Pushback From Administration at the May 17 Council Employee Committee (CEC) Meeting Pts 3 and 4
Summer 2021
Community TV and I tell the stories nobody else will touch. When I join committee meetings remotely, I can see who else is online. While Medicine Hat News is often represented, I’ve yet to see anyone else.
(I don’t always make it to meetings and I can’t see the in-person spectators.) I seem to be the only one reporting on the CEC meetings.
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Part 3
I’m bothered by how administration tries to explain the survey results. They blamed everything from the corporate realignment to budget cuts to the election to Covid and working from home. (Again, not verbatim.)
Administration Rep D “When you look back at last 2, 3, 4 years, it’s an interesting journey the organization has gone through. We had a number of council initiatives to deal with financial challenges, to the execution of 2021 budget...corporate realignment in 2020, workforce reductions that occurred as well (2021) also in the midst of a global pandemic... restrictions during Covid, working from home, disconnected, etc pressure on mental health not only from the employee but what their families were going through. When you wrap all that up it was quite a time.”
Employee discontent has been going on for much longer than the last 4 years. The last Employee Engagement Survey (EES) was done in 2017.
At the April 26 Council Employee Committee (CEC) meeting Acting City Manager (ACM) Heggelund said
- directors felt feelings of threatening and bullying from the last time there was a survey, a lot of hard feelings
- directors will be intimidated if council is looking into their departments
Obviously the 2017 results were not very positive. 5 years later, we’re getting what I suspect is disastrous results. These results cannot be blamed solely on the last 4 years.
The Rot Runs Deep; it’s been rotting a long time.
I can respect people who say “It’s my fault, I’ll get help, I’ll do better.” I’m not seeing anyone taking any responsibility for how things are now.
Part 4
I’m disturbed by how much push back is coming from administration about the Employee Engagement Survey (EES), from the lack of taking any responsibility to the near hostility at the idea of bringing in outside experts to assess the organization.
This is not ALL coming from the Acting City Manager (ACM) but from the next level of administration as well.
The workplace culture has obviously been deteriorating for a long time as evidenced by what we heard about the 2017 survey at the April 26 CEC meeting.
Did the public ever get the results of that one? There’s nothing about in the 2017 (or 2018) Annual Report.
The press got a leaked copy of the 2017 Police Survey results but did anything really change?
Sure they allowed officers to show tattoos and have facial hair, I think they can now wear ball caps too.
Did anything else change?
Was the sexual harassment ever addressed?
Administration has to take responsibility.
Our ACM said “Rewriting policies is not going to create good culture, it’s not going to create good leadership...we have a whole tool box of interventions and initiatives we can take creating competent leadership and we use external experts and facilitators and investigators we can call on...”
Yeah that hasn’t worked very well.
All the surveys, idea repositories and focus groups in the world won’t do a damn bit of good if nothing changes. Sometimes that means top administrators.
Our ACM also said “It’s critical to have culture to come from the top and permeate down we’ve used (name redacted) for years, unless you set the tone from the top you’re fighting a losing battle.”
To that end, the CEC also discussed the search for a permanent City Manager. They’re still awaiting an opportunity profile from the search firm.
Mayor Clark “Should we reach out to (name redacted), does he realize the urgency of the situation?”
She Knows
We Need New Blood!
#kasosumh #yxh #yxhcitymanager #workplaceculture #neednewblood #mayorclark #yxhmayor #takeresponsibility
