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 Personnel Services
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FOUNDATIONS - Personnel Services

The Year in Retrospect
This last year has provided the department with challenges that were expected and at the same time unexpected.  It was expected that staffing was to continue to be very tight due to the continued restrictive budgets and that there would be extensive work on the Management Information System (MIS), Collective Agreement bargaining, and the reorganization of the newly-combined Personnel Services Department.  The department had to meet the new challenges of providing new personnel services for educational administration staff and the sudden increase in record keeping requirements that have left the department with a severe space shortage for records management.
The staffing process to set up for the 2005/06 school year went better than in past years.  There were over 10,000 internal applications for teacher postings that were processed this year.  There were fewer classrooms in the early part of September that still did not have appropriate staff assigned than in past years.

The MIS project has progressed in fits, stops, and starts.  It has provided two significant challenges.  The first is that the software has substantial potential to be molded to our organization’s needs.  However, it comes with the price that our organization has to articulate how it wants the software molded to us.  Secondly, this work has to be done at the same time as everybody’s regular duties.  Early in 2005, the “Human Resources” components of the MIS system had been almost completed.  Data was exported and tested in the new system and appeared to work.  This is an integrated system with the Payroll, Finance and Purchasing departments.  Thus, it can only proceed as one project.  While the Human Resources aspects were close to completion, the other components were not.  This will be a major thrust in our department in early 2006.

Reorganization of the department has been a focal point.  In the past, it has consisted of separate Non-Teaching and Teaching departments with Health & Safety as a part of Non-Teaching.  Now it is one department that has also added in posting, filling, and contracts for educational administration.  There has been considerable work within the department to improve how it provides services to its clients as one entity.  There have been minor renovations to facilities as a result.  A major part of our services is communication.  A review of our communication strategies has resulted in a revision of our telephone system (still in progress due to Telus’ labour difficulties) and soon-to-be-changed e-mail/conference/RichNet approach.

The local negotiation of an agreement with CUPE for a new Collective Agreement was a major achievement during 2005.  The lack of success at the provincial level for the Teachers’ Collective Agreement and the resulting labour disruption was unfortunate.

Ongoing efforts to increase health and safety awareness of staff have had a positive impact on our injury rate and claims costs.  Site-based Health and Safety Committee training, advanced training sessions on emergency preparedness, and individual advice and consultation has taken place.  Much of this activity has contributed to the WCB Assessment Rate dropping significantly.  A significant problem has been making sure there is sufficient training in the Fall.  Job action cancelled some of the training and it had to be rescheduled.

We have been experiencing problems with employee absences exceeding the supply of replacement staff.  This has resulted in severe shortages of Teachers On Call (TOC), casual secretarial, and educational assistants.  As a result, a review of our TOC practices was done in the Spring.  Changes were made to our callout systems and room bookings on RichNet.  We are doing night callouts as well.  We will continue to explore and refine our practices in an effort to decrease absences and increase supply so that the shortages can be limited.  However, this is up against a regional shortage in a competitive marketplace.  An ad hoc committee has been formed to look at the shortage situation in regards to educational assistants.

In the last three years, there have been significant changes to the labour relations practices in the education sector of British Columbia.  Related to this is the requirement to be more accountable.  This results in more record keeping.  Our department has run out of space for the storage of records.  It regularly microfiches, puts in storage, and disposes of unnecessary records.  This, coupled with the department’s ongoing reorganization, has caused the staff to also do a review of its facility.  This process is ongoing with a focus on how to technically better store records in an efficient manner and how to better utilize the space we do have.

The Possible Year to Come
In the coming year, many of the above challenges will continue.  Major areas of work and change will still be related to the MIS, facility review, recruitment, and CUPE bargaining under the recently announced bargaining framework.

Multiple “Ready” processes are now underway.  We will not know their impact on our school district and the services this department provides until they are completed.  That being said, there will probably be a “change” to the teacher bargaining structure in some manner and our department will have to respond.

The going “live” of the new MIS system has a focus on current in-house activities.  Once this is successful in the coming months, the next phase will begin with a focus on client access.   This could include online applications, leave of absence requests, etc.

The facility and technological review has not revealed many better ways to organize the limited space we have.  However, there will need to be increased effort in this area so additional solutions can be found.

There will be a continued emphasis on prevention through 2006 in the Health and Safety area so that our injury rates can continue to decline.  There will also be an analysis and probably proposals for improved WCB return to work processes and different approaches to training in light of the “supply” problem for replacement staff.

The Personnel Services Department has had a steady staff turnover, which will be continuing.  The maintaining of continuity of services during these staff changes is important with an eye on the changing future needs of the school district.

As the economy of British Columbia improves, there is a more competitive labour market.  When you couple this with increased retirement rates provincially, it will make for a more competitive labour market.  It is anticipated that there will be increasing difficulties in recruiting for the trade or technical areas that will continue until after the 2010 Olympics.  There is a continuing challenge to recruit and keep educational assistants with new strategies coming out of the ad hoc committee’s deliberations.  Also, the same is beginning to happen with teacher recruitment.  There has been an increase of activity in schools back to the level of approximately four years ago where teachers are released for pro-d, meetings, and field trips.  We are again experiencing more requests for TOCs than the supply can accommodate.  There is an increase in the hiring of TOCs.  However, this has to be watched carefully against continued declining enrolment projections and the substantial number of teachers remaining on our “Recall” list with almost eight years of service (there are currently 43 teachers on the Recall list).