Culture at city hall 'deeply concerning,' expert says

A new survey polled Hamilton city staffers and found a deeply concerning picture of the broader culture at city hall, a human resources expert says.

According to the citys latest employee ethics survey, half of city staffers feel like they cant report misconduct at work without fear of retaliation. A similar number of city employees say that even when employee misconduct is reported, they don't believe their bosses deal with it appropriately.

On top of that, a quarter of the employees surveyed say they have been pressured to compromise their ethics and values on the job. With results like that, the city will likely find it difficult to retain high level, competent workers, says Aaron Schat, an associate professor of organizational behaviour and human resource management at McMasters DeGroote School of Business.

It suggests a problem with the broader culture of the organization, Schat told CBC Hamilton. It suggests that management cant be trusted to deal with misconduct.

These numbers seem quite high.

The report shows that only 33 to 49 per cent of employees who filled out the citys latest employee ethics survey felt like they could alert their supervisors about misconduct on the job without worrying about retaliation.

Trouble at city hall

Schat says that in any organization, workers need to feel that misconduct is dealt with quickly, transparently, and appropriately but in the last year, the news out of city hall has been anything but.

First, there was the dismissal of public works road crew employees over lacklustre work habits, and then the revelation that close to $1-million in funds had allegedly been stolen from the Hamilton Farmers Market.

Most recently, anHSR manager was fired over allegations of sexual harassment, only to be given glowing references for a new job with Guelph Transit and a hefty severance package. He was later let go by Guelph Transit.

The city has taken steps to deal with those issues. But with stories like that and an overall perception that employees cant come forward with misconduct allegations, its easy for workers to feel disenfranchised and disconnected from their jobs, Schat says.

It will undermine the overall quality of their work, he said. Eventually, it makes people feel quite cynical about the organization and the work they do.

The people who have integrity and have options will eventually leave an organization like that. It can definitely foster a race to the bottom.

Disenfranchised workers are absent more often, expert says

A symptom of a disenfranchised workforce is a high percentage of absenteeism from workers, he says which is an issue in Hamilton. According to a new city report comparing the third quarter of 2013 to the third quarter of 2012, paid sick days are growing and the total cost to taxpayers for this year will be more than $11 million. Those costs have councillors looking for ways to crack down.

But being disenfranchised with your workplace isnt something thats exclusive to the city, says Ed Canning, a labour law expert and lawyer with Ross & McBride LLP.

Thats not unique to the city, Canning told CBC Hamilton. As someone who deals with employees and employers every day, do these numbers surprise me? No.

Canning also called into question the specificity of the survey itself. What does dealt with appropriately even mean? Its subjective.

The city knows it has issues that need improvement, city manager Chris Murray said. And it began an ongoing program of addressing them this year.

Murray met with about 600 managers this fall to discuss what's working and what's not about the city's corporate culture. He also established a planning group. The goal, he said, is to be as transparent as possible, and he's pleased with the progress so far.

'We aren't fooling around,' councillor says

"We have some distance to go before we're the organization we need to be, and we've given ourselves a time limit to be there," Murray said.

"We realize that taxpayers pay us a considerable amount of money to provide services. We want to make sure we're a high-performing organization."

At Mondays audit and finance committee meeting at city hall, Coun. Brad Clark said that more has to be done to ensure that city workers know they are protected and can come forward with allegations of misconduct or harassment, sexual or otherwise.

We need to make it very clear, Clark said. We arent fooling around. This isnt public relations. This isnt politics. This is serious.

Schat says that kind of response is a positive sign.

"People need to see that follow through to signal a cultural change," he said.

"It's a signal that 'hey you can't get away with that here.'"