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1. OPERATIONAL BUDGET REVIEWS FOR ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES - EXAMEN DES BUDGETS DE FONCTIONNEMENT DES SERVICES ADMINISTRATIFS -
SERVICES AUX EMPLOYÉS |
Committee Recommendation
That Council
approve the final 2008 Operational Budget of the Employee Services Branch, as
presented in the attached updated 2008 operating budget pages.
Recommandation du comité
Que le Conseil approuve le budget
final de fonctionnement de 2008 des Services aux employés, tel que présenté
dans les pages mises à
jour du budget de fonctionnement de 2008 ci-jointes.
Documentation
1. City Council report dated 15 February 2008
(ACS2008-CMR-CSE-0015).
2. Extract of Minute, 22 February 2008.
Report to / Rapport au :
Long Range Financial Plan Sub-committee
Sous-comité du plan financier à long terme
and Council / et au Conseil
Submitted by/Soumis par : City Council / le
Conseil municipal
Contact
Person/Personne ressource : Diane Blais,
Committee Coordinator / Coordonnatrice du comité
City
Clerk’s Branch / Direction du greffe
(613)
580-2424 x, 28091
Diane.Blais@Ottawa.ca
SUBJECT:
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OPERATIONAL BUDGET REVIEWS FOR ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES
- EMPLOYEE SERVICES |
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OBJET :
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EXAMEN
DES BUDGETS DE FONCTIONNEMENT DES SERVICES ADMINISTRATIFS - SERVICES AUX
EMPLOYÉS |
That the Long Range Financial Plan Sub-Committee recommend Council approve the final 2008 Operational Budget of the Employee Services Branch, as presented in the attached updated 2008 operating budget pages.
Que le Sous-comité du plan financier à long
terme recommande au Conseil d’approuver le budget final de fonctionnement de
2008 des Services aux employés, tel que présenté dans les pages mises à jour du budget de
fonctionnement de 2008 ci-jointes.
In December 2007, during its deliberations on the 2008 Budget, Ottawa City Council approved a motion calling on the Long Range Financial Plan (LRFP) to conduct operational budget reviews for administrative services.
At its 9 January 2008 meeting, Council considered and approved a subsequent motion, which amended the schedule for the LRFP’s review of the various branches.
In order to assist the LRFP in
its work, Financial Services staff has provided updated budget pages for the various branches being
reviewed. These pages have been revised
to reflect any changes approved by Council during its budget deliberations.
The budget pages for the Employee Services Branch are attached to this report and are numbered sequentially, however they also include the reference page to the 2008 Draft Budget document in case members of Council have made notes in their budget books and want to refer to them.
This item will be advertised in the local dailies as part of the Public Meeting Advertisement on Friday preceding the Long Range Financial Plan Sub-Committee Meeting.
Any changes approved by Council
will amend the City’s 2008 Operating Budget.
Document 1
- Updated
2008 Operating Budget Pages - Employee Services
Staff from the various branches to implement any changes approved by Council.
OPERATIONAL BUDGET REVIEWS FOR
ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES - EMPLOYEE SERVICES
EXAMEN DES BUDGETS DE
FONCTIONNEMENT DES
SERVICES ADMINISTRATIFS - SERVICES AUX EMPLOYÉS
ACS2008-CMR-CSE-0015 CITY WIDE / À
L'ÉCHELLE DE LA VILLE
Mr. J. Byrne,
Director of Employee Services, spoke to a PowerPoint slide presentation, which
served to provide the Committee with an overview of his branch’s mandate,
structure, performance measures, efficiency history, budget and risks. A copy of this presentation is held on file
with the City Clerk.
Mr. Plamondon discussed slide 8 of his presentation, which provided an overview of the review panel’s observations with respect to the Employee Services Branch. A copy of Mr. Plamondon’s presentation is held on file.
Members posed questions arising out of the presentations. The following summarizes the main points raised.
Mr. Byrne confirmed that compensation costs for his branch represented 83% of their budget and he advised that, since 2005, Employee Services had grown by approximately 20 FTEs.
Speaking to the percentage of branch budgets associated with compensation, Mr. Kirkpatrick indicated the figure varied from one branch to another. He acknowledged the role of managing human resource costs in terms of trying to manage the impact of budgetary pressures on tax rates and suggested there were several major components to that question; what services the City provided and to what extent management made use of in-house resources versus external resources or alternate service delivery mechanisms. He also referenced the collective agreements, which impacted on the amount of latitude the City had in terms of making decisions between internal versus external resources.
Responding to further questions, Mr. Kirkpatrick suggested the strategic branch review process would give Council an opportunity to look at the various lines of business, activity levels, outcomes and related costs. He indicated a report would be coming to the March meeting of the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee on the proposed process and schedule and that the first branch review would be in mid-2008.
Mr. Byrne reported that the Employee Services branch provided payroll services to the Ottawa Police Service and OCRI and he confirmed staff could look into the possibility of expanding it to other City agencies in order to achieve efficiencies.
With respect to the risk of client departments creating their own HR positions, Mr. Byrne indicated he was confident the City currently had a centralized HR function. However, he was not confident this would continue to be the case in the future. He noted client departments were satisfied with the services being provided but felt they were not getting enough and that services were not timely enough.
Responding to a question with respect to consolidating competitions in order to reduce transaction costs, Mr. Byrne reported that in 2006, the Branch had reduced the number of competitions from 1200 to 900 by identifying the most frequently posted positions and posting them semi-annually and that they were continuing to pursue such opportunities for savings.
Mr. Byrne indicated all employees were paid through direct deposit and that being paid by cheque was no longer an option.
The Director indicated the over-all budget for French language training was $385,000, which was completely separate from other budgets for staff training.
Mr. Byrne discussed the proposal to hire two safety officers, which represented cost avoidance in that the number of workplace accidents would go down, both through better educating management staff and through investigating accidents that did occur. He noted the two safety officers had not yet been hired but that he would take immediate action on it if the positions remained in his budget after Council’s final decision on March 26.
In reply to a question with respect to benchmarking, Mr. Kirkpatrick explained it was always difficult to find true comparators because of the many differences between one organization and another. Despite this, he felt it was important to make allowances for the differences and to continue to make comparisons. However, he suggested that in addition to make comparisons with other organizations, it was also important to make comparisons with previous years’ performance within the organization. In the Employee Services branch, he noted the year over year trend continued to be very positive, to the point where the City was risking efficiency over effectiveness. In terms of processing transactions, this branch’s capacity was getting tighter and tighter and it did not have the capacity to do the strategic work needed in order to meet the challenges going forward.
Responding to questions with respect to Labour relations and grievances, Ms. L. Hunt, Manager of Labour Relations, Human Rights & Employment Equity, noted grievances were largely driven by the union and that the City had to respond based on the substance of the grievances. She indicated that over the last two years, the branch had made a concerted effort to train managers, with respect to human rights and labour relations, so they could then better manage their people. She believed this training was partly responsible for the drop in grievance rates. However, she submitted that regardless of the grievance rate, there would be some costs involved and that this was part of dealing with a unionized workforce. She noted costs could rise, depending on the complexity of a grievance. She reported that coming out of amalgamation, the branch had seen a number of extremely complex grievances related to the newly amalgamated collective agreements and that these had been very expensive to litigate.
Ms. Hunt responded to further questions by indicating she did not have data on hand with respect to the percentage of the various types of grievances. However, she estimated about 30% related to disciplinary or harassment issues. She noted another significant portion related to staff not being awarded jobs they felt they should have gotten. She confirmed the number of grievances in recent years: 446 in 2007, 551 in 2006, 650 in 2005 and approximately 900 in 2004. She indicated staff reported to senior management on a quarterly basis with respect to the various stages of settlement of grievances and the percentage that went to arbitration, therefore this information could be shared with members of Council. She believed approximately 1.3% went to arbitration.
With respect to costs, Ms. Hunt confirmed that a portion of the Legal Services branch budget was associated with labour relations because they were responsible for paying the lawyers who argued the cases when it was necessary to go outside of the in-house legal group as well as the costs of the arbitration rooms. However, she could not confirm the amount.
Following this exchange, Councillor Hunter suggested that the LRFP consider striking a sub-committee to look at the area of labour relations in greater detail so that Council could get some satisfaction that things were on the right track.
Mr. Byrne indicated approximately 400 employees were currently on long term disability (LTDI), noting that many of these cases were inherited through amalgamation and were people with permanent disabilities waiting to move into retirement. He confirmed that the aforementioned figured included staff in Transit Services.
Councillor Hunter suggested this was another area where Council should receive more in‑depth information.
Responding to further questions, Mr. Byrne discussed the difference between Transit Services and other City departments in terms of the ability to replace employees on LTDI, the provisions of the various collective agreements in place, the impact on service delivery and the business risk associated with back-filling such positions. He indicated the various managers and / or directors would do a cost benefit analysis to determine whether or not to hire on a temporary basis to replace employees on LTDI.
Mr. Byrne indicated the efficiency target for his branch was $100,000 in 2008 and $85,000 in 2009. He advised that the reduction option identified in the budget pages was directly related to, and conditional on the over-all number of FTEs declining across the corporation. He explained the ratio was 1.48 FTE in Employee Services for every 100 FTEs corporate-wide.
Responding to questions with respect to staff in his branch, Mr. Byrne indicated they currently had 177 FTEs, which was an increase of three over 2007 and that they currently had one vacancy. He then provided a break-down of the increase requested in the 2008 budget, as outlined at pages 9 and 10 of the agenda package.
Speaking to the request for one-time funding to support the SAP de-customization, Mr. Byrne explained the scope and objectives of the initiative and expressed staff’s best intentions to have the work completed in 2008.
In response to a question with respect to the addition of two safety officers, he indicated this was requested under one-time funding because he could not guarantee the return on investment. Therefore, he would establish them on a temporary basis and measure the return to determine whether or not they should be made permanent.
Responding to questions with respect to opportunities related to technology, Mr. Byrne talked about establishing kiosks where staff who did not have office workstations could access electronic information at the beginning or at the end of their shifts. He advised that, with technological efficiencies, his branch would be better able to absorb the growth of the corporation and that, if the corporation did not grown, then he would need less staff.
Speaking to future automation initiatives / requests, Mr. Byrne indicated that this year, staff would be prioritising these in terms of the ones that would give the biggest bang for the investment. Therefore, Council would know what the next project would be and its estimated impact on the corporation.
Responding to a question from Mayor O’Brien with respect to what he could live without next year if Committee and Council were to cut from his budget, Mr. Byrne submitted his branch was not even making the grade in terms of providing services to the City’s employees and management team. Therefore, any cut would have an effect on service delivery.
Councillor Wilkinson noted that at the last meeting, Committee took something out of each branch’s budget and she did not think anyone should be off the hook. Therefore, she recommended taking $160,000 out of the Employee Services branch budget.
Councillor El-Chantiry wanted assurances that the motion would not result in the branch not hiring the two safety officers.
Councillor Wilkinson maintained that her motion spoke to a dollar figure, not FTEs.
Committee then voted on the budget, as presented.
That the Long Range Financial Plan Sub-Committee recommend Council approve the final 2008 Operational Budget of the Employee Services Branch, as presented in the attached updated 2008 operating budget pages.
CARRIED