Jonathan Dame has a story on Wicked Local Newton about the vacancies in Newton City Hall. Mayor Setti Warren is quoted, saying:
“We take this seriously,” Warren said. “We take the hiring of leadership in this city seriously.”
According to Dame, Warren and administration officials say that the employee turnover rate has been steady for the past six years, and that it is comparable to the turnover rates at other municipalities. The article highlights the very recent departures of Transportation Director Bill Paille, Youth Services Director Jenny O’Higgins and Community Engagement Director Jackie Goddard.
Numbers provided by the city were:
In 2015 and the first couple weeks of this year, 33 people have resigned and 25 people have retired, according to Maureen Lemieux, the city’s chief of staff/chief financial officer. That’s out of more than 900 employees.
If I’m calculating correctly, that adds up to a turnover rate of just under 7% (and I don’t know if retirements typically get factored int0 turnover rate).
The article also discusses some of the long-lasting vacancies.
Read and share your thoughts.
I’m not buying it. The issue is frequent turnover of a relatively small number of high-level positions at city hall, yet the stats presented are a comparison for all 900+ employees? That could very well mask any problems retaining managers compared to other cities. What’s the average tenure looking like? Are certain departments impacted more than others and if so, why? When terminations occur multiple times for a the same position, we should be worried about a lot more than the vacancy.
Adam– I’m not disagreeing with you. But I’m curious why you see this as a problem? To my mind, these folks serve at the pleasure of the Mayor. Not the other way around. If someone wants to leave, or the Mayor wants them to leave, the door to City Hall swings out. But maybe I’m missing something. What’s the issue as you see it?
Mike – while I do care on a personal level about these people, I think it’s also fair to say it raises questions about the effectiveness of the administration. Are these employees set up for success or failure? Are they given what they need to meet their goals? What does it say about our ability to attract and retain talent if good people are repeatedly let go?
Mike – I think the problem is stability. It’s hard to accomplish much when leadership is changing. For example, Mason-Rice’s Principal Mr. Springer long tenure was a huge benefit to the school. He knew how the system worked and was a stabilizing influence for staff and students.
I find Bill Paille’s departure very unsettling. The transportation dept is chronically understaffed and Bill was a great person – involved, on-top of his field, hard working and polite. It’s a great loss for the City.
Mike,
you should understand that the biggest waste of money is training people for a job. On top of the wasted funds in training we will ultimately see worse services. I hope that doesn’t happen, but it’s a logical next step. How do you hire people when you don’t have an HR person doing the hiring? (Just an example, I know we have an interim HR person).
Adam, Lucia, Tom– All very good points, and I appreciate your perspectives.
The largest company I’ve personally run was 140 people, so not nearly as large as the City’s operation. And I would occasionally lose good people including department heads. Sometimes they left on their own. Sometimes I showed them the door. But I can honestly say that in 8 years of running the company, every single time some one would leave, it gave me the opportunity to replace them with an even more talented person.
For me, the turnover turned out to be a good thing, and after eight years I I sold the company for six times what I paid for it. Sometimes change is good. While I don’t know most of the folks that have left City Hall, I give the benefit of doubt to the Mayor, and I hold open the possibility it may turn out for the best.
@Mike Striar – When you ran a company, you had the ability to offer competitive salaries. My guess is that also you also didn’t have high turnover in a few key positions but instead it was spread more evenly throughout the company. And if you saw a position that had become a revolving door, you would question what was going wrong (bad hiring choices, a burn-out job, underpaying, etc.)
@mgwa– All true. And there’s nothing wrong with questioning what’s going on with these departures. But I think because they are personnel issues, the details will be hard to come by. And given that the Mayor has plenty of management experience that dates back to his time with FEMA, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on this.
There was a time when government jobs paid less than the public sector. It is my understanding that that assumption is no longer a given, especially when you factor in benefits and pensions. I am not an HR expert, but I would question the assumptions made here about salaries. Also, a good administrator must hold leaders accountable for their performance levels. Has anyone asked whether any of the people leaving had missed the mark in performance? Perhaps calling in new talent is not as streamlined as keeping the “old” in terms of training, but, to keep a bureaucracy from moldering, a responsible executive, must demand measurable performance targets. While we may have liked the people who were let go and while they may have supported the agendas we favor, they may not have done what they were tasked with doing. Only the Mayor or a City Cluster can tell us this unknown. I agree with Mike Striar’s benefit of the doubt.
Sallee, the administrators are certainly not beyond reproach. Administrators should also be held accountable for setting reasonable performance targets, providing the necessary resources to achieve them, ensuring cooperation between different parts of the organization, and ultimately the success or failure of those employees. When there’s a pattern of turnover, the city suffers. We shouldn’t rush to blame those who were let go.
Also, anecdotally, I have heard of turnover and vacancies in certain departments directly related to salaries in the private sector, benefits notwithstanding.
We also don’t know who left for better opportunities that was the equivalent of a promotion and who was let go. If you’re a department head in Newton, there’s no local upward career path. For the equivalent of a promotion, one has to go to a larger community or a community with a different structure that may provide expanded responsibilities.
I agree with Mike that change can be very good for an organization. New people bring new perspectives, new ideas. As a reminder, personnel decisions are private so we don’t know why people leave.
Adam: I wasn’t laying blame on those who were sent away. We won’t ever know the reasons, but, what we have a right to judge is whether over a longer term (like the current four year Mayoral span) the City has advanced its goals in various departments efficiently and effectively. Then, if we think the goals have not been reached, we can rightly blame/replace the Executive or praise/re-elect him/her! I do find it interesting that the City has seemed to function fairly well with as many unfilled positions as there seem to be! Isn’t that a good effect on our bottom line? And Adam, benefits are never “notwithstanding”! Even at the risk of heavy turnover necessitating frequent on-the-job training, benefits are the gorillas in all four corners of the room!
And lest we forget, we are doing something right in Newton:
http://newton.wickedlocal.com/news/20160114/newton-receives-high-bond-ratings-from-moodys-standard–poors?utm_source=newsletter-20160115&utm_medium=email&utm_term=view_as_webpage&utm_campaign=newsletter
The issue is the constant dismissals coming from the Executive office. It’s a revolving door. Can’t all be related to job performance.