El Paso County highlights training, mentorship and internship efforts to boost employee development

Christine Middleton, organizational development division manager in Human Resources for El Paso County, described a sustained push to expand employee development during an interview on the county podcast Beyond the Deus.

"We here in human resources, we are here to support all employees of El Paso County," Middleton said, listing talent acquisition, compensation, benefits, employee relations, risk management and organizational development as parts of the unit's work. She said the county now offers a training catalog of about 230 live and on-demand courses and runs internship, mentorship and leadership programs aimed at retaining and developing staff.

Middleton said some of the most in-demand courses relate to communication skills — for example, navigating difficult conversations, giving feedback and emotional intelligence — and pointed to a program called "creating a culture of feedback" that teaches employees how to both give and receive constructive feedback.

The county automatically enrolls newly promoted or hired supervisors in a bundled supervisor boot camp; a separate, nomination-based leadership development program focuses on higher-level skills such as delegation and managing difficult conversations, Middleton said. She added the county launched its second cohort of a mentorship program in January after participant feedback prompted organizers to move the start date from mid-October to avoid the year-end holiday break.

"The mentorship program ... allows us to use another great resource we already have to develop and grow our workforce," Middleton said, describing mentorship as a way for mentees to gain advice and for mentors to share experience across departments. She said cohorts include roughly five cohort-wide networking events and that the program was updated in its second round to give pairs more flexibility around written requirements and timelines.

Middleton listed two new classes planned for February and March: one on change management and adaptability and another on positive intelligence. She said the county continues to add offerings based on employee feedback and needs identified through engagement surveys.

The interview also addressed performance management. Middleton called annual evaluations "a summary of what you already discussed throughout the entire year," and urged supervisors to hold regular check-ins so employees face no surprises at review time. "If you really take the time to do performance management throughout the year ... then the performance evaluation is really just a summary," she said.

Middleton acknowledged constraints. "We have a limited amount of staff" and budget limitations compared with private-sector roles, she said, but added that the work has been rewarding because staff take initiative and persist to implement programs with the resources available.

The organizational development division also supports internships and apprenticeships, which Middleton described as important early-career pathways. She cited her own experience in a German apprenticeship and an internship at Fort Carson as influences on her work designing local programs and urged prospective applicants to sign up for job alerts on the county careers page.

Middleton said workforce development in the county aims to improve employee engagement and service delivery to residents by increasing staff skills, motivation and retention. She encouraged employees with ideas or questions to contact the HR training team through the county's human resources channels and to look for openings on the El Paso County careers page.

Less critical operational details discussed in the podcast included how the county solicits feedback to revise programs, the benefits of cross-department networking built into mentorship cohorts, and Middleton's description of what she considers a successful day: seeing progress on projects or hearing that a training resonated with participants.