Workforce Planning and Morale
My first leadership training as an adult was in the Canadian Armed Forces. I was in what was then called the Regular Officer Training Plan (ROTP). During my basic training at CFB Chilliwack, officers in training had to learn the so-called “Command Requisites,” also called the “CRs”. There were ten of them, one of which was “seeking and accepting advice.” So, during mission planning, a squad or platoon officer was trained to consult with enlisted personnel under their command about what may or may not work during a mission. Another way of saying this is that seeking input from lower-ranked experts (“the troops”) was baked into leadership training.
How does this relate to workforce planning? Let me explain.
Workforce Planning
I wrote in our March 19, 2026, newsletter that senior SFU personnel had let us know that the University was organizing workforce planning for faculties, among other units. Fast forward to now, and many of those workforce plans have been introduced to their respective faculties. Reception of the workforce plans has hardly been uniformly genial: my APSA team has certainly heard from many members like you over the past month about difficulties and, in some cases, turmoil.
While I won’t go into an in-depth review here of the various workforce plans, I will note that many members subject to them have reported that the plans seem to have been developed by a handful (or fewer) of senior personnel, with little or no apparent engagement with members like you who have ground-level job expertise and, very likely, historical knowledge. As in my anecdote from my military training, ground-level expertise could help guide the workforce planning and avoid, perhaps, some of the very difficulties that are cropping up.
As I also noted in my March article, information flow can be one-way “when the dominant management style is rooted in a command-and-control leadership model.” Obviously, the Canadian military, by necessity, is very much a command-and-control organization. Still, it has tried to ensure, at least in its leadership training, that useful, actionable information reaches the decision makers. It’s very unclear, based on feedback from members in some faculties (I won’t identify which faculties here for the sake of privacy), that the workforce plans are informed by ground-level experience and expertise.
If what I’m reporting is accurate, it’s hard to understand why ground-level experts like you may not be more routinely consulted when it comes to big things like workforce plans. It could be work culture — if so, it’s a cultural dynamic that I first observed back in 1989, when I worked for the Bennet Library as a student. It could also be rooted in the rigid hierarchical nature and related status dynamics of postsecondary institutions. There is perhaps no one reason, but likely multiple factors at play.
Employee Morale
One consequence of members like you feeling sidelined during workforce planning could be reflected in our APSA survey earlier this spring: those who took the survey reported, on average, a morale level of 4 out 10 — which is troubling. After all, when you feel like you have little or no control over your work situation, even just being consulted by leadership, it’s hard to feel positive or valued. In Human Givens psychology, for example, “autonomy and control”* are considered one of our innate emotional needs. If such innate needs go unmet, we can suffer.
This month in our newsletter, we also talk a bit about the causes of low morale in an organization and what can be done about it. There are also some links for further reading.
As always, we’re here to help you if you need us. Meetings with us are 100% confidential.
Take care!
*The human givens approach defines nine emotional needs:
- Security: A sense of safety and security; safe territory; an environment in which people can live without experiencing excessive fear so that they can develop healthily.
- Autonomy and control: A sense of autonomy and control over what happens around and to us.
- Status: A sense of status—being accepted and valued in the various social groups we belong to.
- Privacy: Time and space enough to reflect on and consolidate our experiences.
- Attention: Receiving attention from others, but also giving it; a form of essential nutrition that fuels the development of each individual, family and culture.
- Connection to the wider community: Interaction with a larger group of people and a sense of being part of the group.
- Intimacy: Emotional connection to other people—friendship, love, intimacy, fun.
- Competence and achievement: A sense of our own competence and achievements, that we have what it takes to meet life's demands.
- Meaning and purpose: Being stretched, aiming for meaningful goals, having a sense of a higher calling or serving others creates meaning and purpose.