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1992 Report of the Auditor General of Canada
Exhibit 7.10—Case 3—Use of Payments in Lieu for Work Force Renewal
In this unit, managers were informed of a requirement to cut 43 person-years because of budgetary cuts and changes in standards for resource allocation. Management had to react quickly to the situation.
A decision was made to call for employees to volunteer to be declared surplus and thus become eligible to request payments in lieu. Criteria for assessing requests were established to ensure that operational requirements, among other matters, would be taken into consideration.
Management accepted requests from 43 employees in order to meet its objective. Shortages were created at all levels, including the loss of two senior employees, one of whom was replaced. The other senior employee was temporarily re-hired more than six months later to assist with internal staffing of some of the vacancies that were created.
Our examination revealed that while the supply of new employees for this unit had been reduced to the minimum required to maintain the training program and expertise, it had been exceeding attrition for a number of years. Some recruits could not be assigned to duties for which they had been hired and trained.
While management contend that their approach in this case constituted good management practice, certain of the payments examined in this unit were judged to be either ``in question" or without foundation because they were not in keeping with the intent of the Policy.