Issue 1/03 – 29 January 2003
Putting People First
The HR-Mil perspective
From Lieutenant-General Christian Couture
Assistant Deputy Minister (Human Resources-Military)
For the last two years, “Putting People First”
has been the top priority identified by the Chief of the Defence
Staff in his annual report.
 In
recent years, the CF has begun to more fully acknowledge the impact
of military service on personal lives. Concurrently, CF members
have been seeking increased flexibility in exercising personal choice.
These factors have led to an increased focus on individuals, and
some rethinking of previous one-size-fits-all policies.
Interpreted this way, Putting People First is a positive,
progressive principle to guide CF leaders in the many decisions
they must make at the individual, unit and corporate levels. A little
flexibility on the part of leaders and the organization can go a
long way toward maintaining morale and retaining personnel. Sound
judgment when dealing with exceptional cases is always preferable
to rigid implementation of bureaucratic policies.
However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the
needs and wishes of individuals may not always be consistent with
the good of the organization as a whole, and with our ability to
achieve our missions. This delicate balancing act sometimes requires
leaders to make tough choices – choices some individuals may
not like.
 National
Support Element personnel
By Combat Camera
CF members are a group
Putting People First does not mean the CF is obliged
to put every individual's personal wishes ahead of all other
considerations. Clearly, this would not be workable in any organization.
Nevertheless, the CF will, wherever feasible, give
serious consideration to individual requests. While each CF member
is important, his or her individual needs and desires must be considered
among those of other personnel, and weighed against organizational
and operational demands. What is best for any one individual is
not necessarily best for the unit, the regiment/squadron/ship, or
the CF as a whole.
Giving someone the posting he or she desires is the
simplest example: doing so almost inevitably means denying it to
someone else who wants the same posting. And that's saying
nothing about other considerations such as qualifications, succession
planning, and cost moves.
While the goal should always be to maintain processes
that are fair and transparent to all, inevitably some individuals
will not receive what they desire.
Putting People First should not be viewed solely from
the perspective of monetary factors (i.e., compensation and benefits),
either. We have seen, among other such factors, the pay raise, PLD,
and the post-combat reintegration allowance for personnel on deployments
who were unable to take leave to make a trip home. While some of
these initiatives were necessary in order to redress serious shortfalls
that had crept in during the '80s and '90s, Putting
People First is about much more than compensation and benefits.
 SLt
Kim Clarke
By Combat Camera
Five pillars of Putting People First
“I have a profound obligation to ensure your
well-being, to provide compassionate support to your families, to
train and educate you, to ensure your operational preparedness to
face any challenge – in short, to put you before all other
considerations,” CDS General Ray Henault wrote in a November
2002 CANFORGEN.
From this statement, we have extrapolated five pillars
constituting the principle of Putting People First:
The Vision
 Cpl
Phetdavone Sananikone
By Combat Camera
Leadership
Good leadership, at all levels, is fundamental to
the ability of the CF to exist and to carry out its missions. One
of our basic military HR principles states that vision, flexibility
and adaptability are integral to the development and sustaining
of an operationally effective CF culture.
Good leadership is also critical to our ability to retain our personnel.
The U.S. Gallup Organization, which has been conducting public surveys
for more than 25 years, recently concluded that people leave managers,
not organizations. More than a million survey responses show the
most important factor influencing how long people stay with an organization,
and how productive they are, is the relationship they have with
their immediate supervisors.
If we expect our personnel to continue to dedicate
themselves to the CF, and to risk their lives in combat, we must
provide them with the best possible leadership.
Accordingly, at the organizational level the CF has
developed the Officership 2020 and
NCM Corps 2020 leadership visions,
which are currently under implementation and will continue to evolve
in the years ahead. The Canadian Defence Academy (CDA) has been
established to provide overall co-ordination of a common CF professional
development program. As part of the CDA, the CF Leadership Institute
will provide the CF with a centre of excellence for leadership development.
At the individual level, it is incumbent upon all
leaders to conduct themselves responsibly, ethically, and with respect
for their personnel.
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 MCpl
Stephan Pepiot
By Combat Camera
Proper equipment
Implicit in Putting People First is providing them
with the tools and equipment they need to do their jobs safely and
effectively. While this does not mean the equipment needs to be
the newest available, it should be serviceable, reliable, and suited
to the task at hand. Equipment modernization programs, currently
the focus of considerable attention, are an important element of
putting our people first.
While acknowledging that there will always be both
external constraints and competing internal priorities, the provision
of proper equipment for our personnel is a fundamental moral obligation,
and key to the establishment of a high “operational”
quality of life (QOL).
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Proper training
The provision of timely and effective training is
also key to Putting People First, and the CF is engaged in a re-engineering
process to better support training.
As part of the process, a Distributed Learning Network
(DLN)—currently being established—is expected to provide
the technological basis for creating a continuous learning environment
for CF members. The DLN will reduce training costs, increase training
effectiveness, promote interoperability, and encourage greater compatibility
with other training and education organizations.
Under the auspices of the CDA, NCM leadership training
is in transition to Professional Military Education. The education
is cumulative over the five developmental periods and will result
in an NCM Corps able to communicate more effectively and think more
critically as part of the Defence Team.
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 Cpl
Pierre Desrosiers
By Combat Camera
Reasonable compensation
On a direct salary-to-salary basis, the CF is not
always able to compete with private sector organizations –
this was particularly evident during the hi-tech boom. We can, however,
provide our personnel with a reasonable standard of living, and
we can provide other benefits as part of a comprehensive strategy
including financial benefits (direct and indirect), work content,
affiliation, and career benefits.
When comparing salaries with the private sector, both
direct and indirect financial benefits must be considered. Direct
financial benefits include base, incentive, specialist and performance
pays, and all of the various allowances including PLD, clothing
upkeep, foreign service premiums, hardship and risk allowance, sea
duty allowance, flight pay, leave travel assistance… the list
goes on. Indirect financial benefits include health and dental care,
annual leave (often more generous than that in the private sector),
recreation programs and facilities, and pensions.
Work content comprises the satisfaction that comes
from work, and includes job responsibility, variety, challenge,
meaningfulness, autonomy, and teamwork. Affiliation refers to the
sense of belonging to a respected organization that shares your
values. Career benefits include the long-term opportunities for
development and advancement within the organization, and employment
security.
Much work has been done and progress continues to
be made in the areas of direct and indirect financial benefits,
but we must not lose sight of the importance of work content, affiliation,
and career benefits. We must work to improve these areas as well.
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 Pte
Amanda Head
By Combat Camera
Social support
Social Support covers a variety of programs and initiatives
such as health, well-being, and family support.
Reform of the military health-care system is a high
priority. CF members serve their country with unlimited liability,
and in return must be assured of good health care regardless of
where they serve. As part of the reform process, the CF is moving
to accredit all CF in-garrison clinics and to ensure that primary-care
teams are supported by diagnostic, mental health, and support services.
All personnel on long-term medical leave or in the process of being
released for medical reasons will be assigned a case manager, who
will ensure that proper treatment is co-ordinated by the military
medical system or through Veterans Affairs Canada.
Under the Strengthening the Forces initiative, the
CF Personnel Support Agency has hired Health Promotion Directors
at the base level to develop social wellness programs including
stress management, healthy families, anger management, and suicide
prevention. Recent changes to the Public Service Employment Act
allow for priority hiring of CF members medically released as a
result of a disabling injury or illness in a Special Duty Area.
Once again, the list of examples is extensive.
The Military Family Services Program, operating through
Military Family Resource Centres, provides information, support
and referrals to military families, and promotes health and social
well-being. Professional staff and volunteers provide programs in
five mandated areas: information and referrals, children and youth
(including deployment and emergency child care), education and QOL
(including assistance for Reservists' families, and spousal
employment assistance), volunteer development and involvement, and
crisis intervention.
In recent years, the amount of time CF members spend
away from home has become a concern. This “PERSTEMPO”
is not a phenomenon experienced only by CF members on deployed operations,
but refers to the overall accumulation of absences from home due
to overseas deployments, individual or unit training, and/or incremental
taskings. Through the Human Dimensions of Deployment Study, we are
measuring the impact of increased PERSTEMPO on CF members and their
families. The study results will be used to formulate a sustainable
PERSTEMPO policy striking a reasonable balance between the needs
of the CF and the needs of its members and their families.
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 MS
Diane Dupaul
By Combat Camera
The Vision
Putting People First certainly implies “taking
care of our people”, and from that perspective all of these
CF initiatives are important. However, Putting People First also
implies providing our members with the tools they require to be
successful in their primary responsibilities. It is from that perspective
that we must broaden the focus to include leadership, professional
development, training and equipment, and place a renewed focus on
operational QOL as a follow-on to recent QOL initiatives.
This is consistent with the HR-Mil Group's vision: Look after
our people, invest in them and give them confidence in the future.
All three elements of the vision are important, and
must be kept in balance if we are to meet our mission: to develop
and implement HR plans, policies and programs to recruit, develop
and retain people to effectively support the CF in operations and
meet the Defence Mission.
Military HR Strategy 2020
is a document describing an ongoing strategic HR process for the
CF. In it, we articulate 12 strategic objectives—leadership,
professional development, communication, recruitment, retention,
health, well-being, and others—to guide us in accomplishing
the HR mission. Our goal is to keep human concerns front and centre
in all aspects of CF planning and operations.
Considering the human implications of decisions before
they are implemented should become the norm. Adjustments will be
made, where necessary, to maintain the balance between the needs
of the organization and the needs of its members.
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