Administrative Professional recognized by peers
Like all King County departments and agencies, the Human Resources Division is working on multiple wide-ranging programs and requests at any one time, and its employees rely heavily on the support of its administrative professionals to deliver services to County employees and customers.
Ask any HRD employee and they’ll likely tell you that the reason the division is able to run smoothly is administrator Kimberly Robinson, who recently celebrated 10 years with King County and HRD.
Robinson is a member of the HRD Administrative Team that provides high level administrative support to the Director’s Office. She is the office manager for the division, coordinating and submitting communications and transmittals on behalf of the Director’s Office. She also coordinates work orders with Facilities Management Division and KCIT as well as outside vendors, and serves as a resource for all customers who contact the division online, by phone or in person.
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Five Questions with Mei Barker, Human Resource Analyst, Human Resources Division
1. What was your first role with King County? My first role with King County was to provide administrative support to the Public Health Tuberculosis Control Program, mainly processing billing reconciliations and special projects. About a year later I began my career in Human Resources with Superior Court.
2. What do you do in your role with Human Resources Division (HRD)? I handle the civil service recruitments for the Sheriff’s Office, as a member of the Compensation and Employment Services Section of HRD.
3. How is the process for hiring Sheriff’s Office employees different to other agencies?
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Employee working to end veteran homelessness featured in Lean blog
The Lean in King County blog recently featured Dawn Barrett – who we featured in our “Five Questions with… ” segment on November 10 – in an article called “Turning an (Almost) Impossible Goal into Concrete and Solvable Problems.”
Barrett is working on King County’s ambitious goal of ending homelessness among an estimated 1,100 veterans by the end of 2015.
“If we keep doing business as usual, we’ll keep housing as usual,” says Barrett.
Barrett and her team are using Lean to identify small, solvable goals with the aim of achieving the really big, audacious goal of ending veteran homelessness in King County.
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And… We’re Off!
We revealed the 2015 Employee Survey Results today and now we’re embarking on an unprecedented effort to respond to the results. This is going to be exciting.
For the first time ever, we’re responding at every level of the organization. That means that departments, divisions and work groups will each have action plans to address issues that came up in the survey. And at the countywide level Best Run Government Employees will respond to the survey results.
This blog will follow our journey to address the results. I anticipate we will share successes and challenges. We will follow the stories of people doing the hard work of listening and changing and we will also share resources to help you along your journey.
Right off the bat it’s fascinating to see what drives engagement at King County. Each report has a page with 4 key questions to focus on. These are the strongest drivers of engagement for employees at that level of the county. Here’s how the consultant arrives at those 4 questions as the key drivers:
- Engagement is defined as someone’s willingness to say, stay and strive: say positive things about where they work, stay working there and strive to get the job done. Questions 60 – 65 on our survey measure this.
- Questions 1 – 59 in the survey measures the things that drive people’s desire to say, stay and strive. These drivers of engagement are: strategic alignment, senior leadership, role/relationship with manager/supervisor, peer culture, personal influence, growth and development, the nature of the job and employee recognition. In the report you can see questions 1 – 59 clustered by engagement driver.
- The consultant does a statistical analysis showing the 4 engagement driver questions that have the strongest correlation to the say, stay strive questions.
This gives us good information about the best place to focus our efforts. The key questions are different for every department, division and branch of government, though there are overlaps.
Most action planning will focus on better understanding and addressing what we learn about the key driver questions. As we do this action planning we’re building on other things that are also geared toward helping us provide the best service possible to the public — Lean and Equity and Social Justice. with employee engagement all are important to King County becoming the Best Run Government — providing service that is effective, innovative and customer-centric. Their similarities, their differences and how they interrelate form a foundation on which we build the Best Run Government. We will use Lean methodology to guide our action planning. We want to truly understand the problems before we act on them, we want to involve everyone in responding and we want to check our progress. As we do this, it will be important to look through an ESJ lens at everything we are doing.
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Veterans Court helps veterans in criminal justice system
For most, the court system can be complicated, confusing and scary. For many veterans, the process now comes with a sense of comradery and hope.
Callista Welbaum, Regional Veterans Court Program Manager
The King County District Court Regional Veterans Court serves veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or other disabilities from their time in service. In 2008, a judge in New York launched the first Veterans Treatment Court. Recognizing a need, King County launched a study in 2011 to determine the best treatment option, and in 2012 officially opened King County District Court’s Regional Veterans Court.
The Regional Veterans Court is classified as a therapeutic court, where individuals are served by what their needs and different risks are. By working with veterans, the Regional Veterans Court hopes to stop them from offending, and give them tools to deal with their underlying mental health and addiction issues, Callista Welbaum, Program Manager said.
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Explore Race and Social Justice through Literature Out Loud
“We are human only if I see myself
in you and if you see yourself in me.”
These lines are from a poem called “Dialectic” by Quenton Baker, one of eight literary artists selected to present their work to King County employees in a series of symposia in 2016 called “Reflecting on Race and Racism through Spoken Word, Story, and Conversation.”
The presentations offer King County employees the opportunity to explore equity and social justice issues through the personal and intimate art of “literature out loud.” Writers will read or perform their work and briefly explain its genesis and inspiration. A facilitated question-and-answer session between audience and artists will follow.
Poets Quenton Baker and Casandra Lopez will appear in the first symposium on January 12 from 1-3 p.m. in the eighth-floor conference at King Street Center.
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Five Questions with Dawn Barrett, Social Worker/Veterans Program, Community & Human Services
1. 
What was your first role at King County? My first role for King County was in 2004 as a Social Worker for the out-of-school young adults enrolled in our YouthSource program in Renton. I recall my fascination with the size of the team and the innovative and creative programs they were implementing such as Youth Build and Digital Bridge; both aimed to achieve education and employment outcomes to combat income inequalities for this population. The team was incredible at creating a safe and fun place for learning while investing in the development of life skills and relationship building which made it less like a program and more of a community.
2. What is the goal of the Regional Veterans Initiative (RVI)? We have a robust Veteran service delivery system in King County, funded with over $500M annually from all our partners and more than 180 programs and services across the region designed specifically for veterans and their families. The system encompasses outreach and engagement; information and referral; homelessness and housing; education, employment and other benefits; justice system interventions and legal services; and health and behavioral health services. The goal of the RVI is to ensure veterans and their families get to the best resources in the fewest steps and that all the partners are working together toward that goal.
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Job opportunities for veterans ease transition from military
Steve Stamper (center) with King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn (left) and King County Executive Dow Constantine.
Making the transition from military to civilian life can be a difficult one for many veterans but finding a meaningful job where they can utilize their skills while learning new ones can ease that transition.
That’s why King County launched the Heroes Employment Reintegration Opportunity (HERO) Program back in 2012.
“Veterans returning from deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan face a job market with high unemployment rates, and a civilian workforce where their valuable skills may not be recognized,” Councilmember Reagan Dunn said. “We have a responsibility to support those who have fought in service to our country. I sponsored legislation for the HERO program, currently called Vets 4 Hire, in an attempt to ease the transition and increase the employment rate of veterans in King County.”
One of those veterans is former Field Artillery Officer Steve Stamper.
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Honoring our veterans and ending veteran homelessness
Dear fellow King County employee,
King County Executive Dow Constantine
Each year, we pause as a grateful nation on November 11 to salute the men and women who answered the call to serve in our nation’s armed forces. Of the 122,000 veterans of all ages who call King County home, I am proud to say that 931 of them are our fellow King County employees, including 27 who were called to active duty over the past year.
Along with our respect and appreciation, we best honor their service through our actions. Through our King County Veterans Program and the voter-approved Veterans and Human Services Levy, we are helping local veterans and their families to transition home successfully – with counseling, case management, employment and training programs, and more.
But our greatest challenge is the number of veterans who have come home to homelessness. I signed on to the White House Challenge to End Veterans Homelessness and so far this year, with our partners at All Home, we have housed 717 formerly homeless veterans. To reach our goal by the end of the year that no veteran be homeless, we must find housing for the last among them, including 310 who have the ticket to ending homelessness in their hands today: a rental voucher. We need landlords who value what our veterans have contributed and who will accept that voucher. If you or anyone you know can help by dedicating just one unit to house a local veteran, please contact the WelcomeOneHome Program at 206-336-4616.
Even one homeless veteran is one too many. Let us come together as a community to ensure that every King County veteran has a home in time for the holidays. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Dow Constantine
King County Executive
Employee News 