The Vision Vancouver administration at City Hall is implementing its agenda so aggressively that staff morale has plummeted and many fear the civil service is in danger of becoming politicized, according to the association representing more than 700 non-union employees.
That fear is so acute that there is now a loss of respect and trust throughout the organization, and staff are fearful of reprisals for speaking out, the Vancouver Association of Civic Managerial and Professional Staff said in a memo to City Manager Penny Ballem.
The memo, written in June and copied to all members of the city’s corporate management team, accompanied a confidential survey done of 70 per cent of the city’s non-union staff who also identified worries about micro-management, inefficient and expensive processes, administrative interference and loss of corporate knowledge because of the large number of senior managers who have left.
The association said the situation is so serious that “staff in all parts of the organization felt negatively affected by the new style of management.”
The memo was leaked to Vancouver political blogging site Citycaucus.com that posted the document publicly.
Ballem said the memo is helpful to understand how exempt staff are feeling as the city’s administration modernizes. But she rejected the suggestion that the traditionally non-partisan civil service is becoming politicized by Vision Vancouver’s green agenda and she doesn’t accept that a fear of reprisals exists.
Instead, she suggested staff are “confused and lack clarity” about the jobs they have to do under an administration that is carrying out a new council’s aggressive agenda.
“This is what I think has changed. This is a council that is requiring more transparency about what we’re doing. They are asking for more accountability. This organization was very, very devolved in terms of its decision-making,” she said.
“We know we have a lot of changes to make. We’re not centralizing decision-making on some things but there are some things we are.”
Bill Boons, the president of VACMPS, said the leaked memo was an internal document for discussion between non-union staff and management. He didn’t want to discuss the contents publicly but said the association’s concerns were”all pretty much there” in the memo. Since the note was written the association has met with the corporate management team and is trying to work through the issues, he said.
The memo followed a difficult budget cycle for the Vision Vancouver-led council, in which it cut 158 positions and raised taxes by 2.26 per cent in order to close a $61 million gap in its nearly $1 billion budget. Next month the city administration is set to begin the 2011 budget process under similarly difficult conditions.
The association surveyed 502 exempt staff from at least 11 departments, including Ballem’s office. Among the findings:
* 52.7 per cent cited “lack of trust, respect and acknowledgment for skills, abilities, decision-making.”
* 46 per cent cited micromanagement as a concern;
* 27.5 per cent cited work overload – “They have bitten off more than we can chew”;
* 25.4 per cent worry the civil service has become more politicized;
* Other concerns were low morale, poor communication, loss of continuity in decision-making when senior managers leave and a need for budget transparency since many were not convinced of the extent of a $61 million shortfall last year.
Ballem said the city is taking notice of the VACMPS survey but is in the middle of a much larger employee effectiveness survey of all 10,000 union and non-union employees that she says will show where the city should react to staff concerns. The work, being done by Hay Group, will be finished in September and presented to council.
Ballem said she knows employees are struggling with more work in a difficult environment where the status quo is changing. But she said that’s not a politicization of the civil service.
“These are times when it is no longer appropriate for anyone to be doing their own thing. In some ways, that is the thing they feel is politicization. We’re not in the least politicizing,” she said.
“Are we serving the political agenda? Absolutely. That’s the job of a government bureaucracy.”
VACMPS Memo Survey
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