Strategic Management of Human Resources: People are the Best Resource Aboriginal

Case Study 5 - 1

Module Five – Strategic Management of Human Resources – People

are the Best Resource: Landfree First Nation

Read through the following example and then post your answers to the questions posed at
the end of the case study. The objective is to apply your learning to a real life example
facing Aboriginal non-profit organizations. Note: All of the case examples are fictional. They
are based on composite experiences from working with and for First Nations Communities.
The names of persons and places are fictional. Any similarity between real events and the
examples in these pages is strictly coincidental.

Landfree First Nation is located on the outskirts of Kelowna British Columbia. The band has
more than 2500 on-reserve members and several hundred more who live in nearby urban
centres or other parts of Canada. The band employs 285 people in the band office, the
community centre, the health centre, the elementary school and daycare, and the four
band-owned businesses – the grocery store, the cannery, small oil and gas company, and
the cultural centre. During the summer, the band employs about 20 more people through
student summer employment programs. Almost all of these positions go to local band
members from the high schools and college.

Martin Shortleg is the administrator for the band. He is originally from a First Nation in BC.
He came to the band a year ago bringing with him a background in social and health
program coordination and management in a couple urban Native organizations and, in
recent years, was the parks and recreation manager for the municipality of Kamloops.

Martin is the direct supervisor of the six managers for the band departments – Education,
Economic Development, Health, Social, Cultural and Recreation Programs, and Public
Works. Of the managers, four are Aboriginal and two, the Health and Education department
heads, are non-Aboriginal. Only two of the managers are Landfree First Nation members.
Of the many details and planning projects that Martin is presently involved in, two related
issues are consuming a lot of his time lately. First, he is working on formalizing the hiring
policies for the band. Second, the Education Manager position for the band school will soon
become vacant. The responsibilities of this position entail overseeing the various training
and education programs with the band – including overseeing the principal of the
community school. One of the teachers, a Landfree band member has expressed strong
interest in the position. Leonard Bignose holds a teaching degree along with three years
teaching experience. Prior to getting his degree a few years ago, he held the positions of
youth coordinator, drug and alcohol counsellor and apprenticed as a carpenter for a while.
Martin has learned the unwritten policy of the band is to hire, in order of preference, local
band members, then other Aboriginal people, and then, if a qualified Aboriginal person is
not amongst the applicants for a vacant position, a non-Aboriginal person will be hired. The
chief and council have also told him that he should provide every opportunity possible for
band members to not only work for the band, but to be mentored by qualified people so they
may eventually hold most or all senior management and front line positions in the
community. In the long run, he’s been told, the objective is to have all positions held by an
Aboriginal person. Unfortunately, a budget is often not available to employ both a mentor
and a band member at the same time for a position. What seems to have been happening
in a number of instances is a local member is hired for a job they are not fully qualified for,
then they are forced to learn what they can on-the-job.

Martin thought it would be useful to see where the band currently stood with its employment
statistics. Through his research to date, he learned that of the 285 people employed by the
band:
140 are band members
116 are Aboriginal from other bands across Canada
29 are non-Aboriginal – 25 of which are Caucasian, and four are of East
Indian and Chinese decent

Martin has also learned that the unemployment rate for the Landfree First Nation community
is 45%, while Kelowna and area as a whole enjoys a rate of only 7% - the lowest it has
been in twenty years.

Another related thought crossed Martin’s mind as he contemplated the policies he would be
drafting. While working as a manager for the City of Kamloops, he was called upon to assist
the human resource manager now and then to create a strategy to improve the recruitment,
selection and retention of Aboriginal people for the municipality. The City had realized a few
years back that the cultural diversity of their current employees was not representative of
the diversity of the region. For example, although 13% of the population was from a visible
minority background, internal human resource reports indicated only 7% of the employees
self-identified themselves as being a visible minority member. Apart from this, 5% of the
general population in the area was Aboriginal and only 2% of those employed by the City of
Kamloops were of Aboriginal descent.

Martin sat in his office late that day wondering how much of the principles of diversity in the
workplace applied in this case. He knew this would impact the human resource policies he’d
be recommending to chief and council. The statistics he’d drawn up glared in front of him,
as well as the draft job posting for the Education Manager position. He also wondered how
this band and any other Aboriginal organization could put “preference will be given to
persons of Aboriginal descent” in their job ads. Didn’t that violate human rights?

Questions for Further Discussion

In your learner teams, tackle the following issues and come up with some guidelines to
assist Martin in drafting a personnel policy.

1. What provincial laws and regulations should Martin be aware of in designing a new
personnel policy?

2. What are the headings that Martin should use in constructing the personnel policy?

3. What advice can you give Martin about how to ensure that the personnel policies will
be followed?