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City presents workplace culture assessment; staff report strong engagement but want deeper survey work
Summary
City staff presented a multi‑phase workplace culture assessment showing high staff engagement on some measures but lower scores on transparency and inclusion; next steps include department-level discussions, a more extensive May survey, and a proposed council retreat to engage elected officials.
City staff summarized findings from an ongoing workplace culture assessment that combined facilitated sessions, a pulse survey and planned follow-up work. The assessment found high employee agreement that “the work I do matters” (about 89%) and that staff have access to needed equipment (roughly 87%), but lower agreement on transparency in high-level decision-making (about 40%) and inclusion in decisions that impact employees (about 50%).
City Administrator Rick Niemeyer described the phased approach: facilitated department-head and employee sessions (Full Court Vision), a pulse survey (Thinking Leaders Collective) with roughly 60% participation, and a planned more comprehensive survey in May. He said department-level conversations will explore what “transparency” and “decision inclusion” mean to different teams and inform targeted actions.
Council members urged caution about identifying individuals or small departments in survey results and recommended using the process to improve the organization rather than to punish staff. Several members welcomed the high scores for staff pride and the steps toward actionable follow-up; Steven Knott emphasized that such assessments should inform organization-wide improvements rather than personnel actions.
Staff outlined next steps: a 20–25 question May survey designed to increase response rates to the 80%+ target, department meetings to probe lower-rated topics, and a proposal to hold a council retreat (at additional cost) to include elected officials in culture discussions. Niemeyer also provided cost figures for the consultant work to date and options for a council-focused retreat.
What’s next: staff will run the May survey, convene department-level discussions, and return to council with findings and recommendations; a council retreat proposal with cost estimates will be presented at a future meeting.
