bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1989), p. 3
Officially, we are the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers. But in the recent past, I believe we may have been placing too much emphasis on our uncredited union title to the detriment of our professional interests.
There have been indisputable reasons behind our more militant actions, if only to redress our image as a “paper tiger union”. But more important, it has been necessary to fight for better returns from collective bargaining by going, for the first time in the Association’s history, to arbitration during the 1985 contract negotiations and mediation during the 1987 round of negotiations. We have also been forced to go to third party adjudication on a number of key issues, such as performance pay, to ensure that the economic interests of our members were fully protected. To stem the corrosive effects of too many political appointments, we’ve had no choice in recent years but to go public.
I believe that our actions have gained us the respect we need to be able to effectively defend the legitimate union interests of the Association. Certainly, as an Association we should continue to be firm on union issues. But at the same time, I also believe the time has now come to pay greater attention to the “professional” in our title.
The professional issues facing us are often not as tangible as the results of collective bargaining, but they are every bit as important to us. This is especailly true in a era where the diplomat’s role is rapidly evolving as a result of technological change and the reality of the global village. As Canadian diplomats, we must deal not only with a vast array of countries and regions which are vital to our future. We must also respond and react to a host of other global issues, such as the environment.
At the same time we, the working level professional diplomats, are being asked to respond to such issues with reduced resources and smaller budgets. To my mind, this means that as an Association, we must ensure that the Department efficiently and effectively manages its human resources. And to be quite frank, I think the Department has a dismal record on this score.
I have not heard anyone in the Department disagree with the statement that human resources are the most important asset the Department has. The reality is that the Department pays only lip service to this principle at best.
Career planning, for example, is almost non existent. We should all be appalled that we have a personnel division whose primary mandate is bashing square pegs into round holes, although to their credit they often manage to bash round pegs in round holes. The soundest piece of advice that can be given to a new officer by his colleagues about his or her career is to say “never assume that the system has a plan for you, look out for yourself”. When was the last time your assignment officer discussed with you your career prospects and interests? And yet people seriously wonder why many officers end up embittered, and essentially useless to the Department, because they followed a career path that was entirely motivated by promotion. No one ever bothered to manage their careers otherwise.
I do not blame the personnel divisions for this sorry state of affairs, for they must manage the best they can with the meager resources that they are given. Moreover, personnel divisions officers rarely have training in personnel management. No, the fact is, that it is the responsibility of senior management to take an active interest in the management of human resources. Did you know that corporation such as Esso and the Bank of Montreal, companies that are after all driven by the bottom line and not some innate desire to make employees feel cared about, have CEOs who spend over 50 percent of their time on the management of human resources?
Why? Because they realize that their human resources are their most valuable asset and to get the most out of them, they need to nurture and tend them. I believe that the first positive step in that direction is to begin a real process of career planning for the officer corps.
A second critical area of human resource management lies in training and development which one would hope would be a key element of career planning.
Again, a look at the Department’s track record is revealing. The training and development programs offered by the department are woefully inadequate. Did you know that it has been three years since the Department sent an officer on full time education leave? As for new recruits, I do not think I exaggerate when I say that ESIDs are little more than cheap cannon fodder.
PAFSO is currently in the process of putting together a proposal on training and development. We believe that, even without additional money for the program, significant improvements can be made. At the moment, there is not even a coherent program for training and development that ensures an officer is exposed to training programs throughout his career, whether it relates to very basic issues such as changes in consular policy or sending an officer on a highly specialized training program.
PAFSO is committed to putting forward positive proposals on these questions because we believe it is in everyone’s interest to do a better job of managing human resources. There is however a third point that must be raised. It is time for officers themselves to examine their attitudes to these questions. In many respects the corporate culture of the Department has ingrained the very problems I have described above into the officers themselves. When was the last time you sat down with your manager to have a serious chat about your performance, interests and long-term aspirations? And I don’t mean just at rating report time. We as an Association, and you as members, must begin to show management that we do deeply care about the system and providing the best delivery possible. And that means making sure management realizes that it is upon us, the professional working level diplomats, that the system relies at the end of the day to get the job done.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1989), p. 3. Read the rest of this issue →
