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Research · Prelim themes

Who

Tess interviewed 12 participants across 5 ministries, IS30 and Band 3-5 roles - Team Leads, Directors, Sr. Directors, Executive Directors

• our sample skews ‘mature’ and intentionally transforming

To encourage candour and to dig into how they think and feel about org design and digital talent acquisition topics (potentially sensitive), including service experiences in the ecosystem (broader than DTC - to include “competitors”) I was overly cautious around privacy and consent. All conversations are de-identified, and context won’t be attributed to individuals who participated in our research without their express consent

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What & Why

The primary purpose of this research was to identify people’s motivations, behaviours, expectations, and needs when coming to our DTC services todayexperiences when accessing hiring & procurement services today (DTC and the broader ecosystem), and then to understand where they’re headed in an org design and digital talent acquisition context — inclusive of hiring and procuring.

• Knowing what’s important to them, what they’re trying to accomplish, and understanding the current state - what’s working (and why), and where the biggest pain points are (and the impact those pain points have), can tell us a lot about service opportunities for our branch moving forward!

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Our knowns/unknowns discovery activity plus 1:1 conversations with Product Owners and Design Researchers in the branch uncovered many questions and hypotheses:

• when, how, and why do people make the decisions they do when it comes to hiring and procurement, and what conditions and incentives might be influencing those decisions?

• what is the current level of knowledge and confidence re: agility, product development lifecycles, agile team formation, and digital professions? (unmet needs and service opportunities)

• what is the budget context of our clients seeking hiring and procurement supports as we explore cost-recovery models?

• how much demand for talent acquisition is there in the system? (in context of our capacity)

Teaser themes - with formal analysis happening now

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I don’t see overt risk in a connected service, but lots of detail to tease out in the conversations about how to move forward — per the full-stack service design model (Sarah Drummond) and 15 good service principles, how we structure ourselves can significantly influence the service experience, but this should be mostly invisible to our partners/clients anyway (we’ve confirmed they struggle to remember all the product and service names - within DTC and the broader OCIO ecosystem)

• I want to ensure we create space for understanding more experiences: candidates and contractors brought in to do the digital work, and the bigger picture vendor perspective

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Themes & takeaways

On connecting the services

• Immediate connected-service opportunities aren’t jumping out at me, aside from some small experiments:

  • some assumptions were busted in this research, e.g. folks are pretty clear about why they hire or procure, I didn’t uncover an advice-gap so much as systemic blockers where optimal org design strategies may not be feasible in the current state of our system

    • many folks were clear that they’d love DTC’s help with those systemic issues, and other talent development/enabling strategies to help current talent succeed with impact

  • more scope/time is needed to analyze the blueprints of the respective services (archived during the Mural to Miro transition, may need to be re-created and updated) to identify cross-training opportunities

    • I’m mindful of workload/cognitive load and the distinct policy and therefore operational differences between hiring and procurement, and would want to proceed with caution - this may prove to be a blocker to cross-training staff

  • hiring is where the most demand is today, but our Talent program area has seen significant change in leadership/staffing and has put several products/programs on pause, while also considering new strategic directions - it would be helpful to stabilize that service before proceeding (order of operations), and/or see if Marketplace service staff want to cross-train and hop in to help with the hiring demand in the short term

On what our research uncovered

• Interview participants are articulating what a high stakes time this is, and that folks in digital roles achieving outcomes is a primary strategy for gaining/sustaining transformation buy-in and investment from Sr. Leaders - strong hires/vendors that are a good ‘fit’ for the work that needs to get done are critical in this moment in time

  have collected some helpful stories around current state pain points for us to explore together

  • Before we go to far into “fit”… I am curious about the staff perspective on things not working out, when outcomes aren’t achieved.

  • Honouring how new these digital practices are: were the conditions in place to succeed? what’s the root cause?

  • Is it exclusively about hiring, or could some of the other themes that emerged around enabling digital practices (Chapters, development programs) play a role here?

• Folks are trending toward hiring-forward org strategies (“bring the brains back” TLee), but still greatly value vendors - hearing very intentional strategies and rationale to explore together re: when & why people hire vs. procure

  • bang for buck: vendors 2x the cost, with rates rising

  • core policy support for digital roles combined with high volume of quality job applications, at present

  • with business continuity/knowledge management top of mind - long term thinking, org health, sustainability

  • and a strategic preference toward hiring junior across the grid levels and growing folks, vs. exclusively brining folks in as 27s/30s

  • learned of 3 different development programs underway across CITZ, MoTI - TELP, NRIDS

  many more are looking into development strategies, but less formal

  and some vendor trust issues lingering from historic outsourcing policies, where vendors are perceived to be incentivized around contracts vs. outcomes

• Strong theme around moving away from rigid/standalone teams toward blended orgs: “service thinking” e.g. digital folk collaborating with policy and program area roles to deliver that policy

• Good insights around what’s driving behaviour - fiscal year x time to hire is a big one, lots of factors beyond their control can create urgency to acquire talent, from new/changing gov priorities to leadership changes to supporting new legislation to seasonal factors (e.g. parks, emergency response, wildfire)

• Lots of detail shared around hiring and procuring nuances that I’ll need your help making sense of next week onwards

• “and more”

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