‘Broad and systemic’ troubles at City Hall, survey finds; mayor singled out
The Gig Harbor City Council got its first look last week at the results of a city employee satisfaction survey.
It wasn’t pretty.
The survey of 98 city employees portrays a dysfunctional City Hall, in which the majority of employees distrust and fear the mayor and other senior leaders they feel treat them with contempt.
“The City of Gig Harbor has a troubled workplace environment,” the report from the consulting firm InsightLink begins.
Employees complained of “being spoken to in a rude or unprofessional manner, being talked down to, not having their expertise recognized and being micromanaged,” consultant Marilyn Mitchell told the council in a video-streamed study session Dec. 17.
Among the takeaways: Fully 72 percent of employees said leadership did not treat them with “respect and dignity.” Sixty-eight percent said leadership did not seek out or use their expertise, and 70 percent said leadership did not care what was on their minds. About 32 percent said they expected to leave within two years..
“You have a third of your people saying they would like to leave or are looking to leave,” said Mitchell, the firm’s senior research director. “If it remains that high, you’re going to need to spend a lot of money recruiting.”
Council members said they found the results disturbing.
“At first, I had a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment that we got this far,” said Council Member Le Rodenberg, whose ad-hoc committee suggested the study. “But when I read the written comments, I was just overwhelmed by sadness. These employees are just in a dismal situation.”
The survey was commissioned by the council — over the vehement objections of Mayor Kit Kuhn and city administrator Bob Larson — in an effort to find out why so many city employees were quitting or retiring early.
More than 20 employees, including department heads and longtime supervisors, have quit or retired since Kuhn, a former jeweler, became mayor in 2017. The abrupt resignation in July of the city’s well-liked parks manager, Nicole Jones-Vogel, in particular, shocked and dismayed members of the council.
“Many times, when presenting my professional opinion I felt dismissed, belittled, and scolded and was told I was ‘over-complicating things,‘ Jones-Vogel told the council in August. “As time went on my input was not sought and I was told to ‘comply’.”
Her experience was echoed by others interviewed by The Gateway for an article published Aug. 6, including the former city planning director, the former senior planner, the former city engineer and the former operations manager.
In addition, the city has settled at least one discrimination complaint against the mayor, paying $27,000 to the city’s former tourism and marketing director, Karen Scott, who said she was berated and bullied by the mayor.
‘Broad and systemic’ problems
InsightLink, a Palm Springs, Calif. company that specializes in employee satisfaction surveys, was paid $4,800 for the survey, which was conducted anonymously online. Of 107 city employees, 94 participated, for a return rate of 88 percent — a rate so high it was “virtually a census,” as Mitchell put it.
Walking through the survey’s categories, Mitchell was tactful but said “the scores are not great. There is a lot that needs to be done.”
“Every city has problems,” she said, “but yours are broad and systemic. There is widespread dissatisfaction with key leaders ... numerous comments about yelling, belittling, language like that.”
By far the most frequently mentioned are issues with Kuhn, Larson and the human resources director, Kameil Borders, the survey summary noted.
“Employees variously describe them as disrespectful, uncaring and rude, poor leaders who do not understand important aspects of the city’s work and work environment, micro-managers and inadequate communicators. They are also seen by some as being unsupportive of fair pay, career/professional development for employees and, at times, the city’s own regulations and policies,” the summary said.
Asked for comment, Kuhn requested a list of written questions. He was asked if, in light of the survey comments, he has considered moderating his behavior toward employees.
“I feel my manner with employees is fair,” he wrote in reply. “I listen to them and work with them to solve our tasks at hand. We also have a City Administrator to address issues and day-to-day operations and policies.”
The mayor added, “I strive each day to be open, honesty, supportive, transparent and let employees do the job we hired them to do.”
Bob Larson, the city administrator, said he has plans to form teams from a cross section of employees “to work on three to five of the more critical issues.”
“I’m encouraging our employees to participate in making suggestions on what we can do to make improvements and how we can go about doing so,” Larson said.
Borders, the HR director, was out of the office Friday, Dec. 18, and unavailable.
Scathing comments
Mitchell was careful not to name names, but some of the employees quoted anonymously in the survey did not hold back.
“The mayor has micromanaged and belittled his management and frontline staff to the point of destroying, what was once, a pretty healthy working environment,” read one comment. ”Employees are treated as if they are worthless and incompetent.”
Another complained of “constant belittlement of the employees, angry outbursts by the mayor, lack of any type of respect toward staff.”
A majority of Gig Harbor employees said they feel their experience working at the city has not improved in the past 12 months, the survey overview notes. More than half (56 percent) “disagree strongly” that the city is moving in a positive direction.
As Mitchell flipped through the charts and graphs detailing the survey results, her comments fell into a pattern: “The numbers here are very low,” “an unusually low score,” “extremely low,” “really abysmal.”
“Organizations with scores like yours have work to do,” Mitchell said.
Job satisfaction low
Overall job satisfaction was low, with just 29 percent saying they were “very” or “extremely” satisfied.” By contrast, 46% said they were “not very” or “not at all” satisfied. Normally, satisfaction would be around 65 percent, Mitchell said.
Only 16% agreed with the statement, “There is a good sense of morale among the people you work with.” Only 11% found “conflicts are resolved effectively,” just 13 percent agreed “loyalty is valued and rewarded,” only 12% agreed that “people get ahead based on merit,” and just 18% found that the city “communicates high integrity and ethical values.”
The good news is “some of those things are very much in your power to change,” Mitchell said. “These are day-to-day work culture things you can change without necessarily pouring a ton of money on.”
Employees complained about increased workloads caused by positions going unfilled for long periods of time. Thirty-five percent said they often had more work than they could finish, and 20 percent reported being unable to complete their tasks during normal working hours.
They also complained of lack of training and advancement opportunities that left some feeling “blockaded” in their jobs. A majority of employees — 53 percent — said they were “not very” or “not at all” satisfied with opportunities for advancement, and 69 percent felt the same about training and development.
“I brought up a training opportunity to my supervisor and they were very supportive of it, but later stated that administration would not allow it,” one employee complained. Added another, “Training is discouraged (the mayor actually said that if you need training, you are stupid), networking with colleagues is discouraged, advancement is discouraged ...”
Some bright spots
There were some bright spots in the survey. Generally, employees found their work interesting and challenging, and took pride in helping the public. Majorities felt the city was doing a good job managing the city for the benefit of the public and promoting good public relations. Most employees were relatively satisfied with their pay and benefits, though some identified “fairness issues” around pay, Mitchell notes.
There were positive comments as well, especially when employees were asked to name the most satisfying aspect of their work.
“My satisfaction comes from my ability to help the citizens accomplish whatever it is they are trying to build or fix,” wrote one. “All of our customers are the citizens of Gig Harbor and I enjoy being a constructive part of the community.”
Even though employees were unhappy with higher leadership, in general they liked their department heads and praised them for shielding them from the mayor.
“My department director is amazing to all of us, but there are many times that we see the anguish after a meeting with the mayor,” read one comment. “The mayor’s demands must be obeyed, right or wrong.”
Mitchell said many written comments by employees objected to the way the survey lumped together “administration” and “department directors,” saying they would rather have rated them separately. Some said they would have rated the administration even lower, but were afraid that would reflect on their own department heads.
Rodenberg said both the council and the consulting firm wanted the questions separated, but the city attorney who vetted the list insisted that they be combined.
Council reaction mixed
Reaction to the survey by the council was divided along the same lines as the original 4-3 vote in August to commission the survey.
Council members Le Rodenberg, Robyn Denson, Tracie Markley and Jeni Woock said they found it useful though disturbing.
“The bottom line is that we’ve just seen that we have a really big problem in our city,” said Markley. “We need to focus on what our employees are saying what we need to do to make to make it right.”
Council members Bob Himes and Jim Franich were skeptical, wondering if the results had been skewed by union membership. Spencer Abersold did not offer an opinion.
Noting that “we just had a very contentious year” with the police union, Franich suggested that negative opinions from the city’s 20 police officers could have “skewed the survey to a large degree.” According to Insightlink, about 13 percent of the survey’s responses came from police officers.
Himes recalled a prediction he made earlier, saying any survey would inevitably find, “This is a terrible place to work, my wages are too low, and the mayor’s a jerk.”
“My prediction has come true, exactly the way I said it would,” he said.
Kuhn, answering a written question Friday, said:
“We will continue to get employee feedback and will work together to help create a better working environment for our employees. I look forward to additional conversations in the coming months to better understand where we can improve and how to implement solutions.”
The mayor said he would support an ongoing council oversight committee, as some members have suggested.
Custody of comments
There was an extended discussion during the study session about how the survey would be revealed to the public, especially 75 pages of written comments that were not part of the final report.
Kuhn worried that if the comments were distributed to council members, they would be leaked “to a bunch of newspapers.”
Kuhn and Larson wanted the comments to be in the custody of Borders, the HR director, until they could be redacted of anything that could potentially identify employees. Council member Rodenberg objected to that, seeing an effort to keep the comments from the public. In the end, it was decided to let city attorney Daniel Kenny handle the redactions.
The Gateway has filed a public records request for the comments.
The InsightLink survey report is on the City of Gig Harbor website, www.cityofgigharbor.net under Civic Alerts
Reach Kerry Webster at editor@gateline.com
This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 5:30 AM.