Health care’s ‘revolving door’ concerning

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This article was published 27/05/2023 (910 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The government organization in charge of plans to recruit and retain health-care staff for Manitoba hasn’t managed to hang on to some of it own top executives.

Since last month’s resignation of Shared Health chief executive officer Adam Topp, more senior leadership departures have come to light.

Former chief operating officer Jennifer Bjarnarson took a job in the private sector, three weeks “after a much-needed break,” she wrote on LinkedIn.

Human resources director Michael Bereziak has given notice he’s leaving.

Chief human resources officer Armin Pyde departed this week.

Director of accounting operations Michael Powell left in March to work for MPI.

Workforce planning lead Kevin MacFarlane left in April to work for the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals.

Topp’s sudden resignation in April was followed the next day by a Shared Health news release saying its former chief nursing officer, Lanette Siragusa, would be taking over as CEO on May 1.

The departures at the top are “unfortunate,” said the head of Manitoba Nurses Union.

“We are in big trouble in our health-care system, and we really do need to have the same people at the table for a little continuity to try and solve these issues,” MNU president Darlene Jackson said Friday.

She was surprised to learn about Pyde’s departure. She met with him 15 months ago, not long after he started as chief HR officer for Shared Health.

“He told us he’d make the Health Sciences Centre a ‘magnet hospital’ within two years,” Jackson recalled. “It’s a shame, because 15 months isn’t a very long time to give someone to make significant changes in a broken system.”

Pyde could not be reached for comment Friday.

As one of Manitoba’s largest employers — nearly 18,000 throughout the province — departures are not uncommon, a Shared Health spokesperson said Friday.

“The individuals referenced have left over a period of a few months,” they said in an email. “Reasons for departure include other opportunities and retirements, which are not uncommon in an organization of this size. We will not be providing further comment on human resource matters.”

An expert who has studied public bureaucracies for 20 years said turnover in upper management, however, is a cause for concern.

“I can honestly say for the first time in my academic studies that I am genuinely concerned about the well-being of public servants in Manitoba because of the low morale and the high turnover,” University of Manitoba political studies Prof. Karine Levasseur said Friday.

The 2022 civil service employee perspective survey found low morale across the board, while the annual reports of the Manitoba Civil Service Commission show an increase in the employee turnover rate, Levasseur said.

In 2014-15, the Manitoba public service turnover rate was 7.6 per cent; in 2021-22, it increased to nine per cent.

“There’s always going to be natural turnover,” the U of M prof said. “But when someone stays for 15 months in a relatively senior position, that is concerning to me because it runs the risk of becoming a revolving door of employees coming in and leaving.

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“That poses real concerns for institutional memory — having the knowledge to know, ‘Well, that didn’t work in 2017, so we have to rethink how we’re going to approach it this year’… It is not easy to replace senior leaders when they leave at higher rates like this.”

NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara said the recent Shared Health departures don’t bode well for Manitoba’s ailing system.

“Those are the positions, those are the people who have the responsibility of retaining and recruiting the staff in our health-care system right now, where we have a crisis — a shortage of staff,” the NDP MLA said. “It doesn’t instill confidence.”

When asked to comment late Friday on the departures, Health Minister Audrey Gordon’s office deferred to Shared Health.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.