Mr. Michael Wernick
Clerk of the Privy Council
Sub-committee on Public Service Engagement
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A3

December 1, 2016

RE: Public Service Renewal Results Call Letter

Dear Mr. Wernick,

I am pleased to present the Veterans Review and Appeal Board’s Blueprint 2020 Renewal Story. The Board provides Veterans, Canadian Armed Forces and RCMP members, and their families with an independent avenue of redress for disability benefits decisions made by Veterans Affairs Canada. In this, we are dedicated to continuous improvement for Canadians and to contributing to the success of the Public Service as a whole.

Yours truly,

Thomas Jarmyn
Acting Chair

Veterans Review and Appeal Board

Blueprint 2020 Renewal Story

Introduction

Since Blueprint 2020 launched in 2013, the Board’s employees have been engaged in contributing to this government-wide transformation initiative. During this time, the Board has carried out a number of projects that have modernized the service it provides to Canadians and that enable success now and into the future.

1. Respectful Workplaces

Over the last three years, the Board has made great progress in promoting mental health and wellness and has made concrete contributions to reducing the stigma around mental illness. The Board’s senior management has demonstrated strong leadership in this area, and our employees have responded with enthusiasm.

We have been involved in and planned a number of mental health initiatives, often working with Veterans Affairs Canada (our Portfolio partner). The following are some of the notable activities we have been involved in during the last year:

Elephant in the Room

In December 2015, the Veterans Affairs Portfolio National Unit for Workplace Mental Wellness, in partnership with the Mood Disorders Society of Canada, launched the “Elephant in the Room” anti-stigma and awareness campaign. The star of the campaign—a little blue rubber elephant—is displayed by employees who want to show they can provide a safe zone for colleagues to talk about mental health issues or illness. The Board’s staff embraced these blue elephants, now a near-ubiquitous fixture at workstations around the Board.

Canadian Mental Health Week

We celebrated Canadian Mental Health Week 2016 with numerous events, including a “Let’s Get Loud” rally, a health walk, laughter yoga, and workshops. A high percentage of Board employees participated in these activities, which facilitated important discussions and awareness around mental health and wellness in the workplace.

The most spirited activity by far was the Veterans Affairs “Let’s Hear Your Cheer” Contest, in which employees were challenged to create a video to promote mental health awareness in the workplace. The Board’s Director General provided strong leadership by assembling a team of employees to take on this challenge and by participating herself as a cast member in the video.

Turning to popular culture, employees were inspired by one of the year’s most popular and most-memed songs, Drake’s “Hotline Bling”. In a light-hearted remake of the infamous music video, employees used humour, creativity, and some serious dance moves to promote mental health awareness. The video—which took first place in the contest—succeeded in relaying an important message, and was, in and of itself, excellent for employee morale and workplace wellness.

Workplace wellness

In 2016, the Board made all supervisors and managers accountable for workplace wellness by having them commit in their performance agreements to cultivating and sustaining a healthy work environment. In keeping with its commitment to encouraging health and wellness in the workplace, it planned a number of events for employees:

• In June 2016, the Board hosted a guest speaker to talk to employees about self-care and mental wellness. Subsequently, the Board encouraged staff to participate in a self-care workshop hosted by the speaker, and was pleased to see employees take advantage of this opportunity.
   
• For its 21^st anniversary event and all-staff meeting in September 2016, the Board invited a well-known local comedian, author, and public speaker to present on strategies for fostering mental wellness and work-life balance. His approach—infusing serious subjects with humour—made the subject matter accessible to employees and generated open and positive discussions among employees.
   
• The Board hosted a time management workshop for employees in November 2016. Among other things, the workshop instructed employees on the importance of prioritizing work, taking care of oneself, and aiming for work-life balance.

2. Recruitment and Onboarding

The Board is a small organization with approximately 80 public servants. The Board recruits new employees strategically to respond to organizational needs and makes it a priority to welcome and integrate new employees into the workplace. With such a small workforce, the Board has a strong sense of community where colleagues often become friends. The Board consistently achieves high satisfaction ratings in the results of the Public Service Employee Survey, reflecting employees’ positive feelings about the health of the organization.

Because of its small size, it is especially important for the Board to make the best use of available talent. In 2016, the Board increased its focus on continuous learning to support employees in acquiring the skills and knowledge required as the Board adopts new technologies, streamlines business processes, and changes the way it does business.

Employees have long been encouraged to seek opportunities for growth within the organization. However, given its limited staff and variety of job descriptions, the Board is challenged to meet employee demand in this regard. In 2016, in order to provide more opportunities, the Board created an internal inventory for acting and assignment opportunities to staff positions on a temporary basis. Since then, the Board has drawn from the inventory on many occasions to staff positions on a temporary basis, and regularly encourages employees to add their names to the inventory.

In June 2016, the Board finalized its Integrated Business Plan 2016-2019, which will guide the Board as it approaches Destination 2020. This plan makes the Board’s commitment to investing time and resources in learning activities and providing employees with developmental opportunities. The plan also acknowledges that the Board’s success depends largely on a healthy organizational culture that includes: healthy teams, healthy interpersonal relationships, and healthy individuals.

3. Other Actions to Renew the Public Service

The Board has long been dedicated to program improvement and, like many departments, has been actively looking for opportunities to modernize operations to provide the best service possible. Below are some of the notable initiatives carried out at the Board in the last year.

Paperless process

The Board has continued to work on launching a paperless process to increase efficiency and provide more timely service to Veterans and their families. We reviewed each step in our hearing processes and identified opportunities to receive, share and monitor work electronically. We expanded the functionality of our electronic systems used to track and store information, schedule hearings, and monitor applications. The Board also enhanced its Wiki to give Members across the country online access to general resources for decision-making. The Board is now on the cusp of piloting the paperless process, and hopes to have it fully implemented by summer 2017.

GCDOCS

The Board has made great progress toward implementing GCDOCS, the Government of Canada’s new content management system that promotes consistent record-keeping across the public service. GCDOCS will replace shared network drives to manage corporate and program information that supports our operations. In the last year, we took the following steps:

• Completed a comprehensive review of our information holdings;
• Developed a new filing structure for GCDOCS;
• Trained staff on how to use the new system; and
• Transferred the majority of our records into GCDOCS.

GCDOCS represents a big change in the way the Board operates. Overall, it will help our employees to find, share and preserve information of business value more effectively and securely—which means better service for Canadians.

Increased transparency

As a quasi-judicial tribunal, the Board is bound by the open court principle, which assumes that public confidence in—and understanding of—decision-making requires openness and transparency. In 2016, the Board made significant progress on its commitment to publishing more decisions. In the last six months alone, we have more than doubled the number of decisions available on the Canadian Legal Information Institute’s (CanLII) website, with a total of 4,364 as of November 28, 2016.

The Board has also made great headway on a new initiative to publish its Review Hearing schedule. Until now, we have always encouraged and been pleased to accommodate observers at our hearings to foster a greater understanding of our work. Publishing the schedule will increase transparency in the Board’s program and make it easier for interested individuals to know when hearings are taking place and to attend these hearings in their areas. The Board is on track to meet its commitment of publishing its schedule by the end of 2016.

Conclusion

Over the last few years, Blueprint 2020 has synced well with the Board’s longstanding commitment to continuous process improvement and to harnessing new technologies to work more efficiently. As we move towards Destination 2020, the Board will continue to enable its employees to seek new and better ways of carrying out our work. We will continue to promote creativity, innovation, and collaboration in our workplace to allow us to provide Veterans and their families with the best service possible and to meet Canadians’ evolving needs.