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Grading the Cities introduction THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Introduction: 35-City Average Grade: C+
Just a few years ago, no one in his right mind would have thought it possible. City personnel officials were a little like laboratory mice, forced to negotiate complex bureaucratic mazes designed to make innovation difficult. Obstacles have been placed in their way by city councils, unions and state legislatures.
A few examples:
The good news is more and more cities are realizing that this is right, and acting accordingly. Many cities now produce promotional videos to aid in recruiting. San Antonio takes a dog-and-pony show, full of colorful booths and exhibits, to the local shopping malls. Jacksonville used to run display ads that looked like something out of the Federal Register. Now, they’re more reminiscent of People magazine. “We’ve really spiffed up,” says Adrienne P. Trott, chief of human resources.
But the cleverest recruitment gimmicks in the world will do little good unless job candidates are convinced that performance will be rewarded once they come to work. Fortunately, there seems to be a fair amount of progress in this realm. Most of the nation’s largest cities are experimenting with ways to recognize superior performers, whether in cash or with other incentives. Coupled with this is a search for better ways to evaluate the quality of the work performed. In Indianapolis, not only do managers review their employees but the reverse is true as well. Once a year, a form is handed out to employees to rate their supervisors. If the boss gets panned, the process is repeated in six months.
Leah Smith, former director of administration in Indianapolis, was crushed by her first evaluation. “They said I didn’t spend enough time with them.... I made a chart saying, ‘Here’s the bad things you said about me and the good things you said. Here’s what I’m going to do to improve.’ Then we had a retreat, and we talked about how we worked with each other. I realized, maybe I do sound harsh. Maybe I’m not listening all the time.”
Many cities are trying to find a solid middle ground between ignoring staffers who don’t perform, and disciplining them too punitively. Quite a few are now giving managers specialized training to help them deal effectively with non-performers. Minneapolis sends employees with work problems home for a few days to consider whether they want to set up a plan to improve performance — or perhaps seek employment elsewhere.
The majority of human resource agencies are acutely aware that their roles are changing. Traditionally, they’ve focused on regulation and oversight. What they’d really like to do is help hire, prepare and retain the best workers. At one time, says Jacksonville’s Adrienne Trott, “this office was viewed as the cops. We told people: ‘Do the form over again! No! You can’t do that!’ That’s not the value we want to add to the process here. We want to be consultants.”
Technology, for the cities that can afford it, can be a real boon to personnel management. Many cities have either upgraded their HR software recently, or are heading toward doing so. Phoenix, at the cutting edge in this as in so many categories, uses its computers to help identify position requirements, find the right people and track their professional progress. The system makes all employee information immediately accessible to managers who need it. It automates record-keeping and routine tasks and generates easy-to-read reports about personnel.
All of this is increasingly important as the job market in the public sector grows ever tighter. Unemployment rates vary, but in some cities, such as Denver, it has dipped as low as 2 percent. High-tech workers are worth their weight in silicon chips. Librarians, auto mechanics, dispatchers and health care workers are harder to find than ever.
What’s more, public-sector workers tend to be somewhat older than their private-sector counterparts. Almost 44 percent of government workers are now 45 or older. In the private sector, only about 30 percent fall in that group. Minneapolis officials refer to the looming problems of an aging work force as the “Y2K of HR.” One hopes it can be resolved as successfully as the first Y2K, but the odds are against it.
At least Minneapolis understands the problems it’s confronting and is heavily into work force planning. About a dozen large cities have barely begun projecting their future work force needs. In some cases, they simply haven’t recognized the significance of the effort. In others, the technology isn’t up to the task. In still others, they just don’t have the manpower.
Boston’s HR officials, for example, have been warning of the need for more long-range planning for some time. “When you talk about long-range planning, there’s no way given all our other tasks,” says Vivian Leonard, director of the Office of Human Resources.
That’s really unfortunate. It’s bad enough putting a mouse in a maze. But you should at least feed it properly.
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In many of the nation’s largest cities, personnel management — long an area that festered in unchanging rules and dismal attitudes — is a bright spot of creative thinking and reform.