilities of forged applicants. However, social networking screening might not always work efficiently for hiring the right candidate (Gautier, 2015). In order to decrease any further fraudulent chances the hiring executives of the Ministry can rely on one-way video call interview that constricts the talent pool, separates the suitable candidates from thousands of candidatures and further enhances the chances of convenient for both the parties.

References

Australian Public Service Commission. (2013). Human Capital Matters 10.

Broughton, A., Foley, B., Ledermaier, S., & Cox, A. (2013). The use of social media in the recruitment process. Institute for Employment Studies, 3(13), 1-42.

Chan-Olmsted, S., Rim, H., & Zerba, A. (2013). Mobile news adoption among young adults: Examining the roles of perceptions, news consumption, and media usage. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90(1), 126-147.

Charter, M. (Ed.). (2017). Greener marketing: A responsible approach to business. Routledge.

DiMaggio, P., Nag, M., & Blei, D. (2013). Exploiting affinities between topic modeling and the sociological perspective on culture: Application to newspaper coverage of US government arts funding. Poetics, 41(6), 570-606.

Durocher, S., Bujaki, M., & Brouard, F. (2016). Attracting Millennials: Legitimacy management and bottom-up socialization processes within accounting firms. Critical perspectives on Accounting, 39, 1-24.

Eagles, P. F., Romagosa, F., Buteau-Duitschaever, W. C., Havitz, M., Glover, T. D., & McCutcheon, B. (2013). Good governance in protected areas: An evaluation of stakeholders’ perceptions in British Columbia and Ontario Provincial Parks. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(1), 60-79.

Espinoza, C., & Ukleja, M. (2016). Managing the Millennials: Discover the core competencies for managing today's workforce. John Wiley & Sons.

Gautier, C. (2015). The psychology of work: Insights into successful working practices. Kogan Page Publishers.

Lindquist, E. A., Vincent, S., & Wanna, J. (2013). Putting citizens first: Engagement in policy and service delivery for the 21st century. ANU Press.

Melnychuk, N. (2013). Retaining the millennial generation within the Canadian public sector.

Multiculturalism & Anti-Racism - Province of British Columbia. (2018). Www2.gov.bc.ca. Retrieved 11 March 2018, from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/multiculturalism-anti-racism

Ng, E. S., & Gossett, C. W. (2013). Career choice in Canadian public service: An exploration of fit with the millennial generation. Public Personnel Management, 42(3), 337-358.

Noon, M., Blyton, P., & Morrell, K. (2013). The realities of work: Experiencing work and employment in contemporary society. Palgrave Macmillan.

Orpwood, G. W., Schmidt, B. A., & Hu, J. (2013). Competing in the 21st century skills race. Canadian Council of Chief Executives= Conseil canadien des chefs d'entreprise.

Ozcelik, G. (2015). Engagement and retention of the millennial generation in the workplace through internal branding. International Journal of Business and Management, 10(3), 99.

Pease, G., Beresford, B., Beresford, B., & Walker, L. (2014). Developing human capital: Using analytics to plan and optimize your learning and development investments. John Wiley & Sons.

Steps in the Hiring Process - Province of British Columbia. (2018). Www2.gov.bc.ca. Retrieved 11 March 2018, from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/careers-myhr/hiring-managers/process