Granular Breakdown of Data

OPPA: "I feel I am a valued employee" (DHS Stay and Grow Survey)

Important: Below notes and details are from 2021. 

Respondents Definition of "Valued Employee"

Where do respondents feel value (DHS, DPH, OPPA, etc.)?  Valued by whom? (Colleagues, Supervisor, DPH, Governor, etc.)

• The work I'm doing is valued by management and coworkers.
• The value I am bringing to my coworkers and supervisor.
  • If I left would people apprecate my work?
• Value from public awareness: During pandemic public health work is seen by the public more

Contributing/Positive Factors:

• Given opportunities to learn
• Lateral supportive relationships
  • "I feel a lot of support and value from the coworkers."
• Feeling like have control over work
• Positive, supportive relationship with immediate supervisor
  • ​​​​​​​Employees who are supervised by highly engaged managers are 59% more likely to be engaged than those supervised by actively disengaged managers. 
• In person conversations (rather than virtual conversations)
• Ideas being picked up by others
  • Even if the person who originated the idea not involved.
• Stepping up in the pandemic response
• Working with and in partnership with others (LTHDs, other state agencies, community groups)

Restricting/Negative Factors:

• Historical trauma
  • Do not feel valued to the overall system
• Work unnoticed/ignored
  • Colleagues create/complete excellent work yet receive a passive response
• Unexplainable barriers
  • Work cannot be completed/not implemented because of barriers that cannot be explained or mitigated.
• Us vs. Them regarding CRT Response and OPPA Core
  • Not feeling support from up the management chain
• Feeling like do not have control over work
• Feeling outside of the pandemic response
• Politicization of public health
• OPPA fixes others messes
  • OPPA is going to need to help heal relationships with partners that we did not hurt

Where will this data go if we do nothing?

• Stay same because people changing responses
• Answers are going to get more divisive - feel valued will feel more valued; don't feel valued feel less valued
• Value will go up given we have a full time Director

• Local and tribal public health
• Statutory defined partners

Potential Strategies

1. Regular communication with employees
   • Add regular feedback into informal and formal check-ins with employees, and ultimately PEP
   • Regular reassessment of value question (¿Strategy Performance Measure?)
2. Review COVID-19 response work practices that increased employee sense of value
   • Identify things that can be apply to work post pandemic
   • ¿A cross-cutting priority and part of everything we do?
3. Regular all-staff check ins -- include personal aspects
4. Training and development strategies and framework for OPPA
   1. Personal growth check-ins
      1. 2 or 4 x per year checking in on professional goals and how to get there
      2. what opportunities exist within the office, division, department, etc.
      3. projects that could help with experiential growth, etc.
5. Increase Staff Recognition
   • Tell at least one person a day something they did well
   • Create a recognition system
   • Just a tiny bit of recognition of a good job done goes a long way

Jen's Perspective

• Start with OPPA, more rich/frequent internal reporting (so we have the information sharing we need to "see" what everyone is doing) followed by intentional positive feedback/communication
  • Chris's perspective to build on Jen's
    • does more frequent internal reporting include scheduling OPPA Team meetings - sometimes we struggle how to sustain the sharing/reporting so all of OPPA benefits.  Instead of seeing this internal reporting as more work, we could frame as practicing internally sharing our OPPA narrative from an Appreciative Inquiry apporach.  As we get better at it as a team we could consider expanding our narrative sharing to DPH/DHS or others.  

Ideas Needing More Structure

• Address needs/requests presented to us by LTHDs
  • (Comment by Chris) because OPPA Leadership is segmented (some in the response, some doing different activities) we do not have a space to track common needs/requests/concerns across regions and also lack a consistent process to raise up OPPA issues (non-response)
• More frequent reporting
  • Internal reporting to increase line of sight
    • (Chris comment, what does this mean), reporting to the OPPA Leadership Team but also to the entire team? - what should this look like?  Mimi used to provide an update but that was short-lived.
• Being given increasing responsibility as a result of trust and that recognition
  • (Chris comment) is there a way to add a limited number of supervisor level in OPPA - right now we either have staff or managers and no in-between space for employee growth?
• Focus on OPPA's strengths
• Keep and grow our personal connections to others - so they recognize and know what OPPA does, what value we add
  • DPH Offices and Bureaus
  • DPH Senior Management - not always clear on what OPPA does
  • Pandemic facilitated connections: Other state agencies, external organizations

Here's What We Propose to Do Moving Forward

• Regular communication with employees
  • Add regular feedback into informal and formal check-ins with employees, and ultimately PEP
  • Regular reassessment of value question (¿Strategy Performance Measure?)
  • Reference HBR article strategies, particularly:
    • addressing growth opportunities (giving and finding opportunities for staff based on strengths and what energizes them), offering flexibility (work schedule, remote vs in office)
    • giving balanced feedback (positive and developmental and separately, not together)
    • touching base early and often (ie-regular meetings, open lines of communication, informal vs formal check-ins)
  • Building into Planning PEPs - "regular, frequent, and balanced (positive and developmental) feedback to supervisees and supervisor"
    • Have quarterly meetings on the calendar to visit PEP objectives and have intentional opportunity to provide feedback
    • Document when feedback provided to direct reports (who, what, type - positive or developmental)
    • Could be gradual ramp back up with employees transitioning back from response assignment -- supervisor and employee can flex as needed for the individual
• LT meeting 3/31 to discuss communications

Five Considerations When Choosing Strategies

• Leverage - Does the strategy impact the curve? (i.e. Will the strategy increase our sense of value as employees?)
• Feasibility - How feasible is it for us to implement this?
• Specific - How specific is the strategy?
• Values - Is the strategy consistent with our values (OPPA and DPH)?
• Feedback - Can we receive and implement feedback?