The inability of some federal public servants to use their official language of choice at work is pushing them to ponder leaving their jobs for something else within the public service or quitting entirely.
But not all is well at the moment with Canada’s federal public service. In a forthcoming study to be published in the Review of Public Personnel Administration, my co-researcher and I find that the inability of both French and English-speaking federal public servants to work in their official language of choice is pushing them to consider quitting their jobs.
Approximately 40 per cent of English and French-speaking public servants, citing a low ability to use their official language at work, said they intended to quit their jobs for something else within the public service, whereas the probability of quitting was only 26 per cent among public servants expressing a high ability to use their official language at work.
But not all is well at the moment with Canada’s federal public service. In a forthcoming study to be published in the Review of Public Personnel Administration, my co-researcher and I find that the inability of both French and English-speaking federal public servants to work in their official language of choice is pushing them to consider quitting their jobs.
Approximately 40 per cent of English and French-speaking public servants, citing a low ability to use their official language at work, said they intended to quit their jobs for something else within the public service, whereas the probability of quitting was only 26 per cent among public servants expressing a high ability to use their official language at work.
This is mind boggling to me. Everyone I’ve met in the PS with any kind of supervisory role has known at least enough French to carry a conversation. And all managers need to be CCC. How is anybody ending up in a position where they can’t use their preferred official language?
Didn’t join the site to download the pdf, but it looks like it is trying to find a correlation between wanting to leave the public service and answering a survey question about how often you can use your preferred language. As such, I am not sure if they have any follow up queations on why people answered what they did in the survey, but it could be as simple as they have to interact with unilingual people. Even if they have a bilingual boss (who, even at CCC may not be very good), they may not have bilingual clients or team mates and therefore have to work in one language most of the time.
IT in particular can be tricky, since most things are only English. A lot of software tools only come in English, and a big chunk of vendor support is from the US and often does not have a French option. The contractor pool is also largely English since the Canadian private sector doesn’t require bilingualism for tech workers.
Yes even if your supervisor is bilingual, it’s still possible that your office has a dominant language by virtue of the majority.
But anyone who works in IT knows that the price of entry is knowing a certain amount of English, so I would be surprised that IT workers are the ones complaining. They wouldn’t have completed whatever postsecondary taught them IT without learning the basics in English. It’s baked into the industry. Like how biologists need to learn Latin names.
Being bilingual is a metric for hiring, so some people who can say “Jim apple George” or “monet es George” will call themselves bilingual. So knowing enough to be hired, and knowing enough to actually do the job are two different things.
So, if I work at the CRA, and I go into a meeting where we’re discussing some finer points about the tax code, and how it interacts with a s85(1) rollover or eligible vs non-eligible dividends, am I going to speak a language that I am confident that everyone in the room actually knows, or the one that I might need to repeat myself 15 times or make a mistake in front of everyone at work and look stupid?
In short, francophone public servants feel uncomfortable expressing themselves in French because their anglophone colleagues are not sufficiently fluent in the language.
More than 39 per cent of anglophones surveyed said they do not feel comfortable expressing themselves in French. Around 70 per cent cited a lack of practice speaking French while 61 per cent feared having their accent and mistakes judged and corrected. Forty two per cent also reported feeling embarrassed when their francophone colleagues reply in English after they have tried to express themselves in French.
Being bilingual is a metric for hiring, so some people who can say “Jim apple George” or “monet es George” will call themselves bilingual. So knowing enough to be hired, and knowing enough to actually do the job are two different things.
For rank and file this is true, but there is a certification process for supervisors.
But I can see the other points being relevant, especially about technical jargon with colleagues. I guess I’m lucky that almost everyone I work with knows enough of both languages to flip back and forth as needed. The french training in my dept is excellent.
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The study that is mentioned: (researchgate.net)
This is mind boggling to me. Everyone I’ve met in the PS with any kind of supervisory role has known at least enough French to carry a conversation. And all managers need to be CCC. How is anybody ending up in a position where they can’t use their preferred official language?
Didn’t join the site to download the pdf, but it looks like it is trying to find a correlation between wanting to leave the public service and answering a survey question about how often you can use your preferred language. As such, I am not sure if they have any follow up queations on why people answered what they did in the survey, but it could be as simple as they have to interact with unilingual people. Even if they have a bilingual boss (who, even at CCC may not be very good), they may not have bilingual clients or team mates and therefore have to work in one language most of the time.
IT in particular can be tricky, since most things are only English. A lot of software tools only come in English, and a big chunk of vendor support is from the US and often does not have a French option. The contractor pool is also largely English since the Canadian private sector doesn’t require bilingualism for tech workers.
Yes even if your supervisor is bilingual, it’s still possible that your office has a dominant language by virtue of the majority.
But anyone who works in IT knows that the price of entry is knowing a certain amount of English, so I would be surprised that IT workers are the ones complaining. They wouldn’t have completed whatever postsecondary taught them IT without learning the basics in English. It’s baked into the industry. Like how biologists need to learn Latin names.
Being bilingual is a metric for hiring, so some people who can say “Jim apple George” or “monet es George” will call themselves bilingual. So knowing enough to be hired, and knowing enough to actually do the job are two different things.
So, if I work at the CRA, and I go into a meeting where we’re discussing some finer points about the tax code, and how it interacts with a s85(1) rollover or eligible vs non-eligible dividends, am I going to speak a language that I am confident that everyone in the room actually knows, or the one that I might need to repeat myself 15 times or make a mistake in front of everyone at work and look stupid?
Another (better) article that this article sites:
For rank and file this is true, but there is a certification process for supervisors.
But I can see the other points being relevant, especially about technical jargon with colleagues. I guess I’m lucky that almost everyone I work with knows enough of both languages to flip back and forth as needed. The french training in my dept is excellent.