Survey of Staffing

Detailed information for May to November 2007 (pilot survey)

A fundamental objective of the Survey of Staffing is to augment the Public Service Commission's (PSC) staffing information with key data on appointment processes, staffing strategy, area of competition, etc. One of the Public Service Commission's roles is to oversee the overall integrity of staffing processes in the federal Public Service. The information gathered by the survey will contribute to a government-wide perspective of staffing needs and will help to identify areas for improvement to the staffing system.

Data release - Results from this pilot survey will be used by Statistics Canada to prepare for the first cycle of collection for the main survey. They will not be made publicly available.

• Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s)
• Description
• Data sources and methodology

Description

The Survey of Staffing is the newly adopted name for the Survey of Appointments. The Public Service Commission has been conducting the Survey of Appointments since 2000 as a means of monitoring the state of staffing in the public service. With the coming into force of the new Public Service Employment Act (PSEA), it became apparent that the PSC needed to expand the scope of its survey activity both to meet their obligations under the legislation and to provide a richer set of data for analysis of the staffing system under the new PSEA.

The information gathered by the survey will contribute to a government-wide perspective of staffing needs and will help to identify areas for improvement to the staffing system. It will also be useful in providing information to identify any changes needed to the PSEA, and or related policies when the legislation is revisited in 2010.

Reference period: Pilot: The six months prior to the collection period.

Subjects

• Employment and remuneration
• Government

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The survey has two components. The target population for the first component consists of the public service employees who are working for a department that has at least 401 employees. The target population for the second component consists of the public service managers (working for a department that has at least 401 employees) who managed at least one staffing process in the six month reference period. Excluded from this definition for the purposes of this survey are staffing processes for deployments, casual, consulting and acting positions; group and/or level changes resulting from reclassification of a position for a number of employees at once; incumbent-based promotions; promotions arising from the completion of a specific training or development program; and automatic conversions of term positions to indeterminate positions.

Instrument design

In November and December 2007, a pilot version of this survey was conducted in a few departments. The results of the pilot survey will be used to improve the numerous aspects of data collection and quality prior to the first cycle of collection for the main survey that begins in the spring of 2008.

The electronic format of the questionnaire was designed to follow standard practices and wording, when applicable, in an Internet-based environment. This included the automatic control of question wording and flows that depended upon answers to earlier questions and the use of on-line edits to check for logical inconsistencies and capture errors i.e., out-of-range values. The computer application for data collection was subjected to extensive testing.

Sampling

This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.

The survey has two distinct components. The sampling frame for the first component is made up of public service employees belonging to a department with at least 401 employees. The sampling frame was created by combining files provided by each participating department. The sampling unit was the employee. A systematic sample of 1,698 employees was selected from the sampling frame.

Similarly, for the second component, the sampling frame is made up of public service managers belonging to a department with at least 401 employees and that have managed at least one staffing process in the 6 month reference period. Note that for the purposes of this survey, excluded are staffing processes for deployments, casual, consulting and acting positions; group and/or level changes resulting from reclassification of a position for a number of employees at once; incumbent-based promotions; promotions arising from the completion of a specific training or development program; and automatic conversions of term positions to indeterminate positions. The sampling frame was created by combining files provided by each participating department. The sampling unit was the manager. A systematic sample of 298 managers was selected from the sampling frame.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2007-11-02 to 2007-12-28

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

There are two sets of survey questionnaires - one for employees who participated in a staffing process and the other for managers who have conducted staffing processes.

The survey will be administered to the large and medium-sized departments. Apart from covering indeterminate appointments, the survey will include staffing processes for term positions as well. It will also collect information from both successful and unsuccessful candidates (internal only).

The questionnaire is available in electronic format for all participating departments who provided the e-mail addresses of their employees. A paper copy was sent to those selected respondents for whom no e-mail addresses were provided. Also paper questionnaires will be available to those who would prefer the paper questionnaire to the electronic questionnaire.

The data collection period for the pilot survey is:
Paper questionnaire 2007-11-02 to 2007-12-14
Electronic questionnaire 2007-11-22 to 2007-12-28

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s).

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

No public use microdata file will be produced by Statistics Canada and data will not be made available through the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI).