LeapComp - Sales Performance Management Blog

As you may know, Canada has two official languages; French and English. Government employees working in a bilingual position are eligible for an annual $800 bonus once they pass a second language evaluation.

I have some mixed feelings about this bonus. On one hand, it reflects the importance of bilingualism as a key value in the Canadian Public Service, it ensures that the Canadian population can be served in their official language of choice, it reflects on the openness of Canada to diversity, and it’s a pretty good incentive for public servants to become bilingual. On the other hand, shouldn’t bilingualism be considered just a regular skill; something that an employee should master before being hired?

In my opinion, a bilingualism bonus can work to increase the bilingualism of the current workforce. The bonus could be eliminated for new employees, if both languages would be an important rated requirements in the classification of positions. It doesn’t make much sense to hire a unilingual person, send them to second language training for months, and pay an on-going bonus once they become proficient. In the private industry, I don’t know many companies who would hire a C++ programmer, send them for Java training, and pay them a bonus once they can finally program in Java – something that was required for the position in the first place!

According to this paper, every commissioner since 1979 has agreed with the elimination of the bilingualism bonus. However, it was never eliminated because the largest federal public service union opposes the elimination of the bonus and recommends increasing the amount instead.

Eliminating the bonus could lead to a decay in the level of bilingualism in the government if bilingualism skills are not carefully integrated to position’s rated requirements and mandatory skills. Let’s hope that if the bonus is eventually eliminated, that the transition will be done properly… and that the savings will be directed to other bilingualism initiatives.