Salgo: Public servants are happy in their work. But can they meet Carney's new demands?

Ottawa Citizen

a day ago

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Earlier this year, I suggested in an Ottawa Citizen column that a tough economic and fiscal environment might not make this the best time for public servants to whine about their jobs. Since then, Canada has elected a new prime minister with an ambitious — one might almost say transformative — agenda, and he in turn has named a new head of the public service committed to ensuring that Canada's bureaucrats deliver on that agenda. The word on the street is that there will be some new faces at the top and not much tolerance for those who don't deliver.
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Fortunately, the results of the most recent Public Service Employee Survey (PSES), conducted in 2024 and just released, don't disclose much whining. While job satisfaction among federal bureaucrats is down from COVID days, the large majority of public servants like and are proud of their work, at least on a level comparable to that of other Canadians.
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I know I'm painting with a broad brush. But I'm comparing PSES results to studies of Canadian workers as a whole, compiled at roughly the same time by Statistics Canada and the widely used ADP Canada Happiness at Work Index (HAWI). While these surveys all use different methodologies and sample sizes (e.g., close to 190,000 for the PSES versus 1,200 monthly for the HAWI), for the most part they compare oranges to oranges.
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According to the PSES, 77 per cent of public servants responded positively to the statement 'overall I like my job.' This is consistent with StatsCan's report that 80 per cent of Canadian workers, both government and non-government, rated their jobs seven or higher on a scale of zero to 10, with an identical average rating of 7.7 out of 10. The overall HAWI score for Canadian employees, arrived at somewhat differently, was lower, at 7.0, but broadly in the same ballpark.
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What's more, public servants generally take a lot of pride in their work, with 82 per cent saying they're proud of what they do — down from 86 per cent in 2020 but still impressive. Most also report a high level of satisfaction with their immediate supervisors, 80 per cent being satisfied with the supervision they receive. And perhaps not surprisingly, job security does not emerge as a big issue for most of them, although this is probably not the case for term and casual workers.
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These things said, the PSES highlights a fair number of frustrations that the new government should fix if it wants to deliver on its agenda. Of course, there are specific issues such as access to language training and endless woes with the Phoenix pay system. But I'm talking mostly about concerns that are more systemic, cultural and longstanding. For example, large numbers of government employees struggle with complex business processes (think procurement and staffing); excessive approval stages; and constantly changing priorities, with roughly 70 per cent finding these to be problems at least some of the time.