About 40 employees attended the second Office of Performance, Strategy and Budget-sponsored Community of Practice event of 2017 to get an overview of the key findings in the 2016 Employee Survey and learn how workgroups, divisions and departments are acting on what respondents said.

“For those of you who are working on engagement teams I want you to know that it is making a difference,” Chrissy Russillo, Interim Director of Human Resources Division, said at the May 22 event. “I’m out and about and hear people talking about it all the time. The Executive Office has taken this work on as a priority. Executive Cabinet talks about it on a regular basis, it’s an agenda item for every meeting. So know that you are making a difference.”

Whitney Abrams, Director of Employee Engagement in the Executive’s Office, provided an overview of the work being done to bring together the employee-focused efforts in Best-Run Government: Employees, Equity and Social Justice, and continuous improvement to create a fairer, more supportive workplace.

“We’ve put together a strategic plan incorporating the employee-focused elements of the Equity and Social Justice Strategic Plan, what we’re doing in our employee survey action plans, what we’re doing around accountability, learning and growth, compensation, continuous improvement, into a plan called ‘Investing in You.’”

She said that more details on how Investing in You is integrating the County’s employee-focused strategies would be released in June.

The event then broke into four groups to hear firsthand from four employees about their engagement efforts, successes and learnings – Shawn Abernethy from the Department of Executive Services Director’s Office; Van Badzik from the Office of Performance, Strategy, and Budget; Jackie Smith from the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention; and Charlie Bozonier from King County Information Technology.

Sixty-seven percent of employees in participating agencies had their say in the 2016 survey, up from 60 percent in 2015. In 2015, 235 engagement action plans were created to respond to the issues that employees raised in the survey. More than 320 action plans have so far been created to respond to the 2016 survey, and are making positive changes across the County.

The King County Performance Management Community of Practice exists to increase cross-collaboration of data-driven professionals from inside King County and professionals in the region. The Community of Practice typically hosts four events each year and has existed for two years. To find out about future Community of Practice events please contact Abby Beatty to be added to the contact list.