Ag department employees not happy campers?

Thursday, January 2, 2014

How does Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada rank as a department to work for in the federal public service?

Not highly, according to The Hill Times writer Jake Cole, who placed the department in the 40th spot out of 64 departments on a chart of the best and worst places to work in the federal public service. The chart was part of an article published on Sept. 23 about improving Canada's public service. The agriculture department scored 28 out of 100.

The top of the chart ranking the departments says "a perfect score of 100 would mean all employees are completely happy with their workplace." The best score, 63, was given to the Supreme Court of Canada, while Library and Archives Canada scored 15 and was dead last.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada disagrees with Cole. Spokesman Patrick Girard says by email that the department scored at or above public service averages in most questions dealing with employee perceptions of their workplace in the 2011 Public Service Employee Survey. Employees reported high levels of job satisfaction (89 per cent) and pride in their work (89 per cent), he says.

Interestingly enough, the source for the chart with Cole's article is the 2011 Public Service Employee Survey and the apparent contradiction isn't explained. Geoff Bowlby, director of special surveys for Statistics Canada, which  reviews government departments every three years on behalf of the Chief Human Resources Officer (part of Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat), says their survey doesn't rank departments or give an overall score. BF