MWDigest July 2017 - Municipal World's monthly digital digest by Municipal World

July 2017

R ECRUITMENT R ETENTION ALSO INSIDE Good-For-You Stress

How your stress can increase your resilience

Is a LEADERSHIP AUDIT in order?

Call for Canadian Case Studies

PLUS: COMING EVENTS

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CONTENTS

JULY 2017 volume 127, number 7

MUNICIPAL WORLD – CANADA’S MUNICIPAL MAGAZINE

RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

MARIJUANA

& THE WORKPLACE

5 7

WELLNESS

MANAGING

THE NEW KLEENEX?

MOMENTUM

STUDENT

HIRES

DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION HAVE THE FLU?

ENGAGEMENT CONUNDRUM

YOUR NEXT GREAT HIRE

WHOSE

LAND IS IT? 31 THE REGULARS COMING EVENTS ASSOCIATION NEWS

4, 33,43 30

EDITOR’S CORNER

ENVIRONMENTAL ZONE GOVERNANCE ZONE

MANAGEMENT ZONE

THE READING ROOM

MWDigest is a monthly digital publication, highlighting and supplementing content available to Municipal World magazine subscribers. For information on advertising and submitting content for this publication, please contact Anthony Gibbons at 1-888-368-6125 ext. 206.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

JULY 2017

Editor’s Corner RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

For many organizations, recruitment and selection of qualified candidates can be a struggle – and that can have significant impacts on both the organization and the bottom line.

Good-For-You Stress

Stress is a big part of most of our lives. While it can be overwhelming at times, this article shares tips on how we can use stress as a motivator instead of a deterrent.

Call for Canadian Case Studies

Let your story be heard! If your community is doing innovative things, take this valuable opportunity to share a case study with municipalities and organizations across North America! Find out more today.

Online Exclusive! Editor’s Flashback This online-only feature column highlights select articles from past issues of Municipal World’s monthly print magazine. In this issue, we share “Is a Leadership Audit in order?” – by Neville Knowles, from the October 2012 issue.

Coming Events

Stay on the right

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Susan M. Gardner Whether it’s complying with new legislation and regulations, providing a more inclusive hiring process, promoting better recruitment and retention practices, or ensuring the safety of new hires (including those who are young and temporary), it is important for municipal leaders to steer toward progress and compliance, and work to ensure a positive organizational culture. In this month’s issue, the above

list of “HR problems” faced by municipalities are explored. While various workplace issues all have their own unique challenges, they also have a commonality – for positive change to occur, the organization must adapt and respond to a shifting environment. For public sector organizations, however, this can often be a stumbling block. In his book Unleashing Change: A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government, Steven Kelman noted how the public sector often punishes error more that it rewards excellence. This can have a profound chilling effect, hampering organizational progess in all sorts of ways – snuffing out creativity, initiative, and opportunities improvement. For leaders who are struggling to break their organizations free of these historical stereotypes attached to government “bureaucracy,” addressing issues like “bad attitude” (as discussed by Evert Akkerman on page 5) or “orga-

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nizaational flu” (see Mary Lynn McPherson, page 21) can be a good place to start. At their heart, these challenges speak to the values of the organization – and the need to make sure those values are reflected not only by frontline staff, but also (and especially) by the leaders at every level. It’s this kind of alignment that helps build trust within the organization, and between the organzation and the community it serves. And, it also helps pave the way for building a more flexible and responsive organization, one that can roll with the punches as the changes contiue to come. Whether the change is personal or professional, the idea of change – of new ideas, and new ways of doing things – causes many to bristle. The status quo, of course, can be comfortable, and change is risky ... but, it’s also inevitable, and sometimes critical if the organization is to thrive.

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RECRUITMENT & RETENTION For many organizations and their hiring authorities, the recruitment and selection of qualified candidates is a constant struggle. What surprises me is how many postings for municipal HR positions include the phrase “responsible for full recruitment cycle,” which translates to “full circle” and is basically an admission that it’s a revolving door at the Town of XYZ. I think it’s time to step away from the notion that recruitment is cyclical and that churn is the norm. Hiring and firing is an extremely painful and expensive process when it’s run by people who hire based on emotion. I often hear, “We hired her because we liked her,” or “He seemed like a nice guy in the interview.” A stunningly high number of managers, department heads, and business owners make hiring decisions on the fly, ignoring the huge impact that a single bad hiring decision can have on the bottom line, the culture, and morale. In their book Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street state that the average hiring mistake costs 15 times an employee’s base salary. Despite a bad track record, executives, department heads, and supervisors often insist on following the same flawed process, clinging to faint hope for a different outcome. Bill Watters, former Assistant GM of the Toronto Maple

Leafs, once described this tendency as an “outlandish commitment to error.” When turnover is high, it’s a matter of common sense that the approach needs to be changed for a different outcome. As talk show host Rush Limbaugh says, “The likelihood of something happening that has happened before is much higher than the likelihood of something happening that has not happened before.”

Errors by Recruiting Managers A key factor is that, all too often, the wrong people get promoted to positions of authority. According to a 2015 Gallup survey, 82 percent of managers are miscast in their roles. These people don’t need advice from HR – they govern by gut and get their adrenaline rush from thinking they’re James Bond in a corner office. Once a bad hire is on board, and everyone in the organization knows the performance just isn’t there, the CAO procrastinates on pulling the plug. As John Wilson wrote in Great CEOs and How They Are Made, “One of the biggest reasons CEOs fail to build a team of A players is the false belief in their ability to ‘develop’ a direct report who is not performing.” While we have various electronic tools at our disposal to filter applications, we should never remove the human ele-

by Evert Akkerman ment from the recruitment and talent management process and let software dictate outcomes. There is still a need for sound judgment after we do our due diligence. HR is a serious profession, but not an exact science. There are tons of anecdotes out there about how common sense, an open mind, and a focus on opportunities can play a positive role in recruitment. When it comes to employment decisions, the human factor is crucial in spotting attitude, or work ethic.

Bad Attitudes Ruin the Day There is, of course, a difference between good attitude and bad attitude, and employers have a lot of control over the organization’s destiny in the recruitment stage. This is where we can gauge the attitude that people bring to work, what brings them to work, and whether they believe in collaboration, making a differ-

EVERT AKKERMAN is an HR Professional based out of Newmarket, Ontario and founder of XNL HR. In September 2015, he won the inaugural Randstad Canada Professionals Talent Award for Innovation in HR. In November 2016, he was chosen as one of the Top 25 HR practitioners in Canada by the Canadian HR Reporter. Evert can be reached at <info@xnlhr.com>.

July 2017

MWDIGEST

Deep Learning systems are “trained” by repeatedly seeing more and more input data, and gradually optimizing the system’s ability to make an accurate prediction. ence and aligning their behaviours with the organization’s values and mission. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is a strong believer in reaching out to references: “References actually tell you how people work, what their work ethic is.” An example of bad attitude is Candidate X, who gets his application to you three ways: online through the portal, then via email, and finally by regular mail. He states in his cover letter that he is an awesome candidate, available to start work immediately, and then, when contacted, requests a Skype interview with time zone allowance from his vacation address in Sweaty Palms, California. Another example of bad attitude happened to one of my clients recently. The company owner got a call from one of his employees who advised his boss that he’d

received an offer from a competitor and asked his boss to take a look at his new contract and make sure it was all good. Icing on the cake: the employee also asked if he could bring the new delivery truck he’d been promised, so that his current employer could check whether the truck was in a good state of repair. Bad attitudes reside at all levels. A few years ago, I interviewed with a company that wanted to hire a Director of HR, which would be a new position. The company was looking for a superstar and it was all about respect, values, doing the right thing, and ensuring that employees were fully engaged. My first interview, with the CEO, was great; he asked relevant questions, explored how we could build a mutually beneficial relationship and, in general, his entire demeanour

matched what I had read about the culture and in the execs’ online bios. I came away inspired and excited. My second interview, with the chair of the board, was a disaster. The man arrived an hour late, had no idea why I was there, hadn’t read my resume, and wondered why I would consider giving up self-employment to join a corporate entity. He wore a ketchup-stained t-shirt and leaned back in his chair with his hands folded behind his neck, offering me a good look at his clammy armpits. After an hour of his firing off disrespectful questions and venturing into various forbidden areas, I cut short my own questions to wrap it up. After cooling down for two days, I contacted the CEO and withdrew my candidacy. I made sure he knew why …

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Great Attitudes Can Win Them An example of great attitude: in November 2004, I attended an HR Summit in Toronto, hosted by Spencer Stuart. The keynote speaker was Major-General Lewis MacKenzie. On the topic of motivation, he relayed how he had gone to Harlem and spent some time with people running a halfway house. The place was a mess and people were being killed in the street on a regular basis. One man, supposedly in charge, was sitting in a dirty office, sleeping half the time, his jacket covered with cigar ashes. MacKenzie then heard that one of the workers, who was about to wrap up his two-year assignment, had volunteered for another two years. MacKenzie went to see him and asked why. “You see that man over there?” asked the worker, pointing at the cigar smoker. “That man is my boss, and I would do anything to continue working for him.” Last month, I was interviewing candidates for a warehouse position. Each of them had been prescreened for the required skills, so I focused on learning about their work ethic and whether they had contributed ideas in current and previous jobs. One candidate had an excellent example. At his former place of work, they followed a process in which three people would handle car parts, with each worker handing each part to the next. The candidate had suggested building a conveyor that would do away with physical lifting and carrying. This eliminated a lot of injuries, which meant fewer people on short-term disability or long-term disability, and productivity went up. The investment had been recouped within a year and the company had recognized him for the idea. A recruiter friend recently told of a candidate who had come to Canada from overseas years ago. In his native country, he had been an engineer with experience in construction. He arrives in Canada and registers with a temp agency. A couple of days later, he gets a call asking whether he has any planning experience. He replies that he does, as he had planned production for the last industrial company where he worked. The temp agency’s client, one of Canada’s biggest employ10

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July 2017

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come in five minutes late or extend your lunch break. Punctual coworkers tend to resent this kind of behaviour. Whether these coworkers are productive is irrelevant – at least they are at their desks when they’re supposed to be. The caller said that he and a colleague had worked for a government entity in Toronto, which remained nameless. They would come in on a Tuesday morning, have a coffee, and start packing binders and notebooks into boxes, which they would carry out to their cars, in full view of the entire office, and then disappear for two or three days. Upon their return, usually mid-afternoon, they’d return with their boxes and stuff the binders back into filing cabinets, sighing from exhaustion, after which they would sit down and type at their computers, again in full The Slackers view of everyone. They would repeat this about every A special brand of attitude is found couple of weeks and nobody ever asked among slackers. Sometimes, you can’t help but smile at their creativity. I recall any questions. Their colleagues assumed a story from a gentleman who called in that they were attending conferences or at meetings. In reality, they’d be working to Talk640 some 10 years ago, on the in their backyards, going shopping, and theme of “time theft.” His theory was that people will always notice when you drink coffee. Since they executed their ers, offers him an eight-week contract. He goes in on his first day and realizes he’s been hired as a category analyst, and the planning he’s expected to do is planograms, which is a term he never heard before. So, what does this brave new Canadian do? He puts his head down, bluffs his way through the first day, smiling at his coworkers and using his shiny new company coffee mug. He goes home at the end of the day and researches everything he can about planograms. He continues doing this day after day, searching the internet in the evening and during his lunch break, learning how to do this job. When his eight weeks were up, the company offered him a fulltime position and he has had a rewarding career as a category analyst ever since.

A RURAL LENS

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departures and arrivals so openly, no one thought anything of it. When the radio host asked how long the caller and his colleague had been able to “work” this way, the caller said they had continued it for a few years and then moved on to other jobs. Moral of the story: if you don’t want to arouse suspicion, do it in a big way.

Conclusion On a final note, HR practitioners can play a key role in pushing back against biases, preconceived notions, and assumptions that exist at management level – especially among executives who think of HR in terms of payroll and birthday cakes. A friend recently commented how hard it can be to get qualified candidates in front of a client although they may have the right attitude, but the skills aren’t exactly what the employer considers vital. My experience is the same; and, the irony is, once employers have seen the candidate, they often conclude that, on second thought, skills are trainable, but attitude is not. This is where HR people need to show some attitude as well. MW

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July 2017

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GEORGE CUFF Lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lessons

inside

City

Hall A collection of

Short Stories

NEW BOOK

by Jaty Tam

Good-For-You Stress How your stress mindset can increase your resilience

Stress is an increasingly prevalent health issue with the World Health Organization declaring stress the “health epidemic of the 21st century.” Stress can not only impact your overall mood, increasing your risk for depression and anxiety, and your physical wellbeing, contributing to heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes,1 but can also influence job performance, job safety, absenteeism, and disability. One in four Canadian employees will take an absence for stress. The impact of stress on work performance is higher than the impact of physical health concerns (67 percent for stress versus 53 percent for physical health).2 With Millennials and GenXers more stressed than previous generations,3 and the gap between our own stress levels and what we perceive as a healthy amount of stress continuing to increase,4 it’s not surprising to hear about stress everywhere you turn – in the news, social media, and in conversations with our colleagues, family, and friends. 1 NIMH, 5 Things You Should Know About Stress <www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/stress/index.shtm>. 2 Morneau Sheppell, Workplace Mental Health Priorities (2016). 3 “Stress In America Report,” American Psychological Association, Feb 4 (2015). 4 “Stress In America Report,” American Psychological Association, Jan (2012).

down that powdery slope. Your heart races, and breathing quickens – your Believe it or not, there is such a thing stress response kicks in, but it’s good, as “good stress” – also called “eustress.” enjoyable, and motivates you to try a Eustress is that push inside you that more challenging hill. But, if you had to keeps you alert, focused, and motivated. ski down that slope without any breaks, It’s what drives us to strive for success for a day, a week, a month straight, then in our daily tasks, reach for job advancethat once enjoyable activity will cause ment, or run out of a burning building. you distress. When we experience stress (good or Distress occurs when the pressures bad) our body enters the “fight or flight” in our lives stop feeling motivating and state. Back when we regularly encouninspiring, and instead start to feel overtered predators, our bodies were primed whelming, causing you to feel tense, and to divert resources toward areas required wondering if you can cope. When left for running or fighting – our heart, lungs, too long, we can feel burnt out and reand muscles – and away from non-essensentful. A state of chronic stress, without tial systems, such as immune and digesthe chance to get out of the fight or flight tive. After all, digesting your last meal is state, is where we see the health consenot important when you’re running away quences stated above. from a bear. Although we no longer encounter Perceived Stress predators regularly, our body still rePerceived stress is the way we see the sponds the same way to any stress – even demands and pressures placed upon us, when you’re sitting at a desk, behind the and our perception of how it impacts our wheel, or reading email on your phone. physical and mental wellbeing. There are two camps: Bad Stress Stress-is-debilitating – In this mindWhen the demands or pressures set, stressors are seen as overwhelming exerted on us become more than we can handle, good stress can turn to bad JATY TAM, ND is a naturopathic doctor and stress, called “distress.” Distress can be caused by the number of demands placed Founder/Medical Director of Well Street, a workplace wellness provider specializing in on us, or the duration/chronicity of the holistic and education-based wellness sodemands. lutions to corporations across Canada. A highly sought-after speaker and developer Imagine this: You are an avid downof innovative wellness programs. She can be hill skier, and it gives you a rush to soar reached at <jaty@wellstr.com>.

Good Stress

July 2017

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Figure 1

Stress Level Chart

7 Alia Crum, Modupe Akinola, Ashley Martin, and Sean Fath, “The role of stress mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and threatening stress,” Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, Jan 25, 2017, pp. 1-17.

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July 2017

Negative Messages Influence Stress Mindset Messaging around the negative impacts of stress is all around us, and these negative messages are in fact negatively influencing our stress mindset. Even if you are predisposed to a Stress-isenhancing mindset, viewing negative messages about stress can worsen your ability to handle stress. In a recent study, people’s stress mindsets were manipulated by showing subjects film clips that highlighted either the enhancing or debilitating nature of stress.7 The group who viewed the film clips showing the dangers of stress had a reduced ability to adapt to stressful tasks, paid more attention to negative events,

A ANCE OF

IMPORT

RURAL VOICE

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AGREEM

5 Alia Crum, Peter Salovey, and Shawn Achor. (2013), “Rethinking stress: The role of mindsets in determining the stress response,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 104, No. 4, pp. 716-733.

Your stress mindset can make a significant difference in whether or not stress will cause negative health consequences. People who have a “stress-isenhancing” mindset have a lower stress reaction than those who see stress as a problem, meaning they actually produce less of the stress hormone cortisol.5 Cortisol is our main stress hormone, responsible for the fight or flight response, driving up our blood pressure and inhibiting our digestive and immune systems. Not only does one’s perception of stress alter your stress response, but it also leads to improved health symptoms, higher levels of energy, greater life satisfaction, better work performance, and desire for feedback to enhance future growth and performance enhancement.6

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and had an increased production of the stress hormone cortisol. Alternately, the group who viewed the film clips showing that stress can be beneficial to health had better performance on cognitive tasks, and were able to maintain more positive emotions during stressful tasks. This group also had an increase in the hormone DHEAS (dehydroepiandrosterone), which has been associated with improved psychological resilience8 and positive mood.9 What we see from this study is that the messaging we encounter can have a significant impact on how we perceive stress, and this can strongly influence our stress response, as well as our overall health and disease risk.

Stress Perception and Resilience Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from adversity, pressures, and stress. Having good psychological resilience enables you to move from distress back to eustress easily, bouncing back quickly from the physical and mental consequences of the stress response. Resilience is not necessarily a trait that you are born with, but is certainly a capacity that can be developed. Having a stress-is-enhancing mindset can lead to high resilience to stress. Even 8 Denis Charney, “Psychobiological mechanisms of resilience and vulnerability: implications for successful adaptation to extreme stress,” American Journal of Psychiatry, (2004) Feb; 161(2), pp. 195-216. 9 Cheryl Frye and Elizabeth Lacey, “The neurosteroids DHEA and DHEAS may influence cognitive performance by altering affective state,” Physiology & Behavior, (1999) Mar; 66(1), pp. 85-92.

if you are not a natural “optimist,” or don’t tend to see your stressors are challenges, you can change your stress mindset and build resilience.

how long you need to rest. After a sprint, you just need some time to catch your breath. If you run five miles, you may need to stay off your feet for a few hours. For a full marathon, you may need some Build Resilience through a more concentrated days off, maybe some Good-for-You Stress Mindset help from a professional to help you reYou are not stuck with the stress mind- store. From a stress perspective, this may set you have today. The following are ways involve massage, counselling, meditation, or yoga. to build a Stress-Is-Enhancing mindset.

1. See stress as a challenge. Honing the stress-is-enhancing mindset revolves around the ability to see a stressor as a challenge instead of a problem. When you think “this is too hard, I can’t do this”, instead try “this will pose an interesting challenge; how do I tackle this?” This change in thinking will not happen overnight, but as a result of conscious effort to reframe stressors as challenges.

4. Take negative stress messages with a grain of salt. Negative messaging about stress is almost everywhere. It may be useful to take a break from viewing these messages; put down that smartphone, take a break from social media, etc. And, if you’re finding it hard to avoid negative messages, focus on Step 5, to see your stressors as a challenge you can deal with competently and effectively.

2. Build the resources you need to tackle the challenges.

5. Surround yourself with positive messages.

Like a mountain climber trying to tackle a tough climb, you need to go in with the right equipment to meet the challenge. Ask yourself what you need to tackle your stressors as challenges. Do you need more time, or to build stamina through improving physical health? Or, do you simply need a colleague or friend to hear you out?

Viewing messages that stress can be enhancing may change your stress response for the better. Take the time to find and read pieces on the benefits of stress. Talk about the positive aspects of stress and discuss your stressors as a challenge instead of a problem with your family and friends, and change the conversation around you.

3. Rest and recover.

Conclusion

Like climbing a mountain or running a marathon, stress places physical and mental pressures on us, and our bodies and minds need to rest to return back to a healthy state of function. Comparing the intensity and duration of your stress to running may be helpful in determining

Stress is an inevitable part of all our lives. Running away from stress is not a viable options; however, reviewing and practicing some of the approaches mentioned in this article can help turn stress from a bad experience into a positive gain. MW

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APPRAISERS July 2017

COLLECTORS

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by Neville Knowles est g i D sive lu Exc ture Fea

Is a LEADERSHIP

AUDIT in order?

It took commitment and effort from all involved, but after six months, the situation improved dramatically. At first, the director was hesitant to participate in the process; but, he knew his current strategy of pushing his people harder was only making things worse. Deep down, he wanted success for his team and believed the process would work, so he agreed to participate. To be successful, there must be recognition that some kind of change is required. Leadership audits provide this recognition. Without the audit and a full understanding of what was working and what wasn’t, a change process couldn’t be designed effectively. In the case of this troubled department, all five managers felt strongly that change was needed. The departResolving the Issues ment head wasn’t as easy to convince. To solve the problem, the CM opted Commonly, leaders aren’t aware of the impact that their styles and decisions for a leadership audit, to be followed have on others. However, once the by a program to be defined after the process began, he saw the issues more audit. Leadership audits identify opclearly and started to buy into the need portunities for positive change and for change. activities, such as coaching, team To initiate the process, an external development, and leadership developconsultant met individually with all ment workshops to facilitate those members of the team, as well as the changes. They also include a long-term director and the CM. All information, of structure, for which all team members course, was held confidentially, and the are responsible, that helps the team goal was to encourage people to speak make the changes sustainable and encandidly about the situation, so all voicsures they do not lapse back into old es could be heard and issues identified. behaviours. The City Manager (CM) knew he had a problem. In an effort to clean up a financially troubled department, a hard-driving numbers person had been chosen to replace the previous director of the department. The CM was aware of the new director’s abrasive style and lack of leadership experience, but council’s desire to straighten out the department’s finances had trumped his concerns. Before long, the new director had alienated five managers who reported to him. All five had approached the CM with a litany of complaints about the way he was running the department. The issues ranged from disrespect, intimidation, and bullying to the director’s distrustful command-andcontrol management style.

Based on audit information, two programs were designed and ran concurrently for the next six months. Leadership coaching sessions were initiated with the director, providing him with a place to reflect, gain insight, and greater self-awareness. He realized he wanted to practice some different management styles to change the impact he was having on his team. He practised and developed some new leadership skills that helped him build trust and greater connection with his team. A team development process was also launched, bringing together the director and the five unhappy managers in his department. The goal was to build trust in the team and work on the team as a positive operating system. The team shared what was working well and what was not working well. They learned how to have candid, productive conversations to address their issues. Toward the end of the six months, the group created a terms of engagement structure, esNEVILLE KNOWLES is the founder of the Knowles Leadership Group of London, Ontario and an organizational development specialist. He provides executive leadership coaching, team development facilitation, leadership development workshops, and facilitates transformative sustainable change. He can be reached at <Neville@knowlesleadership.com> or (519) 641-5365.

This article was originally published in the October 2012 issue of Municipal World. July 2017

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Taking the first step in leadership can be the most difficult thing. Once underway, the process begins to pay immediate dividends, and participants can see the improvements occurring all around them. sentially a code of conduct by which they all wanted to work together. Because they had created it themselves, they all had ownership of it and were committed to making it work long after the formal process was completed and they had resumed their ongoing work together.

zz enhanced communications; and zz enhanced leadership capacity. All of these benefits lead to improved results and timeliness of those results. The workplace becomes more efficient because the distraction of interpersonal disagreements and agendas is removed. Audits can be beneficial in many Beneficial Process situations, including when: Leadership audits and trailing pro- zz positivity, productivity, and engagement seem low; cesses implemented can have powerzz resistance is the norm; ful results and typically produce the zz leadership impact seems suspect; following benefits: zz deliverables are often late and/or z z enhanced level of trust and reresults seem questionable; spect; z z day-to-day relationships are conz z improved positivity, productivity, flicted or unsettled; and employee engagement; zz self-interest trumps collective z z strengthened relationships and team orientation; and team function;

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July 2017

zz retention seems an issue. Leadership audits are a very effective way of identifying opportunities for positive change processes. Sometimes, team members are well aware of the problems; other times, they are not and only learn about them as they participate in team building or coaching. In either case, the process builds trust and respect, in effect preparing rich soil in which they can sow the seeds of success. Taking the first step in leadership can be the most difficult thing. Once underway, the process begins to pay immediate dividends, and participants can see the improvements occurring all around them. Recognition of a new beginning emerges and all get on board in the new direction. MW

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