Strategic Human Resources Plan 2009-2012: STRATEGY 1 Attract and Retain a Skilled Workforce

Where We Are

Approximately 82% of the Canadian Coast Guard’s workforce is a relatively stable pool of indeterminate employees, with the remaining 18% comprised of term and seasonal employees, casual workers and students. This balance reflects our increased human resource requirements during the summer season, the need to have ships with a full complement of professionally qualified officers and crew before a vessel can leave port, and our need to be nimble in response to unpredictable events and conditions. A national data collection exercise provided a snapshot of our organization as of April 1, 2008 and provided valuable input to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Health of Human Resources exercise. Results will allow CCG to monitor succession planning initiatives, long-term acting appointments and term appointments greater than two years.

A pilot Seagoing Personnel Career Development Initiative (Fleet Human Resources Development Program) was successfully implemented in the Marine Personnel Branch in Fleet Headquarters. The program formalized the practice of encouraging seagoing personnel to work on rotational assignments in shore-based management positions or on related projects. Having the opportunity to gain this experience will allow junior officers to progress to senior officer positions and it also provides Fleet management with a cadre of knowledgeable and experienced officers who can apply their expertise to key management and operational positions, or contribute to a wide range of related projects. The program allows both seagoing personnel and management to evaluate opportunities for an eventual career orientation and progression ashore. This program has been incorporated into routine Fleet practices both in Headquarters and in the regions.

Raising awareness of what CCG does is an ongoing priority. We work with industry and the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary to promote marine careers, reach out to educators, guidance counsellors and students through school visits and career events.

What We Will Do

Recruitment and Staffing

Demographic shifts will be the biggest single influence on our workforce over the next three years, as increasing numbers of experienced employees may retire or choose to pursue advancement opportunities. New recruits will be needed in every occupational group, in every region, at the CCG College and at National Headquarters in Ottawa.

Our focus moving forward will continue to be on targeted staffing measures to mitigate anticipated departures among the five occupational groups presenting the largest human resources risk – we project that 22.5% of our population in these groups will leave CCG by 2013.

We will also continue to encourage collective staffing and use of qualified pools to staff positions for seagoing and non-seagoing personnel. As collective staffing and qualified pools are more widely used, it will become more important for employees to assess their mobility options if they wish to take advantage of the range of available opportunities. Mobility will be encouraged as a means to help ensure efficient response to regional and seasonal demand.

Creation of the National Labour Force Renewal Directorate

Improved coordination of best practices will be the cornerstone of our recruitment and retention efforts. To ensure a sustainable workforce, in fiscal year 2009-2010, CCG will create the National Labour Force Renewal Directorate (NLFRD), a team with a two-year mandate to improve and expand our recruitment and succession planning efforts.

Temporary Employment

Temporary employment measures are an essential and effective means to support Canadian Coast Guard operations. They are necessary to meet service delivery requirements, as ships must have a full crew complement before they can leave port. When crew members are unable to report for duty, replacements are often needed with little advance warning and casual contracts can be quickly put in place. For longer absences, term appointments are the most suitable temporary solution. CCG will continue to place emphasis on fairness, access, representation and transparency, as well as sound human resources planning in the utilization of term, seasonal and casual employees.

While term employment of more than three months has risen slightly, efforts are being made to shorten the duration of term employment in general. Concrete plans have been developed and a monitoring system adopted to ensure that term employment is utilized properly.

Casual employment has decreased, which indicates a shift toward more conventional and stable hiring practices.

Graph F identifies trends in the utilization of temporary employment over the past five years. Noted are determinate appointments of more than three months, determinate appointments of less than three months and casual appointments of 90 working days or less.

Graph F
Term and Casual Employment

Term Appointments Over Two Years

In 2008, CCG began a concentrated effort to reduce the number of term appointments over two years (see Table J), 64% of which are in seagoing positions. Approximately 5% of these term appointments are sunset funded (funding for salary dollars is from external sources and for a limited duration). Approximately 50% are expected to become indeterminate employees by way of the Treasury Board Secretariat’s Term Employment Policy (Section 7.2), while the remaining 45% are projected to be made indeterminate through staffing actions. CCG will continue to monitor term appointments over two years in its ongoing efforts to stabilize the workforce.

_{Note: Historical data is unavailable.}

Acting Appointments

Short-term acting appointments will also continue to be used to fill key vacancies and to provide important developmental opportunities.

As Table K illustrates, the number of acting appointments over one year has fluctuated over the past five years. However, with the exception of a slight rise in 2005, there has been an overall reduction in the number of appointments, which shows that managers are cognizant of the importance of pursuing more permanent staffing options rather than temporary solutions.

_{* Total population does not include students or casuals.}

Acting appointments allow CCG employees to gain knowledge at progressively higher levels. By encouraging managers to monitor the length of these appointments and to use mechanisms such as rotational acting appointments, it will be possible for a larger number of employees to gain much needed corporate knowledge.

Graph G identifies trends in acting appointments over the past five years. The utilization of acting appointments of one to three years has increased consistently since 2005, while acting appointments of three to five years peaked in 2006 and are now declining. With regards to acting appointments of more than five years, the numbers have been improving annually since 2004. Through the executive performance agreements, we will continue to monitor acting appointments over one year in an effort to reduce their utilization.

Graph G
Acting Appointments

At-Risk Groups

Ships’ Officers and Ships’ Crew

It is estimated that attrition among SOs and SCs over the next five years will create the need to replace approximately 223 SOs and 272 SCs. The majority of these positions will be filled through normal succession.

Five of the 12 new Mid-shore Patrol Vessels – expected to be commissioned over the next two to three years - will be in addition to CCG’s current fleet. The net increase in the ships’ complements will be in the order of 30 SOs and 30 SCs.

SOs (Navigation and Engineering) in the lower and middle levels will be encouraged to take rotational shore positions in the regions or at Headquarters. These shore-based positions will require professional seagoing expertise and will provide these officers with pertinent experience in marine management. These assignments are a pre-requisite for consideration for advancement to senior SO positions. There are also situations in which SOs, at all levels, may be required to fill term or acting assignments ashore. Where appropriate, positions are staffed in accordance with regular selection processes.

Canadian Coast Guard vessels are crewed in accordance with the marine personnel regulations of the Canada Shipping Act. Ships’ operating profiles list the certification, technical training and experience for every position on the ship - these must be met in order for the ship to be put to sea. Thus, we analyse our demographics as a function of certificates – what is required and what is available.

Attrition of certificates (for example through retirement, pursuit of career opportunities ashore or transfer to the private sector) is compared to the influx of new certificates from three basic streams upon which our recruitment and retention strategies are based:

Officer Training Program

The CCG College offers a four-year program to train SOs in navigation and marine engineering. The program entails full technical, theoretical and practical training with two phases of sea training after which graduating officer-cadets will enter the Canadian Coast Guard Fleet with a Watchkeeping Mate or Fourth Class Engineer certificate. Moreover, they will have received the necessary training which, combined with the accumulation of sea time in accordance with Transport Canada requirements, will enable them to write exams for higher level certificates. In an effort to increase the number of graduates in this program, the College has committed to increasing its intake of officer-cadets from 48 to 64, starting in September 2010.

Expanded Relationships with Provincial Marine Institutes

The College’s curriculum is based on Transport Canada’s specifications for course content and is expanded to provide full theoretical courses so that officer-cadets are prepared to write exams for higher-level certificates in their disciplines.

Provincially run marine institutes offer similar programs and CCG is pursuing options to cooperate with them in the recruitment of students into a Canadian Coast Guard College stream.

Ships’ Crew Certification Program

Many SCs hold basic and even intermediate certificates in their respective disciplines, having successfully passed exams through the application of experience (sea time). Many of these individuals are appointed to acting SO positions. They and others are encouraged to study for and write higher-level exams for consideration for higher level SO positions. Fleet is developing a strategy specifically aimed at operationalizing this process to evaluate and develop individuals’ potential to progress.

Marine Communications and Traffic Services Officers

CCG’s Marine Communications and Traffic Services (MCTS) Officer ab initio program ensures that MCTS Officers receive standardized up-to-date training. The program is designed for new recruits who have no previous experience as MCTS Officers. In a typical year, the ab initio program accepts 23 candidates. The graduation rate is approximately 83%, which is very encouraging given the fact that the MCTS Officers (Radio Operations) have been identified as an at-risk group.

To ensure that CCG has a qualified pool of MCTS Officers in the future, a national MCTS ab initio recruitment process began in January 2008 to establish a national pool of partially-assessed candidates for the next two years. In 2008-2009, 30 trainees were selected from this national pool, leaving 54 English candidates and four bilingual candidates in the pool. Regions will select candidates from this pool to fill training positions for 2009-2010.

Because the number of bilingual trainees required for 2009-2010 supersedes the number of remaining candidates, a second national recruitment process was launched in December 2008. A partially-assessed national pool of bilingual candidates will be used to staff upcoming bilingual positions.

CCG is the sole employer and trainer of MCTS Officers in Canada. Recruitment is critical in ensuring the continuity of service delivery.

Marine Electronics Technologists

The EL community has seen many departures over the past five years, owing largely to retirement. However, CCG has successfully maintained its electronic technologist workforce through the Marine Electronics Development (MELDEV) Program. Through MELDEV, new electronic technologists are hired at an entry level. Program participants acquire experience, knowledge and skills through formal training and work assignments until they qualify for a working-level position, usually attained in 36 months.

The MELDEV Program was revised in April 2007 and the first national selection process was undertaken, resulting in a partially-assessed pool of 20 candidates. In 2008-2009, 12 of these candidates were brought into the MELDEV Program. The current pool is nearing depletion and another process will be conducted in 2009-2010.

The program has been improved based on lessons learned during the initial national selection process and we anticipate a successful 2009-2010 recruitment campaign.

The Engineering Community

The Canadian Coast Guard employs persons in a wide range of engineering functions ranging from university-trained engineers, naval architects eligible for membership in a provincial association of professional engineers, engineering technologists and engineering technicians. The Agency also employs marine engineers (both seagoing and shore-based), many of whom have received their training at the CCG College and are certified by Transport Canada.

Within CCG, most university-trained engineers who are employed in their capacity as professional engineers and naval architects belong to the EN category. Marine engineers are normally employed in the SO, GT or EG categories and technologists and technicians are normally in the GT or EG groups.

Recruitment and retention of engineers, naval architects and marine engineers is expected to pose increasingly significant challenges over the coming years, varying from region to region. Factors include: the challenge of attracting individuals to the government, given the compensation packages offered by private sector organizations; the competition among federal departments, some of which can offer greater promotional opportunities due to their structure; and the significant pay cuts and adaptation to a new working environment which are experienced when transferring from seagoing to shore-based positions. As well, Canada has not produced the same quantity of marine engineers in recent years as in the past. The smaller number of “new” marine engineers is becoming more and more evident as the baby boomers retire.

Meeting our official languages requirements and employment equity targets also continues to be challenging as marine engineering and engineering technology do not appear to be career choices that are currently attracting a diverse population.

Adding to these challenges, there will be a significant increase in the requirement for engineers (professional and marine) in the future. Much of the growth at CCG over the next 20 years will be to further the work of Major Crown Projects. With an authorized budget of $1.4 billion and a recognized need for an additional investment of $8.6 billion, shipbuilding is going to become a major activity.

As well, the addition of five new vessels and several replacement vessels requiring larger crews, improvements to the vessel maintenance management program and improvements to the life cycle asset management program for shore-based infrastructure will drive the requirement for more engineers.

This year, our focus on CCG’s engineering functions will be threefold. First, in response to the Vessel Maintenance Management Review, we will make a significant human resource investment to improve our capacity to support vessel maintenance management.

Second, we will conduct a thorough analysis of our organization and the engineering function within CCG – where we are now and our future requirements, not just in terms of the number of resources, but required competencies, location and type of work to be performed. This high-level gap analysis will be linked to succession planning but will also drive the creation of an Engineering Community Workforce Solutions Action Plan. This Plan will include recruitment strategies for university-trained engineers required by Major Crown Projects and ITS Headquarters, as well as marine engineers required by ITS Headquarters, Fleet and ITS in the regions. The goal of these strategies will be to increase the visibility of CCG as an attractive engineering career opportunity for university graduates and to increase enrolment at the CCG College. As well, our strategies will include various avenues to attract marine certified personnel to shore-based positions and to retain them.

The third focus, also covered in the action plan, will be development of a mentoring and coaching program for the engineering community. The program will ensure that valuable corporate knowledge is transferred from existing engineering personnel, both university-trained and marine engineers, to newly recruited staff. The goal is to further skill sets and allow existing engineering personnel to grow within the organization.