The COVID-19 pandemic hit early in the third year of our pilot and, when it did, staffing for the types of processes our platform offered all but ground to a halt. As government employees were sent home, we recognized a brand new challenge was emerging. To respond to the pandemic, some departments would need to scale up dramatically to meet critical needs, creating talent gaps that could be filled by employees in less critical roles.
Because we’re an agile team that embraces the digital standards, we were able to pivot quickly and repurpose Talent Cloud to create the GC Talent Reserve in just under three weeks. This new portal was a dedicated, single-window coordinated talent management tool for triaging digital and tech talent needs across the Government of Canada. It enabled the flow of talent from areas of lower priority to areas of critical need, supported by data tracking and central coordination.
Based on what we were hearing across our networks, and in collaboration with the Community Management Office, the policy side of the Talent Cloud team acted as central coordinators, and drafted internal job advertisements (open to employees with a valid security clearance) for in-demand work streams, such as cybersecurity, MS Dynamics, software development, system administration, and procurement. For each work stream, volunteers were asked to put their names forward at either a beginner, intermediate, or advanced level.
Employees who wanted to volunteer were given clear criteria to judge whether they should put forward an application. Most importantly, we asked them to ensure their manager would support a temporary placement if the applicant was selected from the pool. The application form was short, consisting of a few key questions that were assessed by the central coordinating team. Applicants that passed the first round were contacted by email to complete a follow-up questionnaire and/or reference checks.
Managers who were experiencing a critical digital and tech talent gap contacted the coordination team with a list of the work stream and skills they required. In cases where there were volunteers that had passed assessment, we provided a list of applicants along with their profiles. We also created additional streams of in-demand talent on GC Talent Reserve for skills related to fields like procurement when we received new requests. Once a manager selected an employee, it is up to them to figure out an appropriately fast and flexible HR arrangement to move the employee to their department.
As fast as the team moved to build GC Talent Reserve, we weren’t fast enough. There was no way we could be, because the tool that supports coordinated interdepartmental functionality needed to be in place before the crisis hit.
GC Talent Reserve had several hundred employees submit their names, and nearly three dozen employees with critical and in-demand skills assessed and ready to be deployed. But after that point, it was impossible for us to track whether or not employees actually moved because the final connection between managers and employees happened off our site. (In one case, we actually heard about someone getting a new role when she thanked Talent Cloud on Twitter for the GC Reserve opportunity.) We also heard from managers that the paperwork required for internal mobility, even at the secondment level, was taking more time than they had, and many sought talent already internal to their own departments to close gaps more quickly.
Talent Cloud’s biggest takeaway from this was that until there is a permanent, stable solution in the Government of Canada capable of mapping, tracking, and incentivizing employees to put their skills in a central profile or interdepartmental talent repository, the Government won’t be optimized to succeed the next time a significant, rapid talent reallocation is required.
While we didn't run GC Talent Reserve for very long, we built some interesting features for it that users found valuable, which we’re now integrating back into the main Talent Cloud platform. Notably, this includes automated micro-reference checks for skills, enhanced sorting functionality for managers and HR advisors in the applicant database, and more information on interests, availability and matching potential for employees/applicants looking for opportunities.
