TITLE
Recommendation to request City Manager to direct all City of Long Beach employees to participate in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy "State of the Service" public employee survey, to be completed within the next 45 days.
DISCUSSION
The greatest asset to the City of Long Beach is its employees. City of Long Beach employees work hard every day to address our city's most pressing needs including keeping our city safe, maintaining economic stability, providing access to parks and beaches, protecting public health and the environment, and ensuring our roads, sidewalks, and public spaces are clean and well maintained. Despite the hard work exemplified, public sector employees are seldom given the recognition they deserve.
In a time when public employee bargaining power is under threat, public perception is increasingly cynical, and overall trust in government is low, it is up to City leaders and administrators to ensure they are continually acknowledging the hard work produced by employees and examining the ways in which improvements can be made.
Over the past decade, diminished revenues and increasing expenses have hit local governments especially hard. At the same time, local governments face state mandates, mostly unfunded, and experience increased demand from the public to provide efficient public services. These challenging dynamics commonly contribute to low morale and increased burnout.
Given that human capital remains the most important capital for local governments to deliver their mission, it is in the best interest of the City to take proactive steps in ensuring we are creating the best possible conditions to ensure employee satisfaction and productivity.
Recently, USC's Sol Price School of Public Policy, with funding from the Haynes
Foundation, designed a survey titled, "State of the Service", that seeks to assess how local public servants fare a variety of critical concepts in public management, including different citizen engagement approaches, performance management practices, leadership, employee motivations, and attitudes like job satisfaction and different forms of turnover intention and burnout.
This statewide survey of local public servants is a two-year comparative survey, with three waves of surveys. The project team provides ongoing feedback to all participating municipalities after each wave of data is collected, to assist participating municipalities in identifying best practices in public human resource management.
The proposed "State of the Service" report and data promulgation will provide
participating city governments with actionable information on the state of their respective workforce in terms of employee satisfaction, responsiveness to citizen engagement, and potential turnover pressures.
Employees who participate in the survey will be entered in an opportunity drawing to win a gift card of up to $100. The survey will take approximately 20 minutes of an employee's time, and all individual survey responses will remain anonymous.
Several municipalities across the state of California have already began participating in the survey including, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, Lakewood, Glendale, Palmdale, Norwalk, Rancho Palos Verdes, Malibu, San Dimas, Rolling Hills Estate, La Canada Flintridge, South Gate, Adelanto, Duarte, and La Puente. In each jurisdiction, survey design was slightly altered to feature questions and assessments tailored to the unique characteristics of the participating city. In Long Beach, the 'State of the Service' survey includes questions aimed at obtaining a baseline understanding of our workforce's shared definition of terms and concepts such as economic inclusion, equity, and community engagement, which will be helpful as the city of Long Beach moves toward implementing policies and practices aimed at creating a more equitable city.
Discovering what motivates City employees to do their job, evaluating levels of
satisfaction, and learning of the pressures, stresses, and challenges our workforce faces on a daily basis will help inform policy changes and shape the nature of the workplace.
For more information on the State of the Service survey please visit: ww.soscaligov.com
TIMING CONSIDERATIONS
[Timing Considerations]
FISCAL IMPACT
There is no significant fiscal impact.
SUGGESTED ACTION
Approve recommendation.
Respectfully Submitted,
COUNCILMEMBER REX RICHARDSON,
NINTH DISTRICT
COUNCILWOMAN STACY MUNGO,
FIFTH DISTRICT
VICE MAYOR DEE ANDREWS,
SIXTH DISTRICT