Ted Glenn The state of talent management

in Canada’s public sector

Abstract: For more than a decade, senior officials from across Canada’s public sector
have identified the capacity to “recruit and retain highly-trained, qualified staff” as
central to public service renewal and success in the 21st century. And yet, despite
the consensus behind this priority, students of Canadian public administration
know little about the strategies and programs that are in place to attract, recruit,
retain and transition key public servants in this country. This article tries to address
this gap by describing talent management, one approach to getting “the right
people in the right place at the right time” currently in use in British Columbia,
Canada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario and
Saskatchewan. The article concludes with some observations about the present and
future of talent management in Canada’s public sector.

Sommaire : Pendant plus d’une décennie, les cadres supérieurs de la fonction

publique de tout le Canada ont identifié la capacité de « recruter et garder du
personnel diplômé et hautement qualifié » comme étant essentielle au renouvelle-
ment et au succès de la fonction publique au XXIe siècle. Cependant, malgré le
consensus atteint à propos de cette priorité, les étudiants en administration pub-
lique canadienne ignorent beaucoup des stratégies et des programmes mis en place
pour attirer, recruter, garder les fonctionnaires clés dans ce pays et leur permettre
de faire la transition. Le présent article tente d’aborder cette lacune en décrivant la
gestion des talents, une approche consistant à avoir « les bonnes personnes, au bon
endroit, au bon moment »; cette approche est actuellement en usage en Colombie-
Britannique, au Canada, au Nouveau-Brunswick, Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador, en
Nouvelle-Écosse, en Ontario et en Saskatchewan. L’article se termine par quelques
observations au sujet du présent et de l’avenir de la gestion des talents dans le
secteur public du Canada.

Introduction
The ability to find and keep good people is critical to public service success
and reform in any country. In Canada, senior officials have been reporting
for more than a decade that their capacity to “recruit and retain highly-
trained, qualified staff” is a major concern and in fact needs to become a

The author is professor of public administration, The Business School, Humber College,
Toronto, Ontario. He would like to acknowledge the helpful comments made by the Journal’s
anonymous reviewers and the research assistance of Thania Vaga, Patrick Laughton and
Bridget Benn. Research support was provided by a grant from Humber’s Staff Initiated
Research Fund.

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION / ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA

VOLUME 55, NO. 1 (MARCH/MARS 2012), PP. 25–51
© The Institute of Public Administration of Canada/L’Institut d’administration publique du Canada 2012
26 TED GLENN

top priority for public service reform at all levels of government in the 21st
century (IPAC 2009: 54). Given this concern, what exactly are Canadian
public services doing to find and keep good people? And for that matter,
how are “highly trained” and “qualified” defined? Unfortunately, we don’t
know. There has been little written about the strategies and programs that
Canadian public services currently use to attract, recruit, retain and tran-
sition key employees beyond a few pieces on reform and renewal in the
federal public service (see Malloy 2004; Lindquist 2006; Mau 2007). This
article takes a step toward addressing this gap by reviewing one current
approach to getting the right people in the right place at the right time in
seven Canadian public services. The approach is called talent management.
For proponents, talent management is a comprehensive approach to
human resource management, which integrates the core human resource
functions of attraction, retention, development and transition in order to
get the “right individuals” in place “to drive organizational performance”
(Sistonen 2005). The approach was first identified in the late 1990s as a way
for information technology firms in the overheated “dot-com” economy to
hire and hold on to in-demand employees (Michaels et al 2001). By the
mid-2000s, demographics, globalization, technology and more flexible
employment terms combined to make talent management a popular
human resource strategy in most sectors of advanced industrial economies
around the world, including public administration in Canada and abroad
(Bersin 2008).
This article describes the state of talent management in Canada’s public
sector today. It begins by explaining the origins of the approach and then
outlines the critical features of the methodology that have evolved since.
Building on this foundation, the article describes and assesses the two
different models of talent management that have evolved in British Colum-
bia, Canada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia,
Ontario, and Saskatchewan. The article concludes with some observations
about the present and future of talent management in Canada’s public sector.

The origins of talent management

Talent management (TM) is a term first used in a 1998 study published by
Chambers et al for McKinsey & Company, which examined what was
described as “a severe and worsening shortage of the people needed to run
divisions and manage critical functions, let alone lead companies” (1988).
Using results from almost one hundred company case studies and surveys
of over 6,000 executives, Chambers et al found that corporate America was
“about to be engaged in a war for senior executive talent that will remain
a defining characteristic of their competitive landscape for decades to
come. Yet most are ill prepared, and even the best are vulnerable” (45).
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 27

Building on the work of Chambers et al, subsequent researchers seemed to

agree that the origins of the “war for talent” could be attributed to a
confluence of four factors: demographics; globalization of economies;
changes to the psychological dimensions of the modern employment
contract; and advancements in communications technology.
In the late 1990s, demographers and labour force statisticians began
forecasting that the demand for highly trained labour would outpace
supply as baby boomers began retiring in the early part of the new
millennium. Chambers et al (1998), for example, forecast a fifteen per cent
reduction in the 35–44 year-old cohort from which most executives are
drawn by 2009; Chuai (2008) forecast a similar supply shortage in Europe
and China. In Canada, one report estimated that “46 percent of baby
boomers, people born between 1946 and 1966, will be close to their
retirement or pre-retirement years” by 2000 (Canada, Human Resources
Development Canada 2002: 4). The same report noted that “approximately
41 percent of the working population will be between the ages of 45 and
64 [by 2000], compared to 29 percent in 1991” (4). As discussed in more
detail below, these forecasts began to materialize in Canada’s public
services by the mid-2000s, a reality that was compounded by the threat of
mass retirements, particularly among the executive ranks.
The continued globalization of local and regional economies in the 1990s
also affected the supply of talented labour. In-demand employees in “hot”
industries like information technology, engineering and financial services
found themselves in sellers’ markets that, for the first time, spanned the
world as a result of off-shore outsourcing and corporate re-locations.
The effects of globalization on labour mobility were amplified by
changes on the psychological side of employment contracts as well. Until
the 1980s, employees tended to stay with employers for longer periods
of time, producing a type of employee to whom Cappelli refers as “The
Organization Man” (2008a). According to Cappelli, the “Organization
Man” was a product of “a unique set of circumstances on the demand side
(stable markets made long-term planning possible, corporations grew ever
larger, and the skills needed to run them were unique to each company)
and on the supply side (outside hiring did not work, and talent therefore
had to be developed internally)” (55–6). By the 1990s, globalization,
corporate restructuring and generational change were antiquating “The
Organization Man” in favour of a more flexible and thoughtful worker
who valued the quality of work and the “psychological return on invest-
ment” as much as job security and benefits. The results were lower rates
of job tenure (average 4.1 years per job versus 6), almost half that
experienced by “The Organization Man.” In the words of a 2001 report by
McKinsey & Company: “today’s high-performers are like frogs in a wheel-
barrow: they can jump out at any time” (cited in Chuai 2008: 8).
28 TED GLENN

Technology also contributed to the “war for talent” by making

“the boundaries between organizations more permeable” (Chuai 2008: 8).
The proliferation of personal computers in the workplace and at home, the
advent of the Internet, customizable web browsers, database and e-mail
technology all combined to quicken the pace at which employers could
advertise employment opportunities and potential workers could respond
to them. These changes, combined with globalization and changes in the
psychological contracts in employer–employee relationships, meant that
“highly skilled individuals were no longer limited to marketing their skills
within one country or region, instead they could market themselves to
organizations based anywhere in the world” (Chuai 2008: 9).

Talent management
The “war for talent” and talent management as a combat strategy gained
considerable popularity following the publication of McKinsey’s 1998
report. In May 2000, for example, the war was featured on the cover of
Fortune Magazine. By the early 2000s, hundreds of North American human
resource practitioners had added talent management to their rosters of
available services (Stumpf and Tymon 2001). By the mid-2000s, academics
had joined the ranks: in a 2006 literature review, Lewis and Heckman
found that “a search on the phrase ‘talent management hr’ in late 2004
using a popular internet search engine yielded over 2,700,000 hits. One
year later a search on the same term yielded over 8 million hits” (Lewis
and Heckman 2006: 139).

The focus on talent and the enterprise-wide integration

of critical HR functions to manage that talent are the
hallmarks of what is known as talent management
today

Despite its popularity, there was initially little consensus on a single,

authoritative definition for talent management (see Lewis and Heckman
2006; Chuai 2008). At a basic level, proponents argued that TM was
“simply a matter of anticipating the need for human capital and then
setting out a plan to meet it”(Cappelli 2008b) using traditional human
resource tools like succession planning, recruitment, retention, perfor-
mance management, development and redeployment. Critics, however,
contended that these functions on their own did not represent a new
approach to human resource management. For Chuai, defining talent
management in this way was “just old wine in new bottles” (2008). As the
practice of talent management evolved over the 2000s, though, “talent”
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 29

became a more precisely defined entity, and the experience gained through
the actual practice of integrating attraction, recruitment, retention and
transition functions across organizations gave researchers the perspective
needed to distinguish talent management from other HR approaches like
personnel management, traditional workforce planning and strategic
human resource management (see Bratton 2006; Morton 2006; Kock and
Burke 2008). By the mid-2000s, researchers could with some degree of
consensus define talent management as “an integrated set of activities to
ensure that the organization attracts, retains, motivates and develops the
talented people it needs now and in the future” (Armstrong 2007: 390) or
as “an integrated set of processes, programs, and technologies designed to
develop, deploy and connect key talent and critical skill sets to drive
business priorities” (Sistonen 2005: 120). The focus on talent and the
enterprise-wide integration of critical HR functions to manage that talent
are the hallmarks of what is known as talent management today.

Defining talent
“Talent” has been defined in one of two ways: exclusively or inclusively.
By far the most common way has been exclusively, meaning those high-
performing individuals (or those who demonstrate potential for high
performance in the future) who drive a disproportionate share of an
organization’s performance or value (Sistonen 2005). This is precisely how
McKinsey defined talent early on: “A code for the most effective leaders and
managers at all levels who can help a company fulfill its aspirations and
drive its performance, talent is some combination of a sharp strategic mind,
leadership ability, emotional maturity, communications skills, the ability to
attract and inspire other talented people, entrepreneurial instincts, func-
tional skills, and the ability to deliver results” (Michaels et al 2001: xiii).
While less commonplace, some organizations that have adopted TM
frameworks have defined talent inclusively, meaning that “everyone has
talent and has a clear role to play, and consequently contributes to the
success of the business; hence, every single person should be viewed as a
source of competitive advantage” (Sistonen 2005: 14). Four of seven Cana-
dian public services with talent management regimes define talent exclu-
sively; three do so inclusively, as described in more detail below.

Managing talent
Initially, McKinsey recommended that corporate leaders use a combat
strategy to engage in the “war for talent” that relied primarily on the HR
functions of recruitment, retention and development. In their words,
corporate leaders must make talent and its management “a burning
corporate priority” (Michaels et al 2001: 46) by linking business strategy to
human resource plans for “attracting and retaining the people you need,”
30 TED GLENN

figuring out how to “recruit great talent” and then “develop, develop,
develop” that talent (46–7). As the practice of TM developed over the
2000s, three additional functions — workforce planning, performance
management, and transition — could be found as part of most organiza-
tions’ talent management regimes as well. All six elements are described in
more detail below.

Attraction
According to the Conference Board of Canada, “the ability to attract talent
in an increasingly competitive global market is a growing priority in
Canada. Recruitment, which has had a relatively low profile following
decades of a labour market glut created by the size of the baby-boom
cohort and rounds of downsizings during recessions, is once again in the
spotlight” (Wright 2006: 28). For TM organizations, attraction begins at the
macro-level with “branding” strategies to build corporate image and
reputation as “employers-of-choice” in competitive labour markets. On a
micro-level, TM organizations use traditional recruitment mechanisms like
postsecondary career fairs to target specific kinds of talent in tight labour
markets in order to “close the deal” with sought-after candidates. As
proponents argue, TM organizations in effect use attraction to emulate
supply chain management systems by creating a “constant flow of pre-
qualified talent” that can be tapped into with fast and efficient recruitment
mechanisms (Cappelli 2008a).

TM organizations use a mix of traditional retention

mechanisms like developmental opportunities, and
reward and recognition to retain key employees, as well
as newer strategies like employee engagement and job
enhancement to ensure a level of “personal connection
and commitment an employee feels toward the firm and
its mission”

Retention
The “war for talent” heightens the importance of retaining talented
employees because “as labour markets tighten, skilled employees have
greater choice in employment opportunities, and voluntary turnover typi-
cally rises” (Wright 2006: 40). Hill suggests that retention is “the most
misunderstood” area of talent management but the one which offers “the
greatest value in developing and retaining high-potentials” (Hill 2005: 20).
TM organizations use a mix of traditional retention mechanisms like
developmental opportunities, and reward and recognition to retain key
employees, as well as newer strategies like employee engagement and job
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 31

enhancement to ensure a level of “personal connection and commitment an

employee feels toward the firm and its mission” (Martin and Schmidt 2010:
58). On this latter point, Trank et al found that “finding ways to boost job
challenge and career growth will be essential to attracting and retaining
high achievers, particularly in highly competitive labor markets” (2002:
342).

Performance management
TM organizations typically exhibit a culture in which “job performance is
tracked and the high value of having top performers in pivotal roles is
understood” (Wright 2006: 34). Performance management systems in most
TM organizations are not distinct from systems in place elsewhere: they are
used to establish performance expectations, appraise performance results
using both employee self-assessments and supervisor reviews, and manage
performance via training, coaching, mentoring and rewarding, and dis-
cipline. What does distinguish performance management systems in TM
organizations is their integration with the other TM functions, as the case
of Canadian public services demonstrates below.

Development
TM organizations use a wide range of tools to develop talented employees,
including activities at the learning and training end of the development
continuum (i.e., formal learning opportunities in postsecondary institutions
as well as job-specific training) to on-the-job learning (i.e., coaching and
mentoring), to job change and redesign (special assignments, projects, and
secondments) (see Morton 2006; Wright 2006).

Planning
Planning in TM organizations involves identifying the critical knowledge,
skills and experience needed to accomplish corporate objectives. Plan-
ning usually begins with a workforce profile that identifies and describes
mission-critical positions within an organization and the core competencies
that individuals need to succeed in those positions. Workforce profiles are
then populated with data on the employment status of current incumbents
(i.e., full-time, part-time and time to retirement). The result is a “talent map”
on which demand for and supply of talent can be plotted for enterprise-
critical positions within an organization.

Transition
Transition is the planned movement of employees into new roles within
an organization through a combination of succession planning and exit
management processes. Succession planning builds on workforce plans
with connections to attraction, retention, performance management and
32 TED GLENN

development processes. Exit management is also integrated with planning,

attraction and development processes, but focuses on ensuring the reten-
tion of key institutional knowledge and building the organization’s brand
in the labour market. As Chuai explains, “employees who are leaving or
have left are more likely to be open, honest and frank in appraising their
ex-employers; thus, the learning gained from exit management can be a
driver for organizational change and improvement from an employee’s
perspective, and eventually help improve how talent is managed in the
future” (2008: 23).

Talent management in Canada’s

public services
At present, public services in seven Canadian jurisdictions have adopted
talent management as an approach to managing their key human resources
– British Columbia, Canada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labra-
dor, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan.1 Two very different models
of talent management, however, have actually emerged. In one, talent is
defined exclusively in terms of senior managers, and corporately admin-
istered planning, assessment, performance management, and deployment
processes are used to manage them. This “executive” model is found in
the federal, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan public services. In
the second model, talent is defined inclusively (i.e., across whole public
services, departments or within professional groups) and a variety of
approaches and processes are used to manage that talent within hortatory,
enterprise-wide guidelines or frameworks. This “strategic” model is found
primarily in British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova
Scotia.2 Tables 1 and 2 describe the broad outlines of Canada’s public sector
talent management regimes.

Origins
The two models of talent management that exist in Canada’s public services
today emerged in response to two different sets of priorities. Executive
model jurisdictions (Canada, New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan)
were prompted to focus on senior management because of acute challenges
posed by impending retirements in those ranks. For example, a 2004 report
to senior officials in Ontario highlighted the fact that twenty-eight per cent
of the Ontario public service’s 6,000 senior managers (SMGs) would be
eligible for retirement by 2009, with that number growing to fifty-six per cent
in 2014. In 2007, the Clerk of the Privy Council made a similar observation
about the roughly 300 assistant deputy ministers (ADMs) who were the
initial target of the federal Executive Talent Management program launched
 Table 1. Talent Management Regimes in Canada’s Public Services
Core public
Program/Strategy services TM target TM target
Jurisdiction name Model Launched Size (FTEs) population classifications
BC Being the Best Strategic 2006 30,000 30,000 All
CAN Executive Talent Executive 2007 216,000 4,700 EX 01–05
Management
NB Corporate Talent Executive 2008 9,100 1,200 Bands 6–12
Management Program
Departmental Talent 1,700 Bands 5–7
Management Program
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR

NFLD Integrated Talent Strategic 2009 8,300 8,300 All

Management Program
NS Talent Management Strategic 2006 10,700 N/A All
ON Talent Management Executive 2006 67,000 8,000 SMG 1–3; select
Program non-bargaining
feeder groups
SK Talent Management Executive 2009 12,000 1,100 MCP (currently
Strategy DM & ADM)
33
 34

Table 2. Canadian Public Service Talent Management Regime Details

Employee
assessment Development Planning/Transition
Regime Attraction Talent Talent Organizational
Jurisdiction type (external) Retention Self Supervisori plans mapping assessment
CAN Executive X X X X
BC Strategic X X X X
NB Executive X X X X X
NFLD Strategic X X X
NS Strategic X X X
ON Executive X X X X X
SK Executive X X X X X
i
This category indicates some level of integration of an existing performance management system with the talent management
regime.
TED GLENN
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 35

that same year: thirty per cent of all ADMs were then immediately eligible
for retirement, compared to seventeen per cent within the entire executive
group (Canada, Clerk of the Privy Council 2007).
For executive model jurisdictions, these demographic challenges were
compounded by two factors. First, individuals within executive “feeder
groups” were retiring at rates similar to executives themselves. This was
significant because the vast majority of executive positions in Canadian
public services are typically filled from within public service ranks. In
Saskatchewan, for example, “85 per cent of management positions are
filled from within” (Saskatchewan, Public Service Commission n.d.: 15).
Second, senior public service officials realized that their organizations had
neither the vision nor the integrated functionality to attract, develop,
manage and deploy executives across their organizations that were needed
to address the scope of the retirements in a strategic and timely fashion
(Ontario, HROntario 2010). As the Clerk of the Privy Council declared in
2007, the federal public service was “in a situation where it is compelled
by demographics, by national and international circumstances, and by its
own immediate history to rethink how it recruits, develops, manages and
retains its [executive] workforce” (2007).
Talent management offered an accessible and flexible way to help senior
officials in these jurisdictions “rethink” the human resource challenges
facing their organizations. As one official with the Ontario government
recalled, “when we were thinking about how to deal with the demographic
and programming challenges facing our senior management group in 2004
and 2005, talent management was an obvious choice. It was very popular
and could be tailored to fit the specific needs of our organization.” Ontario
introduced the Talent Management Program for its 6,000 managers, direc-
tors, ADMs and deputy ministers in 2006 and subsequently extended it to
include some members of non-bargaining feeder groups. In Ottawa, talent
management offered not only design flexibility but also a considerable
degree of continuity with the target of past reform initiatives. In her 1997
report to the prime minister, then-Clerk of the Privy Council Jocelyn
Bourgon identified a “quiet crisis” in the federal public service, a crisis
rooted to a significant extent in the senior ranks of that public service.
To address the crisis, a number of initiatives in the ensuing La Relève
exercise — too many, in fact, for critics — were designed to improve
recruitment, training, retention and succession precisely at the execu-
tive level (Lindquist and Paquet 2000). In this context, the federal Execu-
tive Talent Management launched in 2007, with its current focus on the 4,700
members of the EX classification (directors, directors general and ADMs),
can be seen as the modern heir to La Relève, confirming for some that
Madame Bourgon was indeed “ten years ahead of her time” (Johnson and
Molloy 2009).
36 TED GLENN

In 2008, New Brunswick introduced the Corporate Talent Management

Program for its 1,200 directors, assistant deputy ministers and deputy
ministers, and the Departmental Talent Management Program for its 1,700
managers and management feeder groups. Saskatchewan rolled out its
Talent Management Strategy in 2009 for its 60 ADMs and DMs, with the
remainder of its 950 managers, directors, and executive directors proposed
to come online by the end of 2012.
Demographics were but one of many factors that led public services to
adopt talent management strategies or frameworks in British Columbia,
Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. In British Columbia, “an
aging population that is bringing about a rapid rate of retirements, an
increasingly competitive marketplace for skilled employees, new demands
in our personal lives. . .changing needs and expectations of the public we
serve, the global economy, the introduction of new technologies and the
increasing diversity of British Columbia communities” were all identified
as significant factors driving public service transformation (British Colum-
bia, Public Service Agency 2006: 3). Similarly in Nova Scotia, the Public
Service Commission’s web site identified “an aging workforce, increasing
retirement rates, tight labour market, limited competitiveness, and fast-
paced changes in work” (http://www.gov.ns.ca/psc/v2/pdf/hrCentre/
resources/talentManagement/TM%20Process%20Guide.pdf). This broader
range of factors led officials in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and
Newfoundland and Labrador to define talent much more inclusively
and propose talent management regimes that explicitly extended
“beyond the focus on management and leadership roles [in order to]
build high performance and high involvement work environments for all
employees” (ibid). For public services in these jurisdictions, talent
management needed to be much more “. . . a deliberate and systematic
effort to encourage individual advancement and ensure continuity in key
positions, including management, technical and professional specialist
roles, and across professional groups such as HR” (ibid). In the words of
Newfoundland and Labrador’s Public Service Secretariat, talent manage-
ment is
about more than just attracting and retaining talent. It is about researching, developing, and
implementing a series of human resource initiatives and looking at how these initiatives fit
together to manage the talent available to a department. Building and enhancing employee
potential will not only benefit employees, it will also support the organization in meeting its
goals and objectives while focusing on the provision of excellence in public service 4
(Newfoundland and Labrador. Public Service Secretariat 2008: 1).

In 2006, British Columbia introduced its Being the Best corporate HR

strategy for its roughly 30,000 employees; Nova Scotia launched its Talent
Management framework in the same year for use by individual depart-
ments and specific professional groups. Newfoundland and Labrador
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 37

introduced the Integrated Talent Management Program for that public

service’s 8,300 employees in 2009.

Details
In all jurisdictions, the authority to make staffing decisions resides with
deputy ministers in individual departments. All talent management
regimes are really just mechanisms to provide deputies with advice on how
best to exercise their staffing authority vis-à-vis the “talent” in their depart-
ments. From this perspective, what distinguishes the executive model
jurisdictions from the strategic (other than the obvious definition of talent)
is the degree to which those mechanisms are used in a formalized or
operational manner. Executive model regimes use centrally supported
individual assessment, performance management, organizational assess-
ment, development, and deployment processes across their organizations
to manage senior officials. Strategic model regimes are characterized by
strategic talent management frameworks or guidelines within which
central agencies provide assistance and support to help deputies and their
delegates to define their talent needs and develop customized program-
ming to meet those needs.

Employee assessment
One common feature of the Canadian public-sector talent management
landscape is the use of employee self-assessment. For example, employees
in Ontario’s Talent Management Program complete online Talent Profile
and Talent Assessment modules early in the second quarter of the fiscal
year. Employees use the profile module to describe their work experience,
career interests and aspirations, unique abilities (i.e., language proficien-
cies), and ability to move within the province. In the assessment module,
employees evaluate their readiness to assume greater levels of responsi-
bility, based on demonstrated behavioral competencies (see Appendix 2 for
details), as well as express their willingness to assume greater responsi-
bility within the organization. Supervisors subsequently complete their
own assessment of the employee’s readiness to assume greater responsi-
bility and then conduct “talent conversations” early in the second quarter
with their employees based on these results. At the end of the second
quarter, managers confirm their employees’ Assessment results and learn-
ing and development strategies.
The federal government’s EX TM program works similarly: each year,
executives within the EX classification complete an online questionnaire to
describe their talent (in terms of education and professional achievements,
breadth of experience and skill set, and career interests and aspirations)
38 TED GLENN

and assess their talent against the competencies and effective behaviours
set out in the EX Qualification Standard (see Appendix 2). Each executive
then meets with a supervisor to review the completed questionnaire and
have “an open discussion about career aspirations and potential learning
and development strategies in the context of business needs” (Canada,
Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer 2008b).
In New Brunswick, executives in the Corporate Talent Management
Program complete online career management modules to assess their own
talent and create learning and development plans, while supervisors
assess employee talent using four criteria: performance, readiness to
advance, willingness to advance, and “criticalness,” or where the em-
ployee resides on the NB talent map (New Brunswick, Office of Human
Resources 2009: 75). The results of these analyses are then used as the
basis for “talent conversations” between supervisors and their executive
employees.
In Nova Scotia, all employees are required to develop individual career
development plans through corporately offered workshops and using
online resources. The point is to ensure that each employee has an
opportunity to assess their own skills, interests and development needs as
well as identify short- and long-term career goals. The NS Public Service
Commission recommends that these plans be used as the basis for talent
review meetings in which senior managers assess each employee in terms
of their “. . .performance; stage of readiness and potential; key strengths;
career goals; areas for development; and development actions plans”
(Nova Scotia, Public Service Commission 2006: 15).

Talent mapping
Supervisors use input from the self-assessments and “talent conversa-
tions” to place employees in the four executive model jurisdictions on
“talent maps.” These maps typically include four or five categories of
talent and allow senior officials to rank and compare employees across
their organizations. Categories of talent vary, but generally include: 1) an
“advance immediately” category for individuals who are immediately
ready, willing and able to advance within the organization; 2) a “maximize
in current position” category for high-potential individuals who will be
ready to advance in the near future (i.e., twelve to twenty-four months)
but whose performance in their current position can still be maximized
through targeted development; 3) a “focus on development” category for
individuals who might be ready to advance in the future but would
benefit from further learning and development to prepare them to succeed
in a new position; and 4) an “address performance issues” category for
individuals who may be willing to advance but are having difficulty
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 39

achieving expected performance levels in their current position. The

federal government’s EX TM Talent Map also includes a fifth category —
“transition to retirement” — to highlight the need for organizations to
ensure that the knowledge and experience of retiring employees is
retained. The federal, Ontario and New Brunswick talent maps are
included in Appendix 1.

Organizational assessment
Organization-wide talent assessments complement the individual assess-
ments and talent mapping processes described above. In New Brunswick,
for example, deputies and their teams identify “mission critical” positions
across their departments and assess each in terms of organizational impact,
risk of vacancy (due to retirement or other factors like labour force com-
petition), and degree of difficulty to fill (given availability of suitable
candidates in the NB labour market). Knowledge and skill requirements for
each position are also identified and described (New Brunswick, Office of
Human Resources 2009). A similar process takes place in Ontario: in the third
quarter, ministry-based talent demand forecasts are created to identify
business critical/high risk positions and assess each position in terms
of incumbent retention risk (retirement eligibility, tenure, talent map
placement), difficulty to fill (geography, labour market, skill availability),
and availability of possible successors, both internal and external (Ontario,
HROntario 2010). The results are reviewed by deputy ministers during the
third quarter and culminate in a deputy retreat where OPS-wide talent
management priorities and plans are determined (see below for details).
Saskatchewan’s talent map includes positional assessment results as well as
a detailed inventory of development assignments across the public service,
available development programs, and current and potential mentors and
coaches (Saskatchewan, Public Service Commission n.d.).
Public service commissions in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and
Labrador also recommend that organizational assessments be conducted as
part of talent management exercises. Like New Brunswick, these frame-
works recommend that managers first identify “mission critical” positions
within their organizations or professional areas and then develop skill and
competency profiles for each of these positions (Nova Scotia, Public Service
Commission 2006).

Talent management plans

At an individual level, supervisors and employees use assessment results
as the starting point for creating talent management plans for future
development. To aid in this process, central agencies provide broad
40 TED GLENN

guidelines for determining the exact content of the plans. For example,
HROntario’s Talent Management Guide recommends that the plans for
employees who are ranked as “Optimize in the Future” on the OPS Talent
Map include some combination of emotional intelligence assessment, exter-
nal assessment (i.e., 360o assessment), external learning, coaching, and/or
development assignments in order to be ready for advancement in twelve
to twenty-four months. Similarly, if a federal ADM is ranked within the
“Address Performance” category, the resources provided by the Treasury
Board’s Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer (OCHRO) recom-
mend that the employee’s plan include some combination of targeted
performance improvement planning, and leadership assessment and devel-
opment training (Canada, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer
2008c). These prescriptions are often much more general in strategic
regimes: in Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, the Public Service
Secretariat recommends that talent plans have three elements: 1) pro-
fessional development (i.e., targeted learning and training, educa-
tion support, mentoring); 2) high-potential development (i.e., special
assignments, cross-functional opportunities, coaching, and participation in
professional organizations); and 3) performance management (i.e., compe-
tency assessments; performance feedback; learning plans; rewards and
recognition, workload analysis) (Newfoundland and Labrador, Public
Service Secretariat 2008).
Talent planning for individuals is complemented by enterprise-wide
planning in most jurisdictions. In executive model jurisdictions, enterprise-
wide planning begins with central agencies consolidating data from the
various assessment processes described above into a single picture of talent
supply and demand for the organization. This picture is then usually
delivered to a central, deputy-level committee to confirm talent priorities
and ensure deployment consistency across the organization. In Ontario, the
Ministry of Government Services’ HROntario division consolidates data
from the individual and organizational talent assessment processes for
deputy ministers to use at a fourth-quarter retreat to confirm OPS-wide
succession plans, development plans, and deployment priorities for the
senior management group. At the federal level, the OCHRO identifies
succession challenges, learning and development needs, and talent and
diversity gaps across the ADM cadre and provides the results of its
analysis and talent map placements to the deputy-level Committee of
Senior Officials (COSO) for review (Canada, Office of the Chief Human
Resources Officer 2008b). In New Brunswick, assessment results for execu-
tives in the Corporate Talent Management Program are consolidated by the
Office of Human Resources (OHR) and provided to the Executive Devel-
opment Committee (EDC), which is composed of the deputy minister of
the OHR as chair, the clerk to the Executive Council and two additional
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 41

deputy ministers. The EDC reviews the consolidated assessment data and
makes recommendations on talent deployment to departmental deputies.
For executives in New Brunswick’s Departmental Talent Management
Program (senior staff and managers), talent assessment results are collected
by departmental talent management committees who then make deploy-
ment recommendations to deputies (New Brunswick, Office of Human
Resources 2009).

[D]eputy ministers in all jurisdictions retain the ulti-

mate authority to make decisions regarding talent
deployment within their departments

External talent pool development

Only two jurisdictions (British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labra-
dor) explicitly advocate the development of external talent pools to ensure
an adequate supply of talent to their public services. Newfoundland and
Labrador recommends that this process begin with “branding,” or culti-
vating a reputation for the public service as a “competitive, quality
employer in order to attract both new and experienced talent to the
organization” (Newfoundland and Labrador, Public Service Secretariat
2008). In the words of BC’s Public Service Agency:
Research indicates that much of our target labour market has not considered the
public service as a career choice. To change this, we will develop a corporate ‘employer of
choice’ marketing campaign that helps to communicate the identity of the BC Public
Service to potential recruits. This campaign will also be geared to boost pride and morale
inside government, and to communicate who we are to the public we serve. Our goal is
to have people view the BC Public Service as one of the best places to work in Canada
(2006: 14).

For Newfoundland and Labrador, one of the key targets for branding is
students, who are “. . . important to building an external pool. Encour-
aging students to pursue a career in the public service will also assist
the organization in building a potential talent base and offer the orga-
nization an opportunity to not only begin the development of a long
term attachment of the student to the organization, but also develop
specific skill sets needed in the public service” (Newfoundland and
Labrador, Public Service Secretariat 2008: 8). Specific strategies suggested
for engaging students include job fairs and career fairs; summer and
part-time employment opportunities; cooperative placements; internships;
apprenticeships.
To complement externally focused branding activities, the Secretariat
recommends that departments work to build “positive work
42 TED GLENN

environment and organizational culture.” According to the Secretariat, “an

important component of managing an organization’s talent is developing
strategies to improve elements of the organizational culture and the work
environment. Retention and employee satisfaction, and thus, organizational
performance is enhanced by a number of factors involving the employment
relationship, work environment and quality of work life” (2008: 10).

Deployment
As noted, deputy ministers in all jurisdictions retain the ultimate author-
ity to make decisions regarding talent deployment within their depart-
ments. From this perspective, all talent management regimes in Canadian
public services are ultimately hortatory rather than compulsory. For
example, federal deputies have ultimate responsibility for the recruitment,
appointment and performance management of executives within their
departments (Canada, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer
2007a). In support of this role, the Office of the Chief Human Resources
Officer (OCHRO) administers the online individual assessment process,
consolidates assessment data for use by the deputy-level COSO, and
generally provides an array of supports, tools and guides to executives
and their supervisors.3 But ultimately it is deputy ministers who decide
how and whom to deploy. Talent management regimes in Ontario and
Saskatchewan operate similarly.
New Brunswick’s regime offers an interesting variation on this theme.
For individuals identified through New Brunswick’s Corporate Talent
Management Program, the deputy minister of the Office of Human
Resources can make appointments “without competition” under that
province’s Civil Service Act (New Brunswick, Office of Human Resources
2009). Further, the deputy of the OHR can delegate this authority to
other deputies for the appointment of individuals identified in the
Departmental Talent Management Program if those deputies can justify
that the chosen candidate “has the qualifications, skills and abilities to
meet job requirements and how the appointment qualifies as an excep-
tion to the competitive process” (New Brunswick, Office of Human
Resources 2009: 104).

Conclusion
What are Canadian public services doing to find and keep good people?
One thing seven jurisdictions are currently doing is using a popular
approach to managing human resources called talent management
which, at a general level, involves identifying individuals who are criti-
cal to achieving organizational goals and then integrating the core
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 43

human resource functions of attraction, retention, development and tran-

sition to make sure that these individuals are in the “right place at the
right time.”
As shown, two models of talent management have evolved in the
Canadian public sector since 2006. One model, found in the federal,
Ontario, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan public services, employs a
relatively formalized system of employee assessment, development, and
planning/transition to address acute demographic challenges within
executive ranks. A second, more strategic model found in public services
in British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia
provides hortatory guidelines or frameworks to individual depart-
ments and professional groupings to address demographic and other
workplace challenges related to broader goals of public service reform
and renewal.
Why have these two models of talent management evolved in Cana-
dian public services: one a relatively formalized collection of programs
focused on executive succession; the other, a much looser assortment of
guidelines and recommendations for broader public service renewal?
One explanation is that the performance assessment and comparative
ranking that lies at the heart of talent management programming runs
counter to some of the key principles of collective bargaining. In other
words, with the exception of Nova Scotia, where operational talent man-
agement plans have been developed for specific professional groups (i.e.,
human resources, policy, and finance) formalized talent management
programming has been largely limited to executives and non-bargaining
executive feeder groups. This is not to say that talent management
cannot happen in collective bargaining environments (see Nova Scotia),
but it is obviously much easier to manage talent in a systematic, for-
malized way without the discipline imposed by collective bargaining.
Another defining feature of the Canadian public sector talent man-
agement landscape is the relative insularity of the regimes. With the
exception of British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador — two
strategic model jurisdictions — talent regimes are focused on ensuring
the succession of talent from within and have little capacity or inclina-
tion to seek out and tap into external talent pools. This relative insularity
reflects a long tradition of promoting from within in Canadian public
services, particularly at senior levels, and is made even stronger by the
paramountcy of deputy ministers’ staffing authority, an authority which
is refined and strengthened in the talent management regimes examined
in this article.
So what is the future of talent management in Canada’s public sector?
The continued popularity of the talent management approach in general
would suggest that other jurisdictions in Canada are likely to adopt at
44 TED GLENN

least a strategic model of talent management. The Government of the

Northwest Territories, in fact, has committed to developing a “talent
management program” by 2020 as part of its 2009 strategic plan for the
NWT public service (Northwest Territories, Department of Human
Resources 2009). The constraints posed by collective bargaining, the Cana-
dian public service tradition of promoting from within and the para-
mountcy of deputy ministers’ staffing authority, however, suggest that
formalized talent management programming is likely to be adopted by
other jurisdictions only at the executive level.
A more pressing question, however, is should talent management be
adopted by other jurisdictions, or should talent management continue in
jurisdictions where it has already been established? In other words, is
there solid evidence to suggest that talent management regimes are
getting the right people into the right place at the right times? Given the
relative infancy of talent programming in Canada, it should come as no
surprise that there is a lack of rigorous evaluation results to date, which
is consistent with talent management practice in other sectors (see Lewis
and Heckman 2006). While output data are becoming available (Ontario,
for example, boasts that 95.9 per cent of SMGs have completed their
self-assessments, 61 per cent of learning plan recommendations have
been completed, and 25 per cent of executives deemed as “Optimize
Now” were placed within six months of being ranked), no jurisdiction
has yet to undertake a comprehensive, rigorous evaluation of whether
their talent management regimes are succeeding at getting the right
people into the right place at the right times on an enterprise-wide level.
This is precisely the question that senior officials need to ask at this
point, and hopefully the next generation of talent will be able to answer
in the very near future.
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 45

Appendix 1. Talent maps for

Canada, Ontario and New
Brunswick, respectively
46 TED GLENN
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 47
48 TED GLENN

Appendix 2. Core talent competencies

At the centre of the individual assessment processes in executive model
regimes are sets of core talent competencies. The federal competencies are
formally set out by the OCHRO (2007) in the EX Qualification Standard
and are grouped into four categories:
1. Values and Ethics includes integrity in personal and organizational
practices, and respect for people and PS principles, including demo-
cratic, professional, ethical, and people values;
2. Strategic Thinking focuses on the ability to innovate through analysis
and ideas, and includes the ability to advise and plan based on analysis
of issues and trends, and appreciating how these link to the responsi-
bilities, capabilities and potential of the government;
3. Engagement includes the ability to develop goals, execute plans and
deliver results by engaging people, organizations and partners; and
4. Management Excellence includes the ability to deliver results by maxi-
mizing organizational effectiveness and sustainability in three main
areas: Action management (design and execution of plans and project);
People management (individuals and workforces); and Financial man-
agement (budget and assets).
Ontario uses a combination of four competencies (“specific and observ-
able knowledge, skills and behaviours associated with effective func-
tioning in a job”) and two personal attributes (“character qualities that
effective leaders possess”) to assess their senior managers. The compe-
tencies are:
1. Transforms: Leads change by identifying/acting on opportunities to
transform the OPS business and culture to meet the changing needs of
diverse clients, stakeholders and the public.
2. Delivers: Takes accountability and delivers excellent results for the OPS
by recognizing and using the diverse capabilities and talents of OPS
employees.
3. Inspires: Effectively communicates and demonstrates OPS vision and
values – leading by example, gaining consensus and motivating people to
action.
4. Connects: Builds and maintains respectful, ethical and trusting working
relationships and network of contacts with diverse range of individuals,
teams, partners, customers and other stakeholders.
The attributes are:
1. Integrity: Demonstrates high standards of integrity and ethical behav-
iour both privately and publicly, consistent with the OPS values, prin-
ciples and professional standards.
TALENT MANAGEMENT IN CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR 49

2. Self Awareness: Understands and is aware of one’s own emotions and

the impact that these emotions have on others; knows one’s own
strengths and development areas and uses this knowledge for personal
and professional growth.
Notes
1 While neither exhaustive nor thorough, a review of websites for the sixteen largest
municipal governments in Canada suggests that talent management programming does not
currently exist at the municipal level in Canada.
2 Note that a few federal government departments and professional communities have also
adopted TM frameworks consistent with the strategic model. Federal officials are in
currently in the process of documenting these initiatives.
3 At the lower EX 01–03 levels, the EX TM program is operated by HR units at the
departmental level using OCHRO tools and some administrative support. By 2009, 35 of 36
of core departments and agencies had met this commitment. (Canada, Clerk of the Privy
Council 2009).

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