Purpose
The purpose of this policy is to provide information on the evaluation of French language competencies required by the province to fill a bilingual designated position or to be listed as a bilingual employee capable of providing some service in French through a unilingual position. Both circumstances relate to delivery of services in French, supporting the provincial French Language Services Act.
Application
This policy applies to employees in designated bilingual positions and employees with a reasonable capacity to provide services to the public in French.
Policy (Bilingual Positions)
The incumbent of a bilingual designated position is required to maintain an Advanced level of speaking proficiency or higher, based on the French Language Proficiency Scale.
Employees coming into a bilingual designated position through competition are referred by Staffing for an oral proficiency evaluation to confirm the Advanced level, which is the minimum requirement for a bilingual position. This level must be confirmed prior to the position offer.
Employees achieving the Advanced Plus level or higher are granted an exemption, excluding them from future oral proficiency testing.
An Advanced level employee in a bilingual designated position is required to validate his/her level every two years until the Advanced Plus level is obtained. Contact will be made by the Public Service Commission to set an evaluation date.
On rare occasions where an employee is granted a Provisional Appointment at the Intermediate Plus level, a French Language Proficiency Attainment Agreement must be signed by the employee and manager, outlining what the employee will do to reach the desired advanced level within one year.
To be considered able to provide backup function to a bilingual designated position and listed as a bilingual resource for the province, an employee must maintain the Intermediate Plus level of oral French.
The Public Service Commission will invite bilingual employees to do an Oral Proficiency Interview every two years to validate their level and to remain on the provincial list of bilingual employees. This process is completely voluntary for the employee in a non-designated position.
Bilingual employees are rated using the same Oral Proficiency Scale as for bilingual designated positions. (See description of Oral Proficiency Levels).
The French oral proficiency level of employees in non-designated positions is maintained under the category Workforce Development, Licences and Certifications in the human resource management system, Peoplesoft.
Individual departments may see a full listing of bilingual positions and bilingual employees at any time, by running the French Language Complement Report in Peoplesoft.
General Information
Any employee may request a French oral proficiency interview at any time by contacting the Public Service Commission. Interviews can be conducted in person or over the telephone, and generally last about twenty minutes.
An audio recording of the interview is made and kept on file at the PSC for the two year period that an oral proficiency rating is valid.
A certificate and rating summary are sent to employee. The supervisor is sent a copy of the rating summary and the information is entered under Workplace Development in the category Licences and Certifications in the human resource management systems, Peoplesoft.
In the case of disagreement over the rating, an independent evaluator may be consulted.
An employee may request re-evaluation after a period of six months.