GCmobility

About GCmobility

The GCMobility initiative is a joint partnership between Canada's Free Agents and Shared Services Canada as founding partners.

GCmobility is most interested in how federal employees are supported as mobile workers.

The Government of Canada, from time to time has released various reports measuring mobility rates of its workforce. Mobility varies greatly between departments, regions, classifications and career aspirations. For instance, some employees may have the opportunity to mentor under the leadership of an executive early in their career. These employees may be advised by executives to design their career around 3 year blocks of time for each new opportunity. The first is focused on learning their job, the second is mastering their job and the third is finding their new job. This advise is apparent in the executive ranks where average mobility rates are often around or over 30%.

Mobility rates of executives, or those planning to become executives might be in stark contrast to other professions. One contrasting example includes Research Scientists who may spend the majority of their career researching a specific species of tree or fish in a specific geographic region. This career trajectory may result in lower mobility rates overall within a specific classification.

Although mobility rates will vary throughout the life cycle of the public service, we are witnessing drivers both within and outside government that are changing our perspectives on mobility. Internal drivers may include changing government priorities as well as changes in governing political parties. An example of an external driver is the rise of the Gig Economy. As reported by ITWorldCanada "The gig economy is coming on with incredible speed in Canada. According to Randstad Canada’s Workforce 2025 report, nontraditional workers (i.e., contractors, consultants, remote and/or freelance workers) currently make up 20 to 30 per cent of Canada’s workforce."

The government of Canada has a long history of leveraging external resources to support innovation, surge capacity and specialized skills acquisition. Some believe that these tools may be overused, leading to terms like "Shadow Public Service" made up of contractors, consultants, casual workers and students. However, there has also been a history of a group of public servants that are been busy moving around government to work on exciting projects and this number seems to be growing. The 2007 the Policy on Interchange Canada lead to Interchange Canada "an exchange program between the core public administration and other organizations in private, public and not-for-profit sectors in Canada and internationally."

A growing number of HR innovation programs such as Canada's Free Agents, PCO Fellowships, TBS Talent Cloud and GCEntrepreneurs have been helping to formalize the structure, acceptance and utility of Gig workers within the Government. As the Gig economy starts to mature within a Government of Canada context, we have an opportunity to re-think what a public service might looks like.

Unlike the above average mobility rates of over 30% found in the Executive ranks of the public service, Gig workers can experience hyper mobility rates of 100% to 300%, where a rate of 100% would mean an employee would undertake an individual gig once a year, a rate of 200% would result in a new gig every 6 months , and a rate of 300% would result in a new gig every 4 months (or 3 gigs per year).

GCmobility is most interested in the use case of Hyper Mobile, Gig workers that experience the same on-boarding and offboarding process that other employees experience, however in a more compressed schedule. Many departments have developed on-boarding and orientation frameworks that could take months or years to fully complete. GC Gig workers will compress that schedule into a matter of weeks, and this can put pressure on already strained internal business processes.

If the Government of Canada is to be representative of the Canadian population, then we might ask ourselves...

What would the Canadian Public Service look like with 30% of its work force designated as hyper mobile Gig workers?

We look forward to engaging with you, our stakeholders as we explore, experiment and explain what a hyper mobile workforce might look like.

GCmobility Vision

By 2024,
Canadian Federal Public Servants can work
From anywhere,
At Anytime,
For any department and beyond

Objectives

The primary objectives of this partnership are:

Decrease the time it takes Free Agents to onboard and off board from their short term and rapid assignments throughout the Federal Government
Decrease the technology footprint of SSC employees who are issued individual devices by each partner department for which they provide services

Value Proposition

The GCMobility initiative is for Canadian Public Servants who are part of HR Mobility Initiatives
They want the autonomy and technology support to manage their mobile career
We will develop and test new models for modern and mobile office workflows
That are easily transferable within and between departments and beyond
Unlike the current model offered by individual departments
Which creates disparate policies, technology services, supports and security models
GCMobility will iteratively and collaboratively develop and test new inter-departmental mobility models
That public servants and departments alike can rely on and trust to support a modern and mobile public service workforce

GCmobility Partners

Key Resources for GCmobility

If you need an "Official GCmobility deck" then we have you covered
If you prefer long form presentations then check out the DRAFT GCmobility long form recorded presentation (37 min)
Are you interested in learning about the experiences of employees when mobility goes wrong, check out our presentation "GCmobility: Stories of mobility and Free Agency"
Join the GCmobility community on GCcollab
Follow project progress and Issue tracking in the GCmobile GIT repository on GCcode
The GCmobility document reposiotry is managed internally on SSC's Synergi site (Sharepoint)