Thank you, Ms. Lee. Does committee agree to go back to 2-96?

Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In my general comments I talked about a number of things that I'm expecting this new department to do, and I spoke on my general comments on many issues and I see that reading the activity description of various sections, especially this one, a lot of what I stated is already covered here, so I think that's a good indication for me, but I'd like to know specifically on exit interviews and some of the things. I'd like to just have a better idea about what the department is proposing to do with regard to that, and also I'd like to give a chance to the Minister to respond to any of the general comments I made. I don't know if there was anything there because Minister's weren't answering to the general comments, or they weren't asked to. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this section, corporate human resource services, is now going to fall under the corporate human resources section later on, but, again, it's the same area. So I guess dealing with it now would save us the time of dealing with it later.

The issue of exit surveys, it is done, it is in place, has been in place for a couple of years. It is an optional process. So we do ask individuals to do this and if they feel they want to, then they can. If they don't feel like they want to, then they don't. I guess that's the simple and short of it.

The area of pension specialists and dealing with some of these backlogs, yes, we've had somebody on from superannuation to work with us in this area to help deal with our backlog and help us set up our systems and correct...The Government of the Northwest Territories is no longer the number one employer. In fact, we're having to compete in an ever-increasing competitive market, as a number of Members have stated, of trying to pull skilled people in and come up with that. The area of how do we bring people in and bring them up the line is something we definitely need to work on. It's an area that we've identified. Affirmative action is another one of those areas that is an area that we know there is a need to focus on. There's been much debate about it in past governments. Since I've been a Member since the 13th Assembly it's been one of those areas, and we're hoping in the next couple of months to be able to bring something forward for discussion with Members about where we would go with this piece, the employment equity, affirmative action piece, and the work as well would deal with individuals within the North that feel they are maybe under serviced and that one being the disabilities group of people in the Northwest Territories. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done. We've identified them. We've set up what is the start of some of these areas that are going to go forward on, but, unfortunately, being caught and trying to catch up with a backlog of files has delayed some of the work and the timing we were hoping to proceed with this. Hopefully with this work that's being done with the Hackett Group, and our systems, and how we deal with these issues, and how many times we handle a piece of paper will help us in streamlining some of these things and get us back on track. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A short follow-up and that is that I do appreciate that there has been lots of movements back and forth and a lot of logistics and lots of difficulties that come with amalgamating a department and having people move from one position to another and such. So I can understand how it might take us still awhile to get everything running smoothly. But having said that, we only have about a year-and-a-half left in this mandate, and I think it's the desire of everybody here to see this move along fairly significantly. I do understand that we're putting a lot of pressure on this department and I am hearing from the ground here that employees here are going through a lot of stress. I mean, when you're doing what they're doing, it's quite understandable and I would like to encourage the management to give as much support as possible to the employees and sort of listen to their needs, as well. So I want to state that. So I don't want to say that I'm not aware that there are issues and problems, but in focusing on the bigger picture, I think this is an important work.

But I do want to talk about the exit interviews. I do understand that we can't make people do things, especially employees that are leaving because we don't really have any incentive, but I would like the Minister to make a commitment to see what's the best practice in the field that's out there about how do bigger employers...I mean, human resource management is not a small field and things change all the time, there are lots of experts in the area, lots of best practices, and I'd like to ask the Minister to see if he could inquire in working out...I know we're working out a new human resource policy, I mean there's still a lot more work to do, but somewhere in there I'd like incorporated, and the management to address their mind, too, what can we do to do an ongoing review about the morale or where the employees are and what can we do to encourage the exit interviews. Even if they don't do it, you could ask 100 people and if 20 come back, that's how the surveys are. But I think it all depends on how you promote it, how you market it, how you encourage the employees to fill that out.

So this is an area of huge interest to me and I would like to ask the Minister to give some thought to it and have his people look at it and see what other options are available. It doesn't have to be an exit interview or survey. There could be other things out there that I am not aware of. I would be very interested in having more discussions on that. I just want to state that. Thanks.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct in the areas that we need to focus on and try to get some feedback on. One of the pieces with the...(inaudible)...is something we think will help us identify some of these areas. As well, something we joined in other jurisdictions with was the employee satisfaction survey. It was established across a number of jurisdictions and a survey was done. We hope to have the results of that survey in about a month or month-and-a-half. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Page 2-96.

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