Senior L&E Strategic Planner

Role Responsibilities

Do you believe a strong, engaged public service is essential for the province? Are you a wizard when it comes to crisp briefing notes and decision decks? Do you subscribe to all the Alberta news releases just for fun?

If so, we want you to lead our most visible and strategically important initiatives.

As the Senior L&E Strategic Planner, you’ll be responsible for developing and implementing APS-wide strategies that foster a culture of learning, recognition and engagement. Your work will be grounded in evidence, aligned with organizational priorities, and designed for measurable impact.

You’ll be a driving force behind L&E programming across the APS: turning insights into action through the power of your briefing material.

What You Will Do:

• Lead strategic planning: Develop frameworks and roadmaps for APS learning and engagement initiatives that support organizational goals and workforce development.
• Navigate complex approvals: Craft clear, compelling briefing materials that enable timely decisions and instill confidence among senior leaders.
• Apply systems thinking: Understand the bigger picture and anticipate organizational impacts, manage interdependencies, and identify opportunities for integration across programs and ministries.
• Engage stakeholders: Build strong relationships across ministries, ensuring alignment, collaboration, and shared ownership of outcomes.
• Drive continuous improvement: Use data and feedback to evaluate initiatives, uncover systemic challenges, and recommend enhancements for long-term impact.

What You Will Bring:

• Strategic communication skills: You write with clarity, purpose and impact - , tailoring your templates and messages for relevant audiences and contexts.
• Strategic thinking and proactive planning: You think ahead to anticipate risks, weigh trade-offs, and make timely informed recommendations under pressure.
• Confidence in complexity: You thrive in fast-paced environments, juggle competing priorities, coordinate across teams to keep projects on track.
• Collaboration and positive influence: You build consensus, resolve conflicts, and foster strong relationships at all levels of the organization.
• Results-driven focus: You bring precision, discipline, and rigor to planning, execution, and evaluation, ensuring every initiative advances APS priorities.

Please click on this link to view the job description for this position.

APS Competencies

Competencies are behaviors that are essential to reach our goals in serving Albertans. We encourage you to have an in depth understanding of the competencies that are required for this opportunity and to be prepared to demonstrate them during the recruitment process.

This link will assist you with understanding competencies:
https://www.alberta.ca/system/files/custom_downloaded_images/psc-alberta-public-service-competency-model.pdf.

• Systems Thinking: Considers inter-relationships and emerging trends to attain goals.
• Drive for Results: Actively sets goals and remains open to advice on reaching them.
• Creative Problem Solving: Is open to new ideas and breaks problems down to identify solutions.

Qualifications

Your cover letter and resume will be used to assess your qualifications, including your written communication skills and your attention to detail.

Ensure your cover letter meets all of the following criteria:

• Includes a professional salutation.
• Identifies the relevant job opportunity (i.e. Senior Learning and Engagement Strategic Planner).
• Is concise, without spelling/grammatical errors.
• Clearly identifies the number of years of experience you have working in a public sector organization (e.g. federal/provincial/municipal government, school board, hospital, etc.) and
• Provides a clear and concise example of a time you used written communication to secure an important decision/approval from leadership.

Ensure your resume meets all of the following criteria:

• Includes the starting and ending month & year of each role.
• Is concise, without spelling/grammatical errors.
• Has a clear, consistent layout that demonstrates your attention to detail; and
• Provides information about each role using clear and concise bullet points.

Applications without a cover letter and resume that meet all of the above criteria will not be considered.

Note: Prior to selecting a shortlist of candidates for interviews, applicants may be requested to submit a short written assignment.

Minimum recruitment standard: University graduation and 4 years of progressively responsible related experience.

Equivalency: Related education or experience is considered on the basis of:

• 1 year of education for 1 year of experience; or
• 1 year of experience for 1 year of education.

Other requirements (i.e. “must haves” to be considered for the role):

• Experience analyzing and developing policies and/or strategies in a public sector context.
• Experience preparing clear, concise briefing materials to secure decisions from senior leadership;
• Familiarity with the Government of Alberta’s departments and decision-making structures.

Assets (i.e. “nice to haves”):

• Experience analyzing and developing policies and/or strategies in the Alberta Public Service.

Minimum recruitment standards outline the minimum education and experience required for appointment to a job classification. 
Refer to https://www.alberta.ca/alberta-public-service-minimum-recruitment-standards.

Notes

To be considered for this competition, your application must include a well-written cover letter and resume. Carefully review the Qualifications section to see the specific requirements for the cover letter and resume that are unique to this role. If your application does not include a cover letter and resume that clearly meet these requirements, your application will not be considered.

Location and Hour of Work:
Our office is located in downtown Edmonton. Alternate work locations are not available at this time, however hybrid work options may be available on a case-by-case basis, subject to government policy and operational viability.

This competition will be used to fill 2 Temporary (18months) Senior Learning and Engagement Strategic Planner roles within the Public Service Commission Ministry.

Occasional travel within Alberta may be required.

Business hours are Monday to Friday, 8:15 am to 4:30 pm. Hours of work are 7.25 hours per day / 36.25 hours per week. Modified work hours may be available on a case-by-case basis, subject to government policy and operational viability.

Final candidates will be required to undergo a security screening. Any costs associated with obtaining the required documents/checks as noted or interview travel expenses, will be the responsibility of the candidate. Out-of-province applicants can obtain the required documents/checks from the province they currently reside in.

More information about working for the Alberta Public Service - https://www.alberta.ca/advantages-working-for-alberta-public-service.aspx.

• Public Service Pension Plan (PSPP) - https://www.pspp.ca.
• Alberta Public Service Benefit Information - https://www.alberta.ca/alberta-public-service-benefits.
• Professional learning and development - https://www.alberta.ca/professional-development-support-directive.
• Research Alberta Public Service Careers tool – https://researchapscareers.alberta.ca.
• Positive workplace culture and work-life balance.
• Opportunity to participate in flexible work arrangements such as working from home up to two days per week and modified work schedule agreement.
• Leadership and mentorship programs.