County Performance appraisals

A countywide operational and performance assessment was conducted by Mauldin & Jenkins over 15 months and the findings were released in June of 2023.  The process included surveys, in-person interviews, job shadowing, and walk-throughs.

The operational and performance assessment found almost 500 recommendations for improvement. Click Here to read the full assessment.

After reviewing, these are the observations made by my team:

We saw no feedback or input from external stakeholders, such as customers, citizens, etc. According to our approximations, there were 4k+ employees within the 13 departments plus the library, but only 1k responded. So, a 25% response rate is low. HR stopped doing their annual report in 2017, and we could not find a more current report from them regarding their employees. It could be rolled up in another report, but we could not find it.

There is no mention of conducting any real assessment to determine future challenges, such as a SWOT analysis, root cause analysis, or even Six Sigma to identify barriers in processes.

The data was not disaggregated by race, sex, disability, sexual orientation, etc., so it is hard to discern what the perspectives are from those groups. Something as simple as a barrier analysis would have identified gaps in hiring.

In their summary data, they only stated employees have issues with “management” but do not discern between 1st line, 2nd line, executive, etc., so it’s hard to identify where the problems lie.

There are other general recommendations made, but from our viewpoint, they do not address the many external community challenges that may occur in 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, or longer.

Also, there was no mention of the development of an improved strategic plan to include timetables, strategies, tactics, goals, and objectives.

We do not think it is best practice to recommend organizational changes without first addressing the needs of the constituents. It would have been good to see the actual questions used in their survey tool and interviews. Also, how they deployed the survey matters as well. Culturally, we saw no mention as to whether the current organizational values and culture aligned with the direction, needs, and wants of the community.

As a public service entity, it is important to start externally first to discern if they are up to the challenge. We found no comparisons or bench-marking to “like” county governments across the nation.

The current County Manager is responsible for overseeing the corrective actions required, this makes no sense since all the violations occurred under his watch. Good leadership would seek an independent supervisor or director.