Breaking Down Barriers
A major service organization helps employees reach their full potential
The term ‘glass ceiling’ is most often used to refer to the inability of women to break through hidden barriers to the male-dominated ranks of senior management. At the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), the Ontario insurance giant that provides a workers’ compensation system for employers and workers across the province, the invisible barrier was seen to exist at a much lower level, holding back the careers of far more women – and of some men. “We were getting all kinds of complaints from people in the lower-salary-grade positions that there was this glass ceiling,” says Harry Goslin, President, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 1750, which represents most of WSIB’s workforce. “A lot of them were in minorities and felt they were being discriminated against.”
The union’s solution was to consult with WSIB management, and the two sides conducted an audit of recruitment-selection grievances together. While they found no statistical evidence of a barrier to advancement, they came to the conclusion that a fairly widespread perception of bias at WSIB was itself problem enough.
In search of a corrective, WSIB initiated a pilot program in its Toronto Central Data Entry Centre, a department where employees are predominately female and where a significant percentage are from visible minorities. It was also a department where employees had had limited success applying for internal positions. The program was designed to help employees understand where their literacy and job-specific skills could be improved upon, and to foster the requisite skills and self-confidence that would put them in a more advantageous position for advancement and personal growth.
WSIB’s Workplace Learning Project encompasses test preparation geared to specific positions, volunteer participation in training programs in such areas as math-skills upgrading, business-writing lessons that include critiques of letters and memos, and interviews that emphasize past performance and behaviours to evaluate candidates’ suitability for new positions. “It has been a real morale booster and it has increased peoples’ confidence,” says Lina Mascherin, a 17-year WSIB veteran. “I got a lot more out of the program. You could take it with you; it wasn’t just for the interview itself. I thought I could apply it to other things outside of work, too.” Mascherin, an electronic-mail administrator, had applied unsuccessfully for a number of positions before taking the pilot program last year. She has since been promoted to the role of executive secretary.
Mascherin’s success is not an isolated case. Of the 30 employees who participated in the summer 2005 pilot, 12 applied for new positions and 10 of these succeeded in winning new roles and responsibilities.
“It was very successful,” says Richard Ventura, who was promoted from Imaging Clerk to Claims-registration Clerk shortly after participating in the initial program. He found he was better “in all facets” following the program, “in the screening process, in the work sample and in the interview.”
Remarkably, the results were achieved with few resources other than staff time. “We had zero money,” says Charmaine Chin, Director of the Central Claims Processing Branch. “All the work to figure out and assess the group’s needs was done by me and by two of the other managers.” Besides the number of her staff who have successfully won new jobs, Chin measures success by rising levels of participation in in-house projects as well as changing attitudes. “People come into my office and say, `I feel so much better about myself. I know how to find stuff on the computer. Now I can help my kids do more homework. Now I can write.’ Comments like these – and the fact that people come up and tell us – are a big measure for us.”
The pilot project was so successful that it played a major role in WSIB-CUPE bargaining for a new contract last year. “The pilot really put the breath of life into [the contract] just before it went to the bargaining table,” says Goslin. “We were still motivated to make things better, so we said: `Let’s focus on all kinds of things to help everybody in the organization.’ It has grown quite large now.” Within the collective agreement, the two sides created a personal-development program for employees who have competed for positions, but regularly failed to land new jobs. In addition, management and the union agreed to examine how the WSIB puts its staff through the job evaluation process; a special committee was formed to report on work samples and interview processes and to recommend changes to assist employees in landing progressive positions.
The expanded program, which has been rolled out across the province to the WSIB’s lower pay grades, includes a clinic that gives staff the opportunity to participate in a mock interview, computer-skills upgrading and a reading club to improve literacy.
With the pilot project and contract negotiations out of the way, WSIB and the union have also created a committee to reduce subjectivity in employee testing and better assess an individual’s ability to succeed in a particular job. The committee has, for example, developed best practices for work-sample testing and interviews. WSIB has also adopted a system that utilizes job templates to measure experience and this allows employees to “pre-qualify” for job competitions. This replaces a procedure that placed a large burden of proof on job applicants to showcase their basic skills. And for employees with a history of unsuccessful applications, there’s now a process in place through which they can meet with their managers to discuss a career-development plan. This might include self development, WSIB-funded skills development or some combination of both.
As well, a joint committee of union and management representatives was created to develop voluntary training and career-development programs for employees. To begin with, the initiative focuses on the lower salary grades, but will be expanded throughout the organization in the future. Training programs are geared to areas where management and the union expect vacancies will soon appear. Employees are expected to devote some free time to upgrading their skills, but the program also provides time during regular work hours. While not guaranteeing promotion, the program does, however, help employees participate in job competitions for which they previously lacked the minimal skills.
Both WSIB management and the union have tangible proof that the skills upgrading and new internal recruitment programs have had a positive effect. At the end of the first year of implementation (June, 2006), recruitment-selection grievances had fallen by 13 per cent. As well, as employees have attested, offering training and setting out clear career paths have raised confidence and morale throughout the workforce.
Rolling out the lessons of the pilot project to the WSIB’s 4,300 workers across the province is now the responsibility of a vice-president, who has been appointed project “champion.” But for literacy and skills- development programs to succeed as they have at WSIB, both union and management agree it is a bottom-up process that begins with consultations with entry-level employees. “No matter how varied the functions of the organization, the same question is really important at all levels of the organization: ‘Are you really listening to what their needs are?’,” says Jill Hutcheon, President of WSIB. “It was a matter of us reaching out and listening to what they were saying about their ambitions beyond the job they were in.”
