As a Free Agent, I read over Abe’s post and felt compelled to add my two cents (which, unfortunately, rounds down to zero now that we don’t have pennies anymore).
The Free Agent “thing” is still evolving. It was pitched as a pilot, but some of us think it’s matured to a program, and yet others are calling it a movement or an initiative. The great thing is that we’re listening to what’s going on and making adjustments as necessary. One of the things I remember hearing last summer was a manager (it may even have been John Kenney, if it wasn’t, John was in the room) who was reflecting on hiring a Free Agent and what they did for him. As per Abe’s comment, Free Agents are not the bastions of innovation. The manager said “There was nothing special about the skills or abilities that the Free Agent had in comparison to anyone else that I can get out there in the labour pool.” (I may be paraphrasing) That is true. There is nothing inherently special about what we can do that anyone else can do. The Free Agent program (yes, I subscribe to that group of people) simply allows managers to get access to those skills faster and easier than through normal channels. Thus, the “innovative” part of the Free Agent program is the HR part of it. Full stop. There may be more innovative bits with some of the Free Agents, but that’s dependent on the individual.
I like to think of Free Agents as a means by which you can redefine the ways in which you can address the needs of government. I’m a scientist at heart. I spent a lot of time in university in a research lab, making drugs (I’m a chemist, I was supposed to be making drugs), and then more time in a US university doing the same for a multinational corporation. I then started to work in the Patent Office. I spent over ten years there before getting frustrated with the way things work in government. Simply put, there was no easy way for people that had dedicated so many years of their life to one thing to change course and do something else. I even went back to school and got another degree but could not break through to where I wanted to be. You only need to come up against one person to stop your career cold. This is where the Free Agent program came in. The hiring process is pretty involved (and continues to evolve), but I would guess that screening for teamwork and integrating into existing teams are the more important attributes that we look for in a Free Agent. The fact of the matter is that calling people “team players” doesn’t sound as sexy, even though it tells you about as much as “innovator”.
Another time, we had a chance to reflect on the program with our godfather ADM, Neil Bouwer. The discussion was centered around the Free Agents being called agents of change, innovators, etc. The fact of the matter is, if a Free Agent wants to go somewhere and write briefing notes for six months, they are free to do so. Again, this doesn’t sound as sexy as leading on a pangovernment initative on innovation that is transformative in the user-centric methods that we deliver services to buzzword, buzzword digital blockchain buzzword. So how does it work? Well, for me, it works like this: I talk to people and ask them what difficulties they’re having. I find out what problems they are facing. In some cases, I may have skills or experience that may help. In a lot of cases, I don’t. If I do have skills or experience that can help, we can talk a little further and we’re off to get stuff done. Again, my first passion is science. I like getting stuff done. Over the past year and a half I’ve learned a lot of great skills, I know far too much about things I’ve never heard of (Departmental Results Framework? Yup. GCDOCS? Yup. Impact of harassment and discrimination on retention of Indigenous employees? Oh yeah.)
All of that is to say that Abe’s point holds true. My virtue of the fact that there now exists a means and a possibility for me to continue to do good work for the government, it’s made me happy about being a civil servant again. However, please don’t consider that given two data points (Abe and I) that the Free Agents program is full of people who don’t know what to do with their life (it’s not true, I have aspirations of management). I know that in my case, I have to seek opportunities in order to fill gaps, which will in turn make me a better candidate for when I am finally ready to enter the management cadre. This is the other side of the Free Agent program that rarely sees any discussion. One of Neil’s phrases used to describe the program was that it was a means to “jailbreak talent”. I like to think of it as addressing the innate shortcomings of using a classification system for employees. When I worked at the Patent Office, there were a lot of times when I heard the phase: “You can’t do XXX because you only a YYY”, and yet when there was something that needed to get done, a high ranking manager would offer me a “development opportunity”. This is also where the Free Agent program is special. I spent quite a bit of time with Abe (and I know I’m not the only one) talking over how to do the pivot in my career. Now that I have Helen Daniels as my Talent Manager, she does exactly the same thing. “I need to be able to show people I can do XXX, Helen. Please help me.” “Ok, here’s something that’s come up. It will help you build on those skills.” Boom! It didn’t have to go into a Learning and Development plan. The turnaround time for this was a few weeks (I literally told this to Helen at the Holiday party and I worked on some new stuff last week). Can anyone else imagine how quickly you can learn or further develop skills in government at this pace?
There are aspects to the Free Agent program that are really cool, and I can point to them and say that’s what makes it awesome… but it’s not like it’s unique. The program hasn’t created everything that is brand new, that no-one has ever heard of. It’s about figuring out what works and improving on what doesn’t work. We meet monthly for training and professional development. As participants in the program, we regularly serve as the challenge function on certain aspects of the program. The program was borne out of the Adapt group at NRCan, and I like to think that is how it evolves. It adapts to the changing needs of the Agents and of the government.
That’s not to say that all is perfect. Not all matches between employee and project are idyllic. However, yet another feature of the Free Agent program is that there’s an escape hatch. Either party can say it’s not working out, and that’s ok. Priorities change. People change, and the work environment changes. Again, speaking to Abe’s point about happier employees, it’s far better to pull the cord than be an unhappy employee or be in an unhappy workplace. An agile workplace (in the “being able to adapt” sense, not the computer science sense) is great because it allows for stuff to get done.
… and I like to get stuff done. Let’s do it.
Note: Abe reminded me that ADAPT was not the program from which Free Agents was borne, but both ADAPT and Free Agents were borne out of the In*Spire lab at NRCan. See? We’re humble enough to show when we make mistakes and figure out what needs to be done to correct them.