The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
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REPORT OF THE Training and Education Committee

Presented to the 98th Annual General Meeting

By-Law 17.8.2 provides for the Training and Education Committee mandate as follows:

TEC shall be responsible for advising and making recommendations to the Board on any issue relating to the provision of services to individual members, and for providing advice to the Board concerning activities such as the Institute training program and the recruitment and training of Stewards.

I would like to thank the members of the Training and Education committee for their dedication and hard work this past year. The work of the committee depended on your commitment and you did not disappoint. The 2017 committee consisted of:

Peter MacDougall, BC/Yukon
Kieth Laing, Prairies/NWT
Peter Jozsa, Ontario
Robert Tellier, Quebec
Gordon Bulmer, NCR
Manny Costain/ Carolyn Hynes, Atlantic.

Staff Resources: Nancy Lamarche, Ivana Saula and Audrey Joyal.

TEC meets on average four times a year. This past year, we have met more than 4 times, due to complexity of the task assigned to the committee this year. Before getting into the new goal of the committee for 2017, an update on last year’s goals will be provided.

  • The “Duty to Accommodate” pamphlet was reviewed and updated where appropriate and the new version is available on the web page and as a pamphlet.
  • The online prerequisite for the Basic training has been reviewed as each region was completing their basic training sessions during the year, one item that was noted the required pass mark was too high. The majority of new stewards who were not passing on their first try were receiving a score within 10 marks of the required mark. Thus the committee has agreed that the pass mark be lowered by 10 points for a more fair expectation.
  • Steward development is still ongoing and is closely related to the new goal of the committee.
  • The mandate of the committee was reviewed and resulted in a name change that was approved at the 97th AGM. The name now more reflects the work that the committee does during the year.
  • Mental Health fact sheets were set as a priority for the year and in October PIPSC launched the Mental Health Resource Guide that the committee along with the Education staff developed during the year.

For 2017, TEC was tasked with reviewing the current training model and make recommendations to improve our training program. This was done in many steps. We broke down the process to five sections:

 

  1. Outreach/Consultation
  2. Format/Structure
  3. Determination of Success
  4. Content
  5. Process

Outreach/consultation was done in a variety of forms throughout the year. The regional training chairs would tasked with discussing training needs and delivery with their regional training committee and their executives. They are making presentations on the newly defined Role of the Steward at their respective Steward Councils this fall. AS chair of the committee I met with the Separate Employers Group, the Working Group on Consultation and the Advisory Council on a few occasions to gain their opinions on PIPSC training and also to gauge what they consider their needs to be in the way of training. A survey was conducted of the membership on training. The EROs in the regions were also consulted with on their ideas of training within the union. All of this was presented to the Board and approved in principle to continue with the work that will revamp the Education and Training of our stewards and members within PIPSC.

It was discussed how to deliver the actual topics and it was agreed that curriculum would be categorized and delivered in the following ways:

- By theme/topics (3 days)
- Series (National Training – 7 days)
- Stand Alone (.5 - 1 day)
- E-Learning.

Determination of success has not been fully looked at as of yet. Currently the model that PIPSC employs for training, measures success based on the number of stewards trained in a year and not on whether we are meeting the needs of the stewards that would enable them to be better union representatives in the workplace.

The content and process are still to be worked on. The committee realizes that this will be an ongoing process for probably the next 3-5 years to get training where it needs to be for our union and even then it will be an evergreen program that will consistently change to meet the needs of our stewards and members.

While the training revamp has been the main focus of the committee in 2017, we also discuss the training within our regions and share our best practices with each other.

Respectfully submitted in solidarity

Kimberley Skanes
Director, Atlantic Region
Chair of Training and Education