Employee Retention and Recruitment

What do you call it when one sector of the economy has significant hiring advantages over other sectors? A labour monopoly or cabal? Criminal? Immoral? Undemocratic? Unethical? Unforgivable?

A tilted playing field.

“Flexible work policies help to retain employees in both the public and private sector,” he said. “Federal agencies see telework as an effective recruitment tool.”

“Trump’s RTO Mandate: Examining the Implications of Latest Policy Decision” is the title of a new Epoch Times article today. The above quote deserves a comment. A photo below shows a repose to RTO. This is a Canadian issue too!

Recruiting and Employment Retention.

I was a Professional Recruiter for 36 years and dealt with the permanent and contracted staffing needs of both government and non-government organizations of every shape and size.

In the private sector

Employee performance is of paramount importance for considerations of hiring and retaining productive employees in competitive market businesses operating under ‘profit & loss’ conditions. The decisions for hiring and staff dismissal are made by the line manager to whom the employee reports, backed of course, by other affected managers in other departments, by HR and by more senior levels of management. Ultimately, merit is the foremost factor in hiring decisions. Prospective employees are presented a job offer which they are free to accept or reject based on any aspect of the Employment Agreement.

If the Employment Agreement allows for remote working conditions, then the employee is free to exercise that policy as long as he or she can continue to meet the performance expectations of the manager.

If that policy is not available, the employer has every right to insist on employees working at the designated workplace. In the private sector, the owners are the boss.

The employer pays. The employee plays. Those are the rules.

If unacceptable, the worker if free to play elsewhere.

In the public sector

The “ownership” of a government organization is unclear.

• Can you claim that, as a Canadian taxpayer, you are an “owner” of the Federal Government?

• Can one say that your elected MP is able to effectively representative you as an “owner”?

• How much input have you had in the terms offered in the federal government’s Employment Agreements?

• If a RTO (return to office) policy was mandated to all government employees who have worked from home during and since the Covid years, would you support it?

• To the extent that “merit” is a measure of employee performance, is there any way to know if federal employees are living up to your expectations as an “owner” while working offsite?

Above are just a few questions.

During Covid, governments went on a staffing binge hiring hundreds of thousands of fortunate workers. Meanwhile, businesses laid off employees, cancelled contracts, shut their doors, and worse. Some of the fortunate ones were able to “tread water” while battling the effects of enforced, and often excessive, government mandates. Of course, all business owners and their employees continued to pay their taxes while government workers paid taxes too … which were funneled back towards paying their salaries, benefits, union dues and pension plans.

Obviously, government jobs offered substantial privileges over non-government employment.

Should the federal government be allowed to out-compete for-profit businesses for talent simply because they have many market advantages such as:

• guaranteed revenues from taxation,

• the ability to create policies that advantage them over business operators

• can exist under all economic conditions ensuring employment security

• Can ignore merit on employee performance and, instead, create hyper-woke, social justice policies to maintain their cultural Marxist workplaces?

The #1 PROBLEM in Canada today is TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT

The only solution to this problem is MUCH LESS GOVERNMENT.

NO GOVERNMENT should have this advantage.

“Federal agencies see telework as an effective recruitment tool.”