Memorandum                    

City of Lawrence

City Manager’s Office

TO:	City Employees
FROM:	Diane Stoddard, Interim City Manager
DATE:	October 21, 2015
CC:	Casey Toomay, Assistant City Manager
RE:	Employee Survey

I would like to thank City employees for completing the employee survey back in August.  We received an excellent response to the survey, which is extremely helpful to ensure that attention is paid to things that matter to employees and that employee sentiment is known and recognized.

Different people will have different interpretations of the survey results.  Here are my takeaways and thoughts on the survey results and our follow up efforts.

Things that are going well or are improved:

• Improved overall employee satisfaction: 

Employee satisfaction is up 18% from the 2008 survey.

• Employees work well with their first line supervisors:

Overall the results show that employees have a positive relationship with their immediate supervisors. The further that management is from the first line level, the more room for improvement exists. This offers a challenge to Department Directors and City Manager’s Office staff to connect better with staff members throughout the organization.   

• Communication has improved:

Communication was identified as a major concern in the 2008 survey and the 2015 survey points to improvements in this area. 

Things that need attention or are areas of concern:

• Equipment and resources:

There was an increase in concern about adequate availability of facilities, personnel and other resources in departments.  While the City was able to make some advancement with equipment needs for the 2016 budget, this will continue to be an area of need that staff will communicate to the City Commission in upcoming budgets.

• Compensation and Benefits:

While the 2015 survey points to an increase in satisfaction with compensation and benefits from the 2008 survey, it continues to be an area of concern.  The City Commission provided additional resources for compensation for the 2016 budget, which will enable a larger merit pool than earlier years, funds for targeted reclassifications of positions, funds toward the compression issues in the public safety departments and funds for the MOU agreements.  Each year, the HR Division staff surveys the market for us to gauge our wages with the market.  This will continue to be an area of focus and an item for staff to continue to communicate to the City Commission.  Also, we know that maintaining a quality health insurance program is a very valued benefit to employees and the City has been able to sustain its funding for this program.

• Facilities:

Facilities have been a growing concern.  There were a number of comments about the need for a police facility and other facility needs.  I believe that over the next 10 years, facility needs will require attention and resources.  Staff will need to continue to communicate these needs to the City Commission.

Next Steps: 

I have requested that Department Directors provide me with a plan to address survey results within departments  (see attached summary). Also, I will provide this survey to the City Commission.  I am currently working on setting times to meet with city employees during November and December and will be looking for additional employee feedback on these issues.

Thank you:

I would like to thank you for taking the time to complete the survey.  Also, I would like to recognize the ERC and thank them for their continued emphasis about the need to conduct this survey and input on survey questions.  Finally, I would like to thank Kevyn Gero, Management Assistant in the City Manager’s Office, for her work on designing the survey instrument, gathering input on survey questions and assembling the survey results and summarizing all of the feedback.  She did an excellent job on this project and it resulted in a great savings to the City to not have to outsource this work.