Social Media Spotlight: Department of Transportation blog
The DOT blog, Inside Transportation, supports the DOT mission to improve the quality of life for people in King County by providing mobility in a way that protects the environment, helps manage growth, and reduces traffic congestion.
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New employee parking rates beginning in 2017
As you may know, parking rates at various King County parking facilities located in downtown Seattle will increase on January 1, 2017. The new rates will affect employees parking at the Goat Hill Garage, the King County Correctional Facility, the Chinook Building, and King Street Center. King Street Center is anticipated to enter King County’s property inventory in June 2017. Therefore, the new parking rates at King Street Center will be effective on June 1, 2017.
The parking rates for 2017 are as follows. Please note *indicates unchanged rates:
- Monthly Reserved Parking – $385
- Monthly Unreserved Parking – $300
- Monthly Rate for City of Seattle Certified Carpools and Electric Vehicles – $210
- Monthly Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) Parking – $150
- Maximum Daily Employee Parking – $20
- Open Surface Lots – $20*
- Daily Motorcycle Parking – $5*
- After-Hour and Weekends – $7*
- Bicycles – Free* (Bicycle racks are located in the Goat Hill Garage, 5th Avenue Plaza of the Administration Building, and on Level A in the Chinook Building.
King County employees are eligible for a variety of commute benefits including an ID/ORCA card that pays your fare on a range of bus, rail and ferry systems, and discounts on Vanpool and Carpool fares. Find out more at the Employee Transportation Program website.
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Ongoing Paid Parental Leave benefit
Based upon the success of the Paid Parental Leave Pilot Program, King County Council adopted legislation in November establishing an ongoing Paid Parental Leave benefit effective January 1, 2017.
The benefit will be the same as it has been under the pilot program. Paid Parental Leave supplements an employee’s accrued paid leave to provide the employee the equivalent of his or her full salary for up to a total of twelve weeks, when combined with the employee’s accrued leave (except for one week of sick leave and one week of vacation leave), following the birth, adoption, or foster-to-adopt placement of a child with the employee (“qualifying event”).
The benefit is available to leave-eligible employees who have been employed with the County for at least six months of continuous service at the time of the qualifying event, and are either a non-represented employee or an employee represented by a union that has agreed to participate in the program. A list of participating unions can be found here.
If you have questions, please contact your department’s human resources representative.
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Featured Job: Quality Assurance Specialist
Closing Date/Time: Mon. 01/02/17 4:30 PM
Salary: $35.21 – $44.63 Hourly, $73,236.80 – $92,830.40 Annually
Job Type: Term Limited Temporary, Full Time, 40 hrs/wk
Location: Chinook Building – 401 5th Ave, Seattle, Washington
Department: King County Department of Information Technology
Description: King County Information Technology – Business Solutions Services is looking for two QA Specialists to work closely with program managers, business analysts and developers to test agreed upon application functionality. These are both 24 month term-limited-temporary positions.
The QA Specialist will create and execute test cases to fully exercise all functionality. The QA Specialist is also responsible for developing test plans for projects of varying size, scope, and complexity in order to deliver high-quality systems on schedule. In addition, the QA Specialist will document and track all defects, as well as giving a final assessment of quality before product release.
Learn more about this position or view all available jobs.
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New Employee Orientation changing Jan. 1, 2017
King County’s New Employee Orientation (NEO) is getting a refresh beginning Jan. 1, 2017.
The changes to NEO will give a consistent positive experience to all new employees and will focus on King County’s values and what you can expect as a new employee.
If you need to register a new employee for NEO, this information is for you:
- NEO registration will be done through Eventbrite
- NEO will be held on every Monday starting Jan. 3, 2017
- If Monday is a holiday where offices are closed NEO will be held on Tuesday
- NEO will be all day (8 a.m. – 5 p.m.) except for non-benefitted employees who will leave at approximately 2:45 p.m.
- Employees will complete the first portion of their I-9 forms and bring to their HR the next day with required identification
- NEO will include obtaining ID badges as long as paperwork has been filed in advance with the King County ID Access Office.
You can find more information about the changes, agenda and how to sign up on this SharePoint site.
As with all changes, we encourage and welcome your feedback as we move forward. You can contact Meghan McKnight in Human Resources Division with any questions.
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Recognition of Emergency Medical Services program by the American Heart Association “warms the heart”
The American Heart Association recently presented its Ian G. Jacobs Award for International Group Collaboration to Advance Resuscitation Science to the Resuscitation Academy, which launched nine years ago to identify and disseminate best practices for treating cardiac arrest.
Mickey S. Eisenberg, Director of Medical Quality Improvement at King County EMS, accepted the award on behalf of the Resuscitation Academy.
“We hope to develop a road map and a set of tools that can be used by emergency medical systems in both high-resource and low-resource countries,” said Eisenberg. “We have the knowledge to increase cardiac arrest survival rates — we know how to do it. The main challenge is implementation.”
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King County Learning and Development delivers
Employee training is one of the career development areas County employees asked for more of in the 2015 Employee Engagement Survey. As part of the response to that request, Human Resources Division’s Learning and Development team provided more than 50 offerings of 26 classes to many of the County’s departments during the first ten months of 2016.
During that time, more than 500 County employees and community partners attended training opportunities, eight of which were in high demand and generated impressive wait lists. These trainings included:
- Difficult Conversations
- So, You Want to be a Supervisor?
- Value-Based Leadership 101
- Facilitating Effective Meetings
- Four Generations in the Workplace
- Introduction to Lean
- Basic Equity and Social Justice
- Stories that Engage
The KC eLearning site – www.KingCounty.gov/eLearning – has also had more than 12,000 visits to date this calendar year, where 1,646 employees accessed 2,572 eLearning resources. It can be accessed from a work or personal computer with an employee’s nine-digit PeopleSoft number. For those who cannot recall their password, it can be reset easily on the site. There is also a Quick Access Guide available, which provides an overview of the platform and it’s features.
The County’s eLearning resources include Skillsoft courses for Human Resources and Project Management certification exams, along with many other certification and self-improvement courses. The platform offers convenience to employees and managers, as the courses may be taken online, supporting both work schedules and learning and development goals – whether those goals be individually set or taken at the suggestion of a supervisor or mentor.
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Executive hosts first “Listening Session” to hear directly from employees
If you want to know what’s going on in any organization, you ask the people who are doing the work.
That’s why King County Executive Dow Constantine hosted his first Employee Listening Session – to hear from employees about the issues they are facing in their workplaces, and what the County can do to help them thrive and better serve their customers.
“Although I visit many King County work sites each month, I still don’t get as many opportunities as I would like to talk directly with individual employees, so I asked my staff to put together these listening sessions,” Executive Constantine told the small group gathered in his Chinook Building office. “I want to hear from you about what you’re working on, what’s working well, and where we could do better to help you succeed.”
The Executive’s Office worked with union leaders who nominated 11 employees from across the County to attend the first Employee Listening Session on Wednesday, December 7: Hossein Barahimi (Department of Transportation), Jason Canfield (Superior Court), Valerie Dreas (Assessments), Steve Ford (KCIT), Bob Goucher (Department of Natural Resources and Parks), Jennell Hicks (Department of Community and Human Services), Amy Lewis (Department of Public Defense), Lynn Mazer (Department of Judicial Administration), Keith Siebler (Public Health), Lois Watt (Department of Transportation), and Lisa Wray (Sheriff’s Office).
A passion for public service was a consistent theme among the employees at the event who all shared a strong commitment to serving their customers and zeal for their work.
Career advancement was a key topic of discussion, with attendees urging the Executive to look at how the County can ensure maximum transparency and objectivity on hiring panels, and to encourage County recruiters to value training and certifications alongside experience when evaluating job applications.
The attendees also advocated for managers to facilitate greater self-direction for employees wherever appropriate, which can lead to more innovation and problem-solving.
Another issue that was raised was support for military veterans, with one attendee advocating for King County to continue its Veterans Program and its focus on hiring and assisting local veterans.
The Employee Listening Sessions are part of the Executive’s commitment to connecting more frequently with employees – both in person at site visits and events like this one, and electronically through video and email messages.
The Executive’s team has taken the suggestions from the employees who attended the session and will work to address the concerns that the group voiced. The Executive plans to host more Employee Listening Sessions in 2017.
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Reminder: Win a book of poetry; further the conversation about equity and social justice, deadline December 30
Enter to win one of these 6 awesome books.
This year an Equity and Social Justice (ESJ) project team in DNRP organized a series of four literary readings called “Reflecting on Race and Racism through Spoken Word, Story, and Conversation” that was open to all King County employees. The purpose was to provide a forum for employees to discuss issues of race and racism to help reject stereotypes, practice empathy, and come to a greater understanding of the roots of inequity and injustice.
The ESJ literary project is also the reason behind this book giveaway open to all employees. To be eligible to receive one of six books by the poets featured in the reading series, simply respond to one of the following prompts:
- The most important thing I learned …
- What I hope to see in future events …
- I didn’t attend any of the events, but I would’ve if …
Send your entries to Rowena Johnson with the subject line ESJ Book Drawing (King County employees only). Deadline for entering is December 30, 2016. All responses will be included in a random drawing, with winners announced in January 2017. Titles to be given away are
- Aux Arcs by Shin Yu Pai
- Adamantine by Shin Yu Pai
- Digging for Roots by Kiana Davis
- Diglossic in the Second America by Quenton Baker
- This Glittering Republic by Quenton Baker
- Where Bullet Breaks by Casandra Lopez
If you are not among the winners, you can still get easy access to the books. A set will be available for checkout from the Local Hazardous Waste Management Program library.
Turning to books is always a good move. As Sherman Alexie says, “I firmly believe in the power of stories to change the world, and I firmly believe in the power of one story to change one life at a time.”
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Kudos to KC Roads for tackling snow and ice head on!
With winter weather on the way, we say thank you to everyone who is helping keep our roads safe!
Kudos to King County Road Services for maintaining 1,500 miles of road and 181 bridges in unincorporated King County. By making sure there is no ice on our roadways you are helping transit operators, commuters and all who travel during this busy season stay safe and sound.
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