Mr. Chair, members of the Board of Internal Economy, good afternoon.
I am here to present a funding request for a minor reorganization I've undertaken at the International and Interparliamentary Affairs Directorate.
Some time ago, I decided to do an analysis of the workload of my team and discovered that the working conditions were not optimal. The IIA directorate, international and interparliamentary affairs, is a joint Senate and House directorate. I have Senate employees and House employees on my team. We deliver services for parliamentary associations, Speakers' exchanges, protocol and conferences. We currently have 54 FTE employees—12 Senate and 42 House.
We did an analysis in terms of the working conditions. I felt obliged to present a reorganization restructuring.
The analysis on which I based my recommendation showed that we had too many competing operational needs. Overtime was on the rise, sick leave usage was high, and we had low usage of annual leave. There was also a very high turnover rate.
I therefore initiated a minor reorganization of my team. We have reassigned internal resources, and we need one more employee to respond to operational needs and pressure. As I said earlier, we serve both the Senate and the House. I've included the numbers. The Senate share of the cost is 30%, and the House share is 70%.
Essentially, here is the bottom line for the House of Commons for this additional FTE. It was piloted on my team, and I have found very encouraging results since April: Overtime is down; sick leave is down; annual leave is up in terms of their ability to take it.
So that is the request before you—the approval of one FTE.