City hasn’t taken temperature on staff satisfaction since 2010

By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express

A satisfied employee is one that will stick around.

At the City of Oshawa, it could be hard to judge just how long staff will stick it out after a recent audit found a number of issues in the city’s staff recruitment and retention practices as well as the fact that an employee satisfaction survey hasn’t been completed since 2010.

The recruitment and retention audit was part of a collection of audits approved for 2017, which also included a follow-up into the overtime audit completed in 2016, along with reviews of the information technology function, work order management, cyber risk and maturity assessment, and administrative monetary penalties.

All of these audits are now complete, save for work order management, which is slated to come before council in the second quarter of this year.

Included in the recruitment and retention audit are seven recommendations from KPMG, the city’s external auditor, five of which are considered medium risk, and two low risk. The audit contained no high risk, or top priority recommendations, those being items that could have a serious and direct impact on the city’s operations or leave the municipality open to liability.

On a bright note, KPMG noted that Oshawa gave the appearance of wanting to improve its retention and recruitment processes, as many initiatives to do so were already underway ahead of the audit, including a performance development program, and the “first mates” program, which pairs newcomers with existing staff.

With that said, the audit pointed out several areas of improvement for the city, including the need to reconcile old identification and access keys to make sure those held by former staff members or those that are lost are no longer active, providing development and training opportunities for employees at all levels, and consistently performing exit interviews.

“We also noted a few minor areas where the corporation may be able to improve retention, increase employee morale and identify trends,” the report reads.

In terms of the employee keycards, it was noted that there were 769 keycards identified in the system without an associated employee or contractor ID, which could potentially pose a security risk. Moving forward, city staff have noted that they will undergo a general “clean up” of the system to deactivate some of the unknown cards, to be completed by the end of the year.

More pressing perhaps is the lack of training opportunities for city employees.

“The corporation should consider performing an assessment of the current training program to identify opportunities to involve staff of all levels as training and development is a crucial component of retaining regular employees and increasing morale,” the KPMG audit reads.

In looking at the numbers, in 2014, the city paid out over $44 million in salaries, but only paid $395,682 in training, or only 0.89 per cent of the salary budget being allocated for training. In 2015, that salary number increased to over $47 million, and the training payout increased to $562,814, or 1.18 per cent. However, in 2016, salary costs dropped to a little over $45 million, and while the payout increased to 1.23 per cent, less money was allocated to training with costs coming in at $554,458.

This is significant when considering that the average municipality spends between two per cent and five per cent of budgets allocated for salaries toward training and development, notes KPMG.

“Employees who feel they cannot develop within their organization or fulfill their career goals are generally more likely to leave,” the report reads. And this not only comes as a loss of potential talent and skills for the city, but it can also be costly.

“Rehiring costs (including recruiting, hiring, initial training and overtime work to cover a vacant position) can be significant.”

Finally, the report recommends that the city should consider performing regular employee satisfaction surveys in order to “gain insight into the current workforce as it is constantly evolving.”

According to Julie Powell, the city’s manager of organizational development, the last such survey was completed in September and November of 2010.

“KPMG’s Recruitment and Retention Audit recommendation relating to employee satisfaction surveys was endorsed,” Powell notes in an emailed statement. “Staff will develop an approach for conducting periodic employee satisfaction surveys and will seek budget funding for 2019 to undertake a formal survey that year.”