Tag: Public policy

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some injured workers do not file for workers’ compensation claims. This article provides evidence of this under-reporting, based on a national survey of Canadian workers. Forty percent of workers who had experienced an injury elibible for workers’ compensation had not filed a claim. Policy makers therefore need to do more to ensure that all relevant parties are aware of their obligations to report work injuries.

Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) convened in 2002 a national workshop in Ottawa to develop quality of worklife indicators for nurses in Canada. Using a collaborative, consensus-building process the workshop actively engaged participants in identifying a set of practical quality of worklife indicators (QWI) that will make a measurable difference for professional nurses. The workshop’s major recommendation is that these indicators be incorporated into the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation (CCHSA) Achieving Improved Measurement (AIM) standards used for accrediting healthcare organizations.
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Much of the debate about enhancing the employability skills of Canadian youth is premised on untested assumptions. This paper examines Alberta high school students’ self-reports of the employability skills they have acquired in high school courses, formal work experience programs, paid part-time employment, and volunteer work. Certain types of employability skills are considerably more likely to be acquired in some settings than in others. Most students do not see the labour market relevance of analytic skills or of a basic high school education. In addition, the skills that employers typically indicate they are seeking are not the same as the skills that students believe employers want. Such findings suggest that the different stakeholders may not be communicating effectively with each other. In particular, educators and employers must demonstrate more clearly to students the link between core secondary school curriculum and employment outcomes.
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This paper examines changes in employment relationships in Canada during the late 20th century. Despite well documented transformations in labour market structures and work contexts, we are only now grasping the significance of these trends for the relationships between workers and employers. Considerable debate revolves around the extent and nature of new employment relationships. Still, it is clear that fewer workers fit the historical benchmark of the post-WWII ‘standard employment model’. Consequently, the labour and employment policy framework fashioned during the post-war decades no longer meets the needs of an increasingly differentiated workforce. Furthermore, the current policy emphasis on learning and skills for innovation and productivity requires a fuller understanding of how trust, communication and other elements of employment relationships mediate human capital development. The ideal focus for the next generation of labour policy must be the workplace, which is where relationships among coworkers and between workers and management can either hinder or enable the achievement of major social and economic goals.
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Health human resources have emerged as a top priority for research and action. This paper echoes calls for a fundamentally new approach to the people side of the health care system – treating employees as assets that need to be nurtured rather than costs that need to be controlled. The question guiding the paper is: “What are the key ingredients of a high-quality work environment in Canada’s health care sector and how can this goal be achieved?” Synthesizing insights from a variety of research streams, the paper identifies many ingredients are needed to create a high-quality workplace. We take a multidisciplinary and holistic approach, which complements other research initiatives on health human resources in three ways. The paper suggests that health care organizations can, and must, achieve a virtuous circle connecting work environments, individual quality of work life, and organizational performance.
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Participants at the National Roundtable on Learning, convened by Canadian Policy Research Networks on behalf of Human Resources Development Canada, proposed a Vision for Learning as a way to address the widely expressed concern at the Roundtable that Canada is not moving fast enough to increase learning opportunities and to remove barriers to learning. Acknowledging our past successes in education, the vision is a strong commitment that learning in the future must occur throughout a person’s life.
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Canada’s governments want to become “employers of choice.” Many are striving to be more flexible, knowledge-intensive and learning-based. Reaching these goals will require nothing short of a bold new human resource strategy that can promote change within each government workplace – a strategy that encourages innovative ways of organizing, managing, supporting and rewarding people. How a government meets these challenges will determine its success in providing citizens with the high quality services they need and want. This is the main conclusion from the Canadian Policy Research Networks’ Human Resources in Government (HRG) Project, which examines the impact of extensive downsizing and restructuring in the public service during the 1990s in five jurisdictions (the federal government and the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia). While much remains to be done, we found pockets of innovation within the five governments studied in the HRG Project. These work units have moved away from the traditional bureaucratic model of work toward a new more flexible model. What is significant about this direction for workplace reform is its potential to integrate two key objectives: improved quality of work life and more effective public services, both of which are essential for revitalizing government.
(published in both English and French)
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This paper argues that union attitudes and behaviour are important but neglected features of the school–work transition process. Using longitudinal panel data from a study of high school and university graduates in three Canadian cities, we examine how young people’s previous union membership, attitudes and educational, labour market and workplace experiences shape their willingness to join unions. This paper establishes that views about unions are emergent during youth, solidifying with age and experience. The implications of these findings for industrial relations, school–work transitions research and labour movement organizing are discussed.

Response to the Business Council on National Issues statement on competitiveness, arguing that quality workplaces are critical to this agenda.
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The people rhetoric of the ‘Alberta Advantage’ is weak in practice. Needed is a more human resource-intensive economic developement strategy in the province of Alberta. This means creating workplaces where learning, innovation and skill can more fully contribute to productivity and competitiveness.
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