The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
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CS Group ~ Communications Officer’s Report - 2019

Prepared and Submitted by: Tony Goddard, 8 June 2019

Annual General Meeting 2019

I took over the communications portfolio last August and feel that we have improved communications with the CS Community. The first part of my program was to revive some of the successful media formats we have used in the past to re-engage CS members.

Newsletter

I have published two newsletters to-date, a Winter and a Spring version. Both newsletters included updates from our Executive and updated our members on key issues being worked on by the CS Group. The newsletter is a good medium to highlight past events and accomplishments and remind our community of our longer-term plans.

Social Media

We have moved the use and administration of our social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter) back to the CS Executive and added a new YouTube account. They are now all registered with generic PIPSC-CS email addresses so ownership and control can be easily controlled as the executive changes in the future. I have also set up a Hootsuite account to assist in the control and broadcasting of these accounts.

CS Flash & CS Bytes

The CS Bytes is normally published by the Bargaining Team and is used to keep our members up-to-date with the progress of our negotiations with Treasury Board. Normally we publish a CS Bytes the week after a session of bargaining.

The CS Flash has been resurrected as our ‘quick and dirty’ message medium. When we want to broadcast a message to our members about a specific single topic, we use the Flash. We have also used it during this round of bargaining to publish the “CS Bargaining Quote of the Session”; these are quotes from various Departments when they attempt to justify why they are advertising CS jobs in a contract tender – thank you to the COAT. I have also set up a new template for a CS Flash specific to the NOC-ROC when that dynamic team needs to send a pointed message to the membership.

In general, all of the Executive contribute to the various communication vehicles in their own way and as often as time and their full-schedules permit. It is my job to prod our busy executive members for their input and pull it all together in a timely manner. I also coordinate the translation and publishing processes with our very busy Admin Assistant, Aline Fournier.

If anyone has a suggestion on how to better our communications with members, with PIPSC, with each other … don’t hesitate to bring it forward. Afterall, we are all responsible for communicating with our CS peers.