Area Summary: Workforce Planning

Relevant Audits

Examples of Audit Objectives

• To assess whether the Ministry, in conjunc­tion with the Agency, had adequate systems and procedures in place to:
  • identify and assess the appropriateness of the mix, supply, and distribution of qualified health care professionals to help meet the current and future needs of Ontarians across the province;
  • ensure that strategy initiatives were delivered in accordance with established regulatory requirements, applicable directives and poli­cies, and agreements; and
  • measure and report regularly on the progress of the strategy’s objectives. (View report summary)

• To assess if Sunrise Regional Health Authority had adequate processes for scheduling required nursing staff for patient care in its healthcare facilities, including managing labour costs relating to overtime. (View report summary)
• To determine whether the Department of Human Resources and selected departments have adequately managed their human resource needs, including meeting the objective of a representative public service. (View report summary)
• To assess whether SES has a sustainable volunteer workforce, with effective strategies to attract, retain and train volunteers. ('Sustainable' means a workforce that is reliable, replenishable, responsive and sufficient to meet expected demand). (View report summary)

Examples of Audit Criteria

• The Department of Human Resources and selected departments have collected and analyzed appropriate information related to their current and estimated future workforce and human resource capacity gaps. (View report summary)
• Departmental and government-wide planning documentation adequately identified how current and future human resource capacity and a representative workforce would be addressed. (View report summary)
• The Department of Human Resources’ staffing policies are responsive to the human resource needs of selected departments, including Inuit employment. (View report summary)
• The Department of Human Resources and selected departments have adequate staffing practices to fill the workforce gaps, including Inuit employment. (View report summary)
• SES has the workforce it needs to prepare for, and respond to emergencies and disasters. (View report summary)

Examples of Evidence Gathering and Analysis Techniques

• Reviewed relevant legislation, administrative policies and pro­cedures, and interviewed staff at the Ministries of Health and Long-Term Care and Training, Colleges and Universities. (View report summary)
• Spoke with a number of external stakeholders in the province. Also spoke to representatives of other jurisdictions to gain an under­standing of how health human resource planning is done in those provinces.(View report summary)
• Fieldwork – Undertook fieldwork in nine public bodies. This involved:
  • A review of plans and documents on workforce planning at an organizational level, and for up to three services at each fieldwork site. (View report summary)
  • Interviews with:
    • the chief executive
    • the head of finance or appropriate colleague
    • the head of HR
    • heads of a sample of services that had been through workforce change
    • trade union representatives
    • other appropriate officers. (View report summary)
• Survey – Issued a data return to all 32 councils, all 22 special and territorial health boards and a sample of 26 central government bodies. Asked for information on their workforce, the approaches they used to manage workforce costs, their use of early departure schemes, and their future staff numbers and costs. (View report summary)
• Conducted an anonymous survey of more than 800 non-unionized staff (response rate of more than 80%). The objective of the survey was to identify common employee concerns about OPG’s Human Resources Practices. (View report summary)
• Engaged an independent consultant with expertise in human resources in the energy sector. (View report summary)

Examples of Findings

• Overall, Ontario has seen an 18% increase in physicians from 2005 to 2012 and a 10% increase in nurses from 2006 to 2012. While the initiatives increased enrolment, created more postgraduate training positions and attracted more doctors and nurses from other jurisdictions, Ontario has not met its goal of having the right number, mix and distri­bution of physicians in place across the province to meet the population’s future health-care needs. (View report summary)
• The Agency provides temporary physician or “locum” coverage in eligible communities across the province to support access to care. However, vacancy-based locum programs meant as short-term measures continued to be used for long periods of time. (View report summary)
• Over four fiscal years, $309 million was dedicated to hir­ing 9,000 new nurses. While the system was unable to hire that many nurses in the four years, it had increased the number of nurses by more than 7,300 and the Ministry was on track to achieve its goal within five years. (View report summary)
• Although the physician forecasting model built in partnership with the Ontario Medical Association was a positive step in determining physician workforce requirements, it is ham­pered by the limited reliability and availability of data. These limitations make planning the optimal number, mix and distribution of phys­icians with appropriate funding, training and deployment difficult. (View report summary)
• Ontario Power Generation (OPG) initiated a Business Transformation project in 2010. Its target is to reduce staffing levels by 2,000 employees through attrition by 2015. Between January 2011 and April 2013, OPG had reduced its staff by about 1,200 employ­ees. Although OPG projects that it will meet its target by the end of 2015, with the number of staff it needs to operate expected to drop by almost 50% by 2025, the auditors believe it will continue to face signifi­cant challenges in making necessary adjustments. (View report summary)
• OPG’s overall staffing levels have gone down by 8.5%, but the size of its executive and senior management group (directors, vice presidents and above) has increased by 58% (from 152 in 2005 to 238 in 2012). Many respondents to the survey questioned the rationale of reducing overall staffing levels while creating a “top-heavy” organization. (View report summary)
• OPG has reduced staffing levels at its nuclear facilities since 2011. Even after cuts, one of the most overstaffed areas in 2013—facility maintenance, janitorial and custodial servi­ces—was still 170% (or 187 staff) above the industry benchmark based on data from other nuclear operators in North America. Some operational functions continue to be under­staffed while their associated support func­tions continue to be significantly overstaffed. (View report summary)
• OPG’s total overtime costs were about $148 million in 2012. Although they have declined somewhat in recent years, the number of OPG employees earning more than $50,000 in overtime pay has doubled since 2003, from about 260 to 520 in 2012. The perception of many respondents to the survey was that poor planning and scheduling led to unnecessary overtime. (View report summary)
• The Regional Health Authority had adequate processes to schedule required nursing staff for patient care in its healthcare facilities including managing labour costs relating to overtime except for its processes to review and approve nursing staff timesheets, identify causes of overtime costs, and implement strategies to address overtime costs. (View report summary)
• Except in the Department of Education with respect to teaching positions, the departments have either not gathered or not analyzed the information that would tell them what qualifications and skills they have in their current workforce. They also lack information on how many people they need, with what qualifications and skills, to deliver their programs and services and meet their objectives. As a result, they are unable to develop plans for filling the gaps in capacity over the short, medium, and long terms. (View report summary)
• Over a two-year period, almost half of the staffing competitions undertaken were unsuccessful in selecting a qualified candidate, and the reasons why have not been analyzed. Departments have also used temporary hiring practices to fill permanent positions, which may provide a short-term solution but creates additional staffing work and uncertainty in the future. (View report summary)
• In view of the Government’s goal of attaining a representative public service, the selected departments have put forward initiatives such as training and development programs to increase the representativeness of their workforce. However, the initiatives were not enough to achieve the 2010 interim target. In addition, it is clear that representativeness will not be achieved in each occupational category by 2020. (View report summary)
• State Emergency Services (SES) cannot be assured that it has sufficient volunteers to respond to future demands. It does not have strategies to establish what volunteers it needs and how to recruit, retain and train them effectively and efficiently. (View report summary)
• SES regions recently restarted capability planning to estimate the volunteer workforce needed to manage the threats faced by each locality. Preliminary results show significant gaps between what some regions need and have. SES has yet to determine how these regional plans will be distilled into an SES-wide workforce plan to inform recruitment and training priorities. (View report summary)
• Each of the nine fieldwork bodies planned, at a service level, when changing their workforces. National Health Services bodies also produce single organization-wide plans, bringing together their service-level workforce plans. (View report summary)
• Eight fieldwork bodies had used an early departure scheme but none had fully tested their schemes before using them. Fieldwork bodies did not routinely collect information on the costs and savings of their workforce change programs. (View report summary)
• Only 58 of the 80 public bodies surveyed were able to predict workforce numbers and costs for 2014-15. (View report summary)

Examples of Recommendations

• To better meet the health-care needs of Ontar­ians, the Ministry, in conjunction with the Agency, should:
  • compare the existing mix and distribution of physicians across the province to patient needs and consider what measures it can take to reduce any service gaps;
  • continue to work with medical schools and associations to encourage more medical students to select fields of study and geographic areas in which to practice that are in demand; and
  • assess the effectiveness of its various phys­ician initiatives in meeting the health-care needs of underserved areas. (View report summary)
• To provide reasonable and reliable forecasts of the requirements for physicians and nurses and to better ensure effective health human resources planning, the Ministry should conduct assessments of employment trends, the supply and projected needs for health services, and the associated health workforce requirements to best meet those needs cost-effectively. (View report summary)
• To ensure that staffing levels are reasonable and that it has the right people in the right positions to meet its business needs, OPG should:
  • evaluate and align the size of its executive and senior management group with its over­all staffing levels; and
  • address the imbalances between overstaffed and understaffed areas in its nuclear oper­ations. (View report summary)
• To ensure that its non-regular and contract resources are used cost-efficiently, OPG should improve its succession planning, knowledge retention and knowledge transfer processes to minimize the need to rehire retired employees for extended periods. (View report summary)
• To ensure that overtime hours and costs are minimized and monitored, OPG should decrease overtime costs for outages by plan­ning outages and arranging staff schedules in a more cost-beneficial way. (View report summary)
• The Department of Human Resources, in collaboration with the other selected departments, should:
  • identify key skill sets and qualifications that departments need in the short, medium, and long terms;
  • determine what skill sets and qualifications they have now;
  • determine the extent to which gaps exist at both the department- and government-wide levels, by identifying how many people they need and what specific skill sets and qualifications are needed in the short, medium, and long terms;
  • identify the underlying factors that affect the ability to fill gaps in capacity and analyze to what extent these factors represent chronic problems; and
  • assess the underlying causes of the common gaps in key skill sets and qualifications identified across departments. (View report summary)
• Where ongoing gaps in specific skill sets and qualifications exist at the departmental level, the Department of Human Resources, in collaboration with the other selected departments, should develop and implement strategies to address these gaps in the short, medium, and long terms. (View report summary)
• The Department of Human Resources, in collaboration with the other selected departments, should develop and implement a strategy for each occupational category in which representativeness has not yet been attained. (View report summary)
• The Department of Human Resources, in collaboration with the other selected departments, should identify ways to reduce the use of temporary staffing practices to fill permanent positions. This should include reviewing its existing staffing policies and determining whether additional policies are needed. (View report summary)
• NSW State Emergency Service should establish clear priorities, integrate initiatives and improve monitoring to better manage and support volunteers. To do this, SES should:
  • By December 2014, improve analysis and reporting on management information about volunteers, including:
    • numbers, contribution, skills, profile, availability and turnover
    • reasons for joining and leaving
    • gaps in data completeness and quality
  • By December 2014, develop a volunteer workforce plan to focus resources for recruitment and retention on areas of greatest need. The plan should be based on regional capability plans that assess in a consistent way:
    • how many volunteers they have and need
    • the gaps and risks around volunteer numbers, skills and training.
  • By April 2015, update its recruitment guidelines and resources, and support units in better targeting recruitment. (View report summary)
• The Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities should:
  • provide strategic guidance on how bodies can redesign services and work better together to jointly plan and deliver services.
  • improve strategic planning of public sector workforces to identify and plan for future skills needs, gaps and challenges across the public sector. (View report summary)
• Where they have not already done so, councils, the NHS, the Scottish Government and central government bodies should:
  • develop and use organization-wide workforce plans, informed by a series of service or departmental plans that are consistent in their structure and content.
  • Senior managers and boards or elected members should scrutinize and monitor these plans;
  • collect information on the costs and net savings from their workforce programs and report these details to boards and elected members; and
  • forecast expected staff numbers, skill needs and costs on a rolling three-year basis, using scenario planning where necessary. (View report summary)

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