national awards and employee engagement survey

1:34:29Thank you, Mike. Uh Mark Bellis for Energy and Sustainability. And uh we're thrilled to bring you some really good news today. And the best way to convey it is the way that it was conveyed to us. So I'll read this to you. On behalf of the National Association of Counties, I am thrilled to extend our congratulations to Pasco County on winning the NACO Edge Excellence in Strategic Planning Award.

1:34:55Here, this prestigious accolade is a testament

1:34:58to your exceptional vision, dedication, and outstanding efforts in advancing inclusive and impactful strategic planning within your county. Your innovative approach and unwavering commitment has set a new standard for excellence, and we are honored to recognize your achievements. This award not only highlights your remarkable work, but also reflects the positive impact you have made in shaping the future of your county. I can tell you we were told that only three of these have been awarded nationally since 2024.

1:35:28And uh it was part of an application where we had to talk in terms of the entire process, beginning with meeting with you to get the direction, and then our committee that went to work for the next 18 months uh working with the organization and community to put this together. So we are very, very thrilled and excited about

1:35:45this. But wait, there's four.

1:35:50Things blow up. I think sometimes they do. I think this is a great thing. Or let people see it. You get enough of the naysayers, let them see what a national tool look like is. I think that quite a bully three. Dear Chair

1:36:04Chair, one of the things we realize is with the the taxes, uh the issues coming up here, a lot of people don't know exactly what it is their dollars are going to. So we actually on the website right now, not only do we have the strategic plan, but we also have a uh A uh a um

1:36:21what do they call this? A

1:36:27Small recording.

1:36:28But it's doesn't have podcasts. There it is. Sorry. We have a podcast that describes exactly what the plan does, what it is impacting. So for people who have no idea of even what the document is telling them, it tells them what we're doing with money. So anybody wants to listen to that, it's less than 15 minutes. It's really exciting. It's right on the website there. Uh as I said, there more.

1:36:49Again you have my two uh leadership meetings, Neighborhood leadership meeting.

1:36:53Perfect. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's wonderful. The uh the other thing I was gonna mention is that we deploy the strategic plan. With a culture that is founded on, you've heard the people, purpose, performance. And what that means is that we attract people to the county who have a heart for service. We connect them with their purpose. And as leadership, we support them to achieve what they came here to achieve, and the performance happens. Now, we take that very seriously because the only way to do that is to have a workforce that's engaged. So every year

1:37:23we actually do a Survey, a national survey where we check the level of engagement across our entire organization. We've been doing that for about nine years. You might remember that in 2021 we got a top workforce award. That was the last one that we got. So we are in the running here this year. We uh were actually up against 20, I think 27 to 30 other jurisdictions, counties and cities that were our size. There were eight categories that you could be topped in. And I I

1:37:53can't tell you that we won one of them because we actually won two of them out of the eight. So we were actually best in class, top workplace in two categories this year, and this is nationwide. So work-life flexibility and professional development. We've been focusing on that, making sure that people like what they do here, they feel comfortable, they can have good work-life balance, and we have really focused on professional development. We actually launched a leadership, a new leadership development program here a couple of months ago and

1:38:24have already put 400 of our supervisors through it. So we're continuing to develop the skills and uh and people are noticing and they like it. So Mike?

1:38:34To me, this is this is validating on the on the cultural efforts that we've been trying to push through the organization and and to get this not only one but but two is a big deal uh for for this organization. So I'm I'm I'm proud of the the vision uh that the board has set out for us as well as the leadership that uh from from the senior leaders right down to the frontline supervisors it is and trying to maintain an engaged functional workforce because as we know the battle for talent is very difficult. And it's it's

1:39:04things like this that that promote your organization are able to help you not only track but retain that talent. So um with that I'm just very, very proud of that and I think it's it's certainly something to celebrate as well. Like for Gulfside. This is uh Mark, this is done through uh this is through the Uh through the times or is this I

1:39:24still through a podcast. I showed an age there, right? Enter gauge is the company that uh deploys this, and they have uh usually anywhere from from 500 to 600 organizations across the country, private and public, uh that take the survey. Uh this year again our cohort was uh like organizations our size, cities and counties. Yeah, our our our numbers have steadily increased from the

1:39:50from the time that we uh we first deployed this survey. probably about a decade ago, where engagement was in the low 30s. I can say consistently lately. We have we've been in the mid-60s and when world class organizations outside of government, the private sector, 70% or higher is considered world class, you should be proud that your organization is really highly engaged in what it is that they do and serve in our community.

1:40:14I'll throw one more little tidbit in if it makes sense too.

1:40:19The survey you have like a lighter scale to answer questions for me. You also have the option of leaving comments. Our folks left. Five hundred and thirty-four pages of comments in the school this year. Now, why that's important, first of all, it tells us the story behind the numbers so that we can continue to build on the things that are working and address the opportunities for improvement. But what it also shows is even if our engagement level wasn't as high as we want, people wouldn't leave those comments

1:40:49if they didn't care. So they're saying here are the things that we need to see or do to be engaged. And that's what we then work on. From a cultural perspective, not to

1:40:57drag this out, but from a cultural perspective. We really let our employees know that when they take this survey, we we take their comments to heart. Every director has goals that are set up around these these types of comments when they come back forward. So that way we know that we're uh we're adopting it and living, walking the talk uh with with our employees to to make sure that they know that when they when they speak, their voices are heard uh when it when it comes to how we how we run and operate the organization. So it's uh it's it's been a lot

1:41:28of work. Uh I can tell you it it uh certainly uh it's not been easy and there's always ups and downs with it, but I can say on the whole it's very validating for us to to see these types of results.

1:41:38Yeah.

1:41:39It's great to see this in action, the way it's going. Uh you know, we talked about this one to be coming to register, et cetera, to the discussion about Of the culture of south. And one of the things we always talked about was

1:41:51When you

1:41:52have your people that are doing And their information can get up to the higher level. the people, the administrators, the managers. They can figure out where to go with it. And that is so critical as opposed to being someone who's just such a regimented thing where you just gotta go level to level to level. But you ever being able to get that information down and bringing it back up?

1:42:13really

1:42:13just leads us to be so much more productive. I think it's awesome. So keep up to

1:42:17certainly thank you. That's all.

1:42:21Hope you And the the clerk's office

1:42:23trying to be closed. I have nothing, thank you.

1:42:25Uh