January 2005 · Volume 87 · Number 1 

Human Resources: What’s Your Plan?
by Joseph Jarret
How effective can a manager be who has no written plan for the management of between 50 and 80 percent of his or her local government's budget? While asking yourself this question, consider your locality's operating budget. How much of it is personnel-related (salaries, benefits, retirement, training, travel, and so forth)? If you're the manager of a typical locality, regardless of size, personnel costs most likely will fall somewhere in the 50-to-80-percent range. 
The successful management of human resources (HR) is probably one of the most overlooked key management functions in local government. Consider that most communities have a detailed, formalized capital planning process that outlines capital projects for the next five, 10, or even 20 years. City and county buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art environmental controls to maximize the efficiency of the building utility operations. Fleet maintenance programs are designed to maximize the effectiveness of equipment. Detailed, specific plans are designed for a number of activities with costs much lower than a local government's HR spending. A similar approach should be used to effectively manage the most expensive outlay in the budget-human resources expenditure. 
Figure 1. Components of a Municipal Human Resource Plan 	
	
Work Systems 
•	Organizational charting 
•	Employee development program 
•	Continuous improvement program 
•	Diversity program 
•	Employee communication system 	Learning Systems 
•	Organizational learning philosophy 
•	Linkage of learning system to strategic goals 
•	Roles and responsibilities of employees 
•	Individual employee development system 
•	Formal education program 
•	Employee training program 	
Performance and Compensation Systems 
•	Objectives for performance measurement 
•	Linkage between performance review and organizational success 
•	Evaluation system 
•	Compensation system 
•	Benefit system 
•	Discipline system 
•	Post-employment support system 	Support Systems 
•	Reward and recognition program 
•	Well-being program 
•	Employee assistance program 
•	Leaves of absence 
•	Sexual harassment program 
•	Work climate survey program 	
An HR plan should be an extension of and complement to the organization's strategic plan; the strategic plan must first be developed to outline the mission, vision, and values of the community and to establish specific goals, objectives, and measurements. A good HR plan addresses the personnel actions required to complete strategic goals, in addition to dealing with daily personnel functions. 
Work Systems
The work-systems component of an HR plan (see Figure 1) explains how the local government is organized to perform work. Among other elements, the organizational chart should be shown, with the entire HR structure displayed graphically. Overall, the work system should be agile enough to meet both current and future needs. Is your locality structured for the current year and beyond, or are you hampered with a 1980 human resource structure that actually hinders your ability to meet work requirements? Managers need to use the organizational structure to their advantage and should not need to work around it. 
Also, how do you develop employees? Is there a priority to promote from within? Does your state or county require special examinations, and if so, what program do you have in place to help current employees successfully complete these exams? 
The plan should provide information concerning career progression. This will vary according to state and other special factors, but it is important for all employees to understand what is required to be promoted within the organization. Career progression information should include educational requirements and promotional-exam information, including when and where exam and vacancy announcements are posted and any position-specific requirements (special licenses, years of experience, and so on). 
Not all employees will be qualified for or will desire advancement. This does not preclude you from offering the opportunity or training to make them the best performers possible in their current positions. It is important to recognize that an organization is only as strong as its weakest link and that it cannot afford to overlook any employee. In cases involving unsatisfactory performance and for which there is not a proper fit between the employee and the organization, a written plan and review of the person's lack of progress will greatly bolster the case for dismissal, should the need arise. 
There should be a plan for continuous improvement of the HR system. When structural deficiencies have been identified, a process should be available to correct them. A number of states have quality improvement programs similar to the Malcolm Baldrige program, which provides guidance on how best to improve organizational performance. Consider conducting an organizational self-assessment to help identify system deficiencies in your local government. 
Recognizing the uniqueness of employees and their different cultural and diversity needs is crucial in eliminating any miscommunications that can result from ignoring this important aspect of human interaction. Do you have specific hiring targets for minorities and women? How does your employee population match your community population? Do you have multilingual tools and personnel to help your employees meet community needs? What proactive measures are you taking to satisfy upcoming diversity needs among your employees and residents? 
How employees communicate with each other, their supervisors, and customers should be explained as part of the work-system plan. Larger communities may use e-mail as their primary means of internal communication, while smaller ones may use a structured, face-to-face method. Employee newsletters, informal monthly departmental meetings, and lunch-with-the-manager programs are all communication tools that can be used to enhance employee communications. 
Technology has progressed enough so that it is cost-effective for most local governments to make an intranet available for employee use only. Messages to employees from department heads, managers, and elected officials can be placed on the intranet. An employee bulletin board can be used to list employees' concerns or questions. Don't forget that the locality's computer use policy will have to be updated to cover any new or expanded uses that form part of the HR plan. 
Addressing community problems can require interdepartmental communication. Do you have a procedure that allows a public works employee to notify the code enforcement department about an unkempt land parcel identified during the employee's drive through the community? Can a police patrol officer report a burned-out streetlight to the utility department or to a public-utility contact person? An efficient cross-departmental communication system fosters a team dynamic of interdepartmental cooperation among employees and demonstrates organizational agility and responsiveness. 
Performance and Compensation Systems
How your organization measures performance, evaluates success, and compensates employees should be clearly articulated. Explaining why certain areas of performance are emphasized will help employees understand the linkage between individual performance and organizational achievement. 
Employees need to know what the performance standards are and how they are measured. There should be clear performance measures that are easily understood and tied to organizational goals and objectives. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for employee performance measurement systems. Larger organizations may want a Web-based electronic tracking system, while smaller communities may use a simple, handwritten system. 
In assessing an office clerk, for example, the number of citizen complaints that are resolved with the first or second contact may be an evaluated performance measure. This could be linked to an organizational goal of satisfactorily resolving 60 percent of all customer inquiries with the first contact and resolving 75 percent within the first two contacts. There may be generic performance measurements in place that are applicable to all organizational employees, who are also evaluated on attributes like attitude, ability to work with others, and ethics. 
Size of a local government's staff, however, should not be used as an excuse to dismiss the personal nature of performance evaluation. Without a personal, human-to-human interaction process, the performance evaluation system will be looked upon as an inconvenience that must be accomplished once a year in order to place a checkmark in a box. Whether you have 50 employees or 5,000, each of them deserves an individual and thorough evaluation session. 
Learning Systems
How employees learn their work skills and obtain new knowledge is a central factor in retaining employees. Workers who are self-motivated and constantly looking for new challenges want to know what the organization's plan is for providing a continuous learning environment. Top-performing employees can set the culture for the entire organization. 
Linking employee training to the accomplishment of the strategic-plan goals or objectives will help the manager to focus resources on the type of training that is most important. 
Communities might have extensive training programs for emergency service personnel and perhaps safety training for other employees. One unifying motivation behind most employee training is that it is either required by federal, state, or local laws or offered as a preemptive measure to avoid possible lawsuits. 
While this type of training is valuable and necessary, what about other kinds of training, to improve organizational operations, attain goals and objectives, improve service delivery, or improve the skills of an individual employee? Training employees in customer service, listening skills, computer software, and other "soft" skills can greatly improve customer satisfaction while also enhancing the professionalism of the workforce. 
The HR plan should include a program that can help an employee develop an individual development plan (IDP). A development plan for each person lists specific, major performance objectives for current positions and gives both management and the employee a road map for performance improvement. ICMA uses a similar process in its manager credentialing program. If it's important for managers to have an IDP, then it should be important for your employees, too. 
The IDP should include a program for additional formal education for employees who want to obtain promotions within the organization. Some localities offer tuition reimbursement for the satisfactory completion of college courses directly related to job performance. Employers should consider requiring some type of employment retention period in exchange for tuition reimbursement programs. This tool motivates the employee to continue his or her own self-improvement while also providing the employer with a better- educated employee, committed to a longer tenure. 
A number of accredited universities provide all levels of college degrees through the Internet. This form of distance learning is growing rapidly and is an excellent alternative for meeting the demands of those employees who cannot attend the more traditional on-site college class. 
Support Systems
A strong reward and recognition program is important to motivate employees and to properly acknowledge the hard-working ones who help achieve organizational objectives or who simply go the extra mile for the local government. Too often, the first recognition that employees receive is when they retire. What does this say about how superior employee performance is being recognized? Some localities feel that, since they cannot reward employees financially because of state or union work rules, they can't have successful recognition programs. But this is not so. 
Some of the most effective programs are the least expensive. In fact, overuse of monetary reward programs can have an adverse effect on employee performance. Some employees may begin to expect cash rewards despite nonexceptional performance. 
A recognition program that uses both informal and formal recognition provides numerous tools to fit the individual situation. Some nonmonetary recognition programs that are popular and easy to implement include on-the-spot recognition; certificates of achievement; lunch with the manager, councilmembers, or department heads; and more common systems like naming an employee of the month. Award recommendations should include a specific discussion of how an employee's actions helped attain strategic goals or objectives. 
The lack of an effective employee well-being program can result in significant and unnecessary expenditures for lawsuits related to employee actions, workers' compensation claims, remedial training, overtime costs to cover extended employee absences, and so forth. 
It is interesting to note how many local governments have stringent maintenance schedules for police cars, fire trucks, and other equipment and how equipment is sent immediately to mechanics at the first sign of stress. Yet we do not usually have the same support systems for human assets. 
A solid human resource plan takes time to develop; it could take several years to formulate all aspects of a good plan. 
A solid HR plan includes measurements to assess employee well-being and morale. A formal reporting system should be designed that allows employees to identify well-being issues without fear of retribution. A formal, confidential climate survey of some type should be undertaken by the local government to assess how well employees feel that they are valued by the organization and by management. 
A confidential employee assistance program should also be established, for employees requiring assistance with substance abuse, mental health, or other personal issues. Personal issues unrelated to work can adversely affect performance, and the employee may not know where to go for help. 
A Good Plan Can Take Time
A solid human resource plan takes time to develop; it could take several years to formulate all aspects of a good plan. This should not deter an organization from starting the process. It is more important to develop a realistic, usable plan over a longer period of time than it is to prepare a nicely bound written product that sits on a shelf collecting dust. 
A thorough human resource plan will supply you with an effective tool to efficiently and effectively deploy your most valuable asset-people. A well-defined, easily understood human resource plan will offer clear direction for staff, and give assurance to constituents and elected officials that accountability and continuous improvement are key values of the local government. PM 
References
Desimore, R. L., Werner, J. M., and D. M. Harris. 2002. Human Resource Development. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt College Publishers. 
Milkovich, G.T., and J. W. Boudreau. 1991. Human Resource Management. Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin. 
Fountain, J., Campbell, W., Patton, T., et al. 2003. Reporting Performance Information: Suggested Criteria for Effective Communication. Norwalk, Conn.: Governmental Accounting Standards Board. 
Army Performance Improvement Criteria (APIC). 2003. Retrieved June 30, 2003, from the Web site at http://www.hqda.army.mil/leadingchange/APIC. 
Dave Fountaine, SPHR, is president of AQUEST Consulting, LLC, Hamburg, New York (dfountaine@aquestllc.com). He served as village administrator of Hamburg for eight years and is currently working on a doctoral focusing on training and performance measurement. 
Look to ICMA

For more information on the subject of human resource management, check out ICMA's new publication Human Resource Management in Local Government: An Essential Guide, second edition. Created to serve as a desktop reference for every local government manager, assistant manager, and department head who makes personnel decisions. Click here to read more about this newly revised, 264-page special report. 

© 2004 International City/County Management Association