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CONTEXT

  • The below themes are the front-of-mind topics for the Band 3-5 leaders I interviewed in an org design & talent-acquisition context (hire and/or procure).

  • Because I’ve rapidly and temporarily onboarded into this space, I may touch on things we’re already doing or are aware of. In those cases, I hope this adds useful evidence to our efforts - please forgive my incomplete understanding of the details.

    • I also hope this helps socialize topics across the Talent & Marketplace teams.

    • For what it’s worth, I leaned into all this detail because I believe in the DTC branch humans and the work we do ❤️‍🔥

  • It may feel frustrating to live in the problem-space rather than jumping to solutions, thanks for sitting in it with me. For most of these topics, we need more discussion and I need the experts (staff and leaders) in the room informing the conversation.

    • Next steps: share themes w/ Leadership (May 22), do some rapid prioritization and identify which themes to explore further, together, toward experiments and pilots.

    • This page is a shared-space to identify themes & add staff insights, current experiments/partner engagements. Working in the open - in one place.

  • I appreciate this is a lot of detail - some folks will need it, esp. as I transition into other work. I will also be delivering a condensed deck, or equivalent - tbd / watch this space.

THE OG QUESTION: do folks need/want a connected service?

Big picture sentiments, and how folks see our role in the system:

“In the big picture transformation context I would like to see some of the structural issues I see with agile and specifically in the kind of hiring, procurement, job description space solved. I'm working on my little corner of the government trying to do what I can to put my best foot forward under the policy and legislative constraints that are around me. One of the reasons I took this meeting is because I'm hoping that from your vantage point, possibly those policy and legislative constraints can be changed.” 🔥

“I don't know if the goal should be so much like hire more digital capacity. It's more like how do we harness what we have more effectively and more efficiently? Because eventually we just have a whole bunch of chickens running around, but like, nobody kind of gathering them or pointing them in a direction.”

  • what happens if we scale misaligned, relatively unsupported digital practices that are new and unfamiliar to many BCPS folk?

What I see:

Our place in the hiring and procurement ecosystem

  • A bustling ecosystem of hiring and procurement supports that folks access today - with mixed experiences and historical baggage in the big picture system (a strategic opportunity - addressing pain points, past fails, fears and differentiating ourselves)

    • Folks go directly to their ministry contacts and many products/services (PSA, PSB…) in addition to DTC supports

      • When they interact with ministry contacts and other service providers, the functions are separate - a more connected service would interrupt mental models, could be perceived as innovative and valuable if the service orients around real problems, and our capacity/eligibility criteria meets their needs

  • The “Digital Talent” roles we support in hiring & procurement services are just a slice of their broader org design strategies

    • e.g. one participant, a Leader transforming their org, isn’t managing an agile team or DT job profiles - they’re bringing in functions like change management to create the conditions for agility and service/product success, and they consider those change management roles part of the digital work

  • My point: we won’t be able to address all hiring and procurement needs, but when folks do come to us, we can make it memorably seamless while responding to their biggest blockers and desired outcomes to nudge transformation/modernization forward

Our audiences and scope

  • The details and implementation decisions toward a connected service will matter, to make sure our service feels welcoming and relevant to all:

    • We confirmed many BCPS folks hire AND procure talent, but not always - hire/procure strategies vary due to org, product context

    • Ensuring we keep the vendor community in the marketplace front of mind in decisions

    • Does our service front-door want to address digital talent attraction and resources to support the candidate lifecycle? Or is that PSA territory

    • How about opportunities to support the contractor lifecycle, e.g. ensuring they’re reasonably supported and feel part of the ‘team’?

  • See Service Design Recipe - Step 1 (Miro)

Our service opportunities

  • I see opportunities for us to:

    • continue to provide trusted, expert guidance and bureaucracy-hacking supports to optimize talent capacity-building strategies (org design) inclusive of hiring and procurement options

    • continue to provide hands-on support and SME expertise to:

      • help acquire talent that are well-suited for the work - quickly

      • connect folks with vendors who are aligned with our ways of working and desired outcomes

    • support the enablement of strong digital practices, e.g. formalizing the foundations (e.g. job profiles) for guilds/chapters

    • explore talent development opportunities with the many partners developing pilots and programs, and consider change management/ re-skilling supports to bring the broad BCPS workforce along with us and ensure healthy collaboration between ‘digital' and ‘business’ folk toward digitally literate and performant program areas

    • and maybe disrupt a systemic barrier or two (classification, job profiles, agility x PSA/BCGEU, modernizing slow & admin-heavy processes…) toward good outcomes, while retaining guardrails that protect equity, diversity, inclusion and healthy, safe workplaces

      • I’m curious how much storytelling we can do about the Alexandria work (e.g. a visible roadmap) to let folks know what we’re working on already. People know this work is hard, small signals about where our effort and attention is going could build a lot of trust, but I’m mindful of sensitivities and risk here.

Operational considerations re: sustainable pace, healthy roles, happy humans

  • While there are connection-opportunities, there are also operational considerations to explore (depends on how we move forward). I’m looking at it as ‘tracks’ or ‘layers’ of work:

    • foundational layer: do we have a common knowledge base, alignment on the theory and perspectives that guide our work?

      • e.g. what guides our org design advice? how do we onboard new employees? are these foundations aligned with advice MAS, DIO, etc. provide?

    • maintenance layer: sustaining and continually improving the current-state services and products, with tight capacity, e.g. supporting ongoing/upcoming competitions and procurements

    • collaboration layer: staff actively informing any change, participating in co-design and pilots, could involve storming on common talent-procurement journey touchpoints e.g. “evaluation”

    • change layer: participating, processing and integrating all of the Digital Office change - scaled scrum, pulse checks, learning opportunities, new ways of working (e.g. OKRs)…

    • strategic/systemic layer: taking a longer view, bigger picture, poking into systemic challenges and opportunities

I always have more questions

  • My questions for you - in context of the themes below:

    • who do we want to be in the ecosystem? how do we want to be known/spoken about?

    • what are our strengths and differentiators?

    • what are the boundaries and limits of our service? (non-negotiables for political, feasibility, etc. reasons)

    • how much demand can we support in the near-term?


RESEARCH THEMES

Passionate leaders, often playing whack-a-mole 😄

TL;DR: Folks are thinking strategically toward sustainable organizations/products and good outcomes for BCPS and the Province, with surprises and systemic ‘moles’ popping up along the journey

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

Existing research / staff insights

Experiments & Collaborations

Digital delivery outcomes = transformation buy-in, sustainment

TL;DR: Talent power the outcomes

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

Existing research / staff insights

Experiments & Collaborations

Matching humans to opportunities, aka “fit”

TL;DR: Mindset, personality, knowledge/skill/ability

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

Existing research / staff insights

Experiments & Collaborations

Org design strategies, service-thinking and digitally literate program areas

TL;DR: Some folks are moving toward org design strategies where digital folk collaborate directly with business folk. There is still a time and a place for well defined agile teams… “it depends”. The system is learning that program areas that aren’t ready for an agile team, don’t know how to work with them, or don’t have the capacity to support the additional workload introduced by design processes, SME requests, engaging in demos, and making decisions can block digital delivery. Deadlines get missed, trust gets broken in the promises of modernization.

I’m also seeing some risky ideation - folks are trying to find clever workarounds to build more flexibility into their org, e.g. resource pools where they move folks around to different products as needed, or positioning Designers to work across the research, service, content and ux design job profiles as needed.
Switching-hats: I’ve lived through this experimentation in NRM as a practitioner, have a POV on this as a former Design Manager (private sector) and NRIDS Guild Lead, and also have data from the Design community about what this can feel like (employee experience) and how it can impact outcomes. I wonder if we should proactively offer some advice around this.

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

Existing research / staff insights

Experiments & Collaborations

Hire/procure strategies & systemic opportunities

TL;DR: We’re in a hiring-forward moment in time (context & market conditions are favourable), with procurement as a high-value strategy. Decisions are strategic and thoughtful, but also impacted by known systemic opportunities, e.g. classification and funding.

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

Existing research / staff insights

Experiments & Collaborations

Growth & development, re-skilling

TL;DR: Develpment intersects with org sustainability, retention, digital delivery outcomes, and is front of mind for Leaders, with opportunities for DTC Branch to lean in: on the ground, and in a systemic-change context.

3 components in this section: agility and flexibility in context of PSA/BCGEU (hard/systemic), up/re-skilling current staff and managing change, programs to attract & develop jr. talent (Sam is running discovery now).

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

  • “So you know it, it's really recognizing that the world is not this "You're a cog in the machine and you're just doing this fixed job" concept. We need to get away from that to to really build the organization, and it's gonna change dynamically as people come and go and people grow and develop”

    • folks are leaning into agility, future-thinking, and realizing we need to operate differently to create sustainable conditions for digital talent to achieve outcomes & impact

    • folks are grappling with the tension between flexible org design models and encouraging staff to lean into new knowledge/skill/ability, within the PSA/BCGEU context — service opportunities: lean interim advice, explore systemic context?

  • “I think it's tough for some people… I actually I'm pretty sure some people on the home team don't really see themselves in the modernized space”

    • staff perceptions that vendors historically get the “interesting, shiny & new” work and don’t have “skin in the game” re: long term implications of decision making and outcomes - this has impacted employees and organizations - engagement, turnover, etc.

    • folks are grappling with how to support valued staff in seeing their place in the modernization context - there can be fear, angst, turnover

      • with observations that agility isn’t for everyone, some folks thrive in uncertainty, others need more structure (valid - ties into inclusion and accessibility, this also could have more to do with implementation than agility itself - orgs early on the learning curve can be overly rigid/dogmatic about the practices, not always investing in the human side of change)

      • common example: Business Analysts re-skilling into Scrum Master, Product Owner, sometimes Service Design roles

        • to support re-skilling today, folks encourage attending meetings (identify interest, gain context), shadowing, low risk opportunities to gain experience, and training/education — service opportunity

  • “I don't have the resources, and the people I work with are [digital practitioners] and they can tell me what topics they want covered, but they can't tell me how to do it, so I have reached out to the federal government and I have their curriculum writers assisting me with developing a program. I actually have Camosun College and Royal Roads that have offered services as well. But yeah, that that whole career ramping and the formalization of it is, is what I'm looking at doing now.”

    • The same dynamic is playing out in the Design community, folks are meeting with Emily Carr, UK Gov folk, etc. to try and figure out ways to grow and develop staff

    • folks are trying to build their own programs, partnering with external institutions, aren’t always aware of others storming on similar initiatives - would it be worthwhile to get all those humans in one room? share, prototype, support each other… domains are different, foundations similar?

  • Growth-minded is a top quality folks seem to be looking for - intersects with “fit”

    • curiosity, openness and willingness to learn kept popping up across topics & conversations - sometimes as a pain point, or a perception that Jr. staff are more open to growth

    • Hypothesis to test: I’m curious if there is a change management layer missing in the transformation work, broadly, where the transformation is uncertain and stressful for some employees (depends on how it’s introduced & rolled out over time), and we maybe aren’t appreciating what a jarring change it can be for some BCPS folk, incl. the contradictions and workplace traumas: some folks have been discouraged or punished for stepping outside their job profile (and developed responses/strategies accordingly), now they’re being encouraged to be more flexible - we can’t blow past that /soapbox

  • Connected-service thinking: how might we align/integrate our talent-development efforts with the new Performance Development Platform (PDP) for a sense of cohesion

    • this could be as simple as lean references to PDP in our advice, the new system was mentioned a few times in the context of helping staff grow and develop

What we know of & can learn from today:

  • MoTI TELP

  • NRIDS Jr. Full Stack Developer path

  • CITZ Cybersecurity & Digital Trust Co-op program

  • Design community efforts - ENV, GDX, DO/Lab, CITZ IMB

  • CITZ - Service BC and Cybersecurity teams exploring development programs

    • feels like a safe bet that more program areas are grappling with the development topic - I see a good investment

  • Vendors are indicating some friction and tradeoffs with mentorship built into contracts

    • BCPS staff can be defensive/resistant - can impact the transformation work, team dynamics, create distractions (change/people management gap?)

    • Vendor staff may not want to or be skilled in ‘teaching’

    • the act of being a “player” and “coach” at same time can be challenging and may be impacting outcomes - the transformation work on it’s own is often quite complex

    • More research/perspectives needed

Experiments & collaborations:

  • Sam recently collaborated w/ MoTI - TELP: what did you learn? see? think?

    • development programs as an EDI strategy - creating equitable access to opportunity

  • Sam collaborating with CITZ - Service BC this week

Maturing & supporting digital practices, guilds/chapters

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

  • “I think that we've moved in the right direction, but much like our legacy systems, I think we suffer from legacy practices in the HR policy space and and I would say that we're getting better - I would put it as 25 to 30% better able to deliver on digital services than five years ago. So we're moving into the right direction, but it's kind of like with moves to the cloud, you have all this legacy crap sitting there and you know, you have to deal with it. You're trying to move everything you can over this way, but it is a journey like it does take that that time, and we often don't have the resources, money, people and stuff to really make that switch in one go.”

Existing research / staff insights

Experiments & Collaborations

Hiring ecosystem

TL;DR: Insights into where folks go for hiring support, and what they experience/care about. Competitive intelligence

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

Existing research / staff insights

Experiments & Collaborations

Procurement ecosystem

TL;DR: Insights into where folks go for procurement support, and what they experience/care about. Competitive intelligence

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

Existing research / staff insights

Experiments & Collaborations

Service expectations and opportunities

TL;DR: Generally I was listening for what does and doesn’t work for folks when interacting with services across the ecosystem - strategic intelligence for us to consider!

Connected-Service interviews (Tess)

Existing research / staff insights

Experiments & Collaborations

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