Remember that Grand Jury report from last June entitled “25 Years of Transient Human Resources Leadership and a Hobbled Human Resources Department”?
From the intro: “The 2022-2023 Mendocino County Civil Grand Jury (GJ) has identified several areas of improvement for HR, including enhancing performance management processes, addressing workplace culture issues systematically, and resolving staffing shortages across various County departments. These improvements are crucial for maintaining qualified employees, providing training opportunities, improving retention rates, and fostering a healthy organizational culture. Unfortunately, these challenges are not new, as a GJ report from 2013 highlighted similar issues with HR. The fact that these shortfalls continue to exist 10 years later is directly attributable to the lack of consistent and qualified leadership for HR, which in turn is due to the lack of support for HR by County leadership…
The Supervisors were required to respond:
https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/60814/638321770876100000
As usual, but especially with this overpaid board of Supervisors, the Supervisors’ first paragraph of their response insulted the Grand Jury:
“The Board of Supervisors encourages the Grand Jury to focus on verified facts and avoid unsubstantiated opinions that tend to inflame instead of inform discussion of this critical issue.”
Translation: Opinions which are critical of us are unwelcome.
The Grand Jury’s first recommendation was to hire a full-time HR Director.
The Supervisors discourteous response: “Not warranted. The County is operating under a different model of HR leadership with HR Director duties performed by Deputy CEO and an Assistant HR Director responsible for HR operations.”
Translation: Butt out, Grand Jury. We’re running HR out of the Executive Office so all your “opinions” are irrelevant.
Nevertheless, after insulting the Grand Jury, the Board immediately contradicted itself and proceeded to agree with a number of the Grand Jury’s recommendations. But, again, as is common, to the Supervisors agreement is just eyewash. They knew they could promise anything in the knowledge that there would be no follow up. They had no intention of following up. The Board only agreed because the GJ’s recommendations were ordinary personnel management practices and were irrefutable.
The most interesting aspect of the Supervisors’ response to this report was the inadvertent inclusion of promised completion dates — which, of course, nobody but us has paid attention to.
GJ Recommendation 3: “Reinforce that assessments [personnel evaluations] are mandatory for all employees, all levels, even step 5. Assessments should be audited and tracked by HR across the organization to ensure all are completed. This should be completed by the End of the Year.”
The Grand Jury had found that the County does a bad job of personnel evaluation and didn’t keep track of their laughably oversimplified and essentially useless personnel evaluations,
County Response: “Requires further analysis. Determine if the current Munis system is capable of tracking assessments and audits by 10/31/23.”
They didn’t even acknowledge how bad the evaluation process was, but only responded to the tracking finding. October 31, 2023 came and went and no analysis or determination was made.
Recommendation 4: “Direct the department heads (for department level) and HR (at County level) to perform oversight/audit of performance assessments to ensure consistent, equitable, and standardized assessments across workgroups, and to assess and develop managers’ performance assessment skills. This should be conducted annually beginning End of Year 2023.”
County Response: “Implement in future. Depends upon Recommendation 3 completion, by 11/30/23.”
Again, no direction was given. November 30, 2023 came and went and nothing happened. Nobody asked the CEO if the implementation had happened.
Recommendation 5. “Implement 180-degree assessments and employee assessments of their supervisors within 12 months of the new HR Director’s hire date.”
Of course there was no new HR Director because the Supervisors had turned the department over to the CEO’s office.
Board response: “Implement in future. Determined new HR model of operations 6/1/23, implement 180-degree assessments by 5/1/24.”
It’s now August of 2024. No such implementation.
Recommendation 6: “Write procedural guidelines describing the updated Performance Management policy, including the recommended changes to the assessment process, as well as guidelines on implementing formal goal-setting and ongoing coaching check-ins during the year. Complete within 12 months of hiring an HR Director.”
Again, the County didn’t hire a new HR Director.
Board response: “Implement in future. Due to new HR model of operations 6/1/23, implement updated Performance Management policy and procedural guidelines by 4/1/24.”
No follow up. No implementation.
Recommendation 7: “Update the [woefully oversimplified] performance assessment form before End of Year 2023 to include open text boxes under appropriate ratings to require supporting details, relevant qualitative feedback, and examples that justify the rating for all employees.”
Unbelievably, most of Mendo’s pro forma evaluations had no “supporting details, relevant qualitative feedback, and examples that justify the ratings.” Just some grade-school level 1-5 rating boxes.
Board response: “Implement in future. By 12/15/23.”
Date passed. Nothing.
Recommendation 8: “Update the performance assessment form before EOY 2023 to include additional sections where managers can list the goals and expectations of the past year that the employee is being assessed against, a summary and assessment of their completed work, the short and long-term objectives, and steps for improvement when necessary.”
Board Response: “Implement in future. By 12/15/23.”
Date passed. Nothing. No goals, no expectations. One wonders what the Board did during their own evaluation of their overpaid CEO. Did they set any goals? Based on their own recent self-raise, it’s obvious that in Mendocino County job performance has nothing to do with pay raises.
Recommendation 9: “Develop follow-up training on effective performance management for all employees (managers and frontline). This training should take the basics learned in the current Vector Solutions training and connect them to each employee’s particular workplace and the County’s specific Personnel Management process. Training development should begin by End of Year 2023 and should be implemented in 2024.”
Board response: “Implement in future. Begin training development by 12/1/23.”
See above.
Recommendation 16. “Communicate in 2023, and annually thereafter, with all employees to improve the awareness and understanding of the current discrimination and harassment policy and reporting options.”
Board response: “Implement in future. Implement communication by 10/1/23.”
No such communications were issued by the Board.
Recommendation 20 had to do with the County’s inability to fill essential positions: “Collect data on why applicants decline job offers. This data should be reported to the HR Director every six months. If there is a trend in reasons for declining, this must be reported to the BOS and to the CEO.”
Board response: “Requires further analysis. Assess ability to collect data by 12/31/23.”
No assessment made. No data collected.
Recommendation 23. “Identify positions that are particularly difficult to find applicants for due to widespread state and national shortages (such as Social Services), and research ways to support local training and certification at both high school and college level, as well as with the Mendocino County Office of Education’s Institute of Career Education.”
Board response: “Requires further analysis. Research for local training and certification by 12/15/23.”
No identification or research was done.
Recommendation 24: “Track vital staffing statistics such as job vacancy rates and turnover rates in the County and include those statistics in the public CEO report.”
Board response: “Has been implemented. Scheduled reporting to be included in CEO reports.”
Is lying in an official response to the Grand Jury a felony or a misdemeanor?
Although the Supervisors obviously didn’t appreciate the Grand Jury’s criticism of their HR department and processes, they nevertheless agreed to implement many of the recommendations in the months following the report. Predictably, the dates the Board set came and went and nothing was done; nobody asked if any progress had been made. The Grand Jury was ignored again — even where the Board agreed with the Grand Jury’s recommendations. And we damn sure don’t have any personnel statistics in the CEO report.
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