The mandate of Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) is set out in the Department of Veterans Affairs Act, which charges the Minister of Veterans Affairs with responsibility for “the care, treatment, or re-establishment in civil life of any person who served in the Canadian Armed Forces or Merchant Navy or in the naval, army, air forces or merchant navies of Her Majesty, of any person who has otherwise engaged in pursuits relating to war, and of any other person designated and the care of the dependents or survivors of any person referred to” (Department of Veterans Affairs Act, 1985, s. 4).
VAC conducted an audit of Human Resources (HR) Staffing Services, as part of the 2018-23 Risk-Based Audit and Evaluation Plan that was approved by the Deputy Minister on June 12, 2018. Furthermore, a second phase of the audit was conducted to include HR pay considerations.
HR Staffing
Within VAC, HR planning and staffing activities are a shared responsibility between management and HR strategic advisors. Management is responsible for recruitment and staffing decisions, while HR strategic advisors are responsible to support management in identifying hiring strategies, in compliance with federal policies and legislation.
The Human Resources Division (HRD) implemented the HR Excellence initiative to improve its service delivery, including staffing processes and accessibility of information. The initiative was launched in 2016 and implemented in November 2017, within the scope of resource levels. The result of this initiative was an updated HR model that includes the following four main tiers:
- The HR Toolbox, which provides guidance and tools to all VAC staff, and is available on the VAC intranet;
- The Client Service Centre, where dedicated HR staff process HR requests and transactions and respond to questions via the generic email inbox;
- HR strategic advisors, who work with assigned client divisions on staffing processes by providing advice, developing tools, and working on HR requests; and,
- The Strategy and Service Design at the corporate level, where HR policies, programs, strategies, standards and tools were developed.
Further in April 2017, the HR management system was updated to a new model, My GCHR 9.1, which includes the Human Resources Staffing Request (HRSR) module. This system change allows managers and their administrative support staff to submit their staffing requests electronically to HRD.
HR Pay
In 2009, the Government of Canada initiated the replacement of the pay system moving towards a centralized pay services for many federal departments and agencies. Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) was responsible for the initiative. In 2016, PSPC rolled out the Phoenix Pay System, resulting in the transfer of most of the responsibility for pay from VAC to PSPC. As part of the centralization of compensation services, PSPC established the Pay Centre in Miramichi, New Brunswick.
Negative impacts have resulted from the Phoenix Pay System implementation, and as such, many federal government departments, including VAC, were required to significantly increase efforts in the HR function to support employee pay.
On August 30, 2017, VAC and PSPC entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which allowed the transfer of VAC personnel, including 20 HR employees, to provide support to PSPC Pay Centre’s operations. While the MOU has since ended, VAC continued to collaborate interdepartmentally in a number of initiatives, such as the Pod Pilot, to work towards HR-to-Pay Stabilization in response to the Phoenix implementation. More recently, VAC HRD partnered with PSPC as the first pilot department for Pay Insight, a read-only web application that allows employees to view their pay and benefits information and open cases.
Additionally, VAC HRD staff participated in interdepartmental working groups to identify best practices and solutions for VAC to apply. Examples of working groups included the HR-to-Pay Playbook Working Group, the Leave without Pay and Return from Leave Processes Working Group, the Horizontal HR Systems Readiness Support Working Group, and the HR-to-Pay Data, and the Reporting and Analytics Working Group.
More recently, the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS-OCHRO) released standardized timelines for 13 staffing processes. All federal government departments supported by the Phoenix Pay System, including VAC, were required to adhere to these standardized timelines in submitting requests to the PSPC Pay Centre for processing.