HR, COMMUNICATIONS & IT

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Operating Budget:

Capital Budget:

Staffing Complement:

Supports Strategic Focus Areas:

Overview

As overall corporate support functions, Human Resources (HR),

Information Technology (IT) and Communications exist to provide inter-departmental support and public interfaces that promote the effective, efficient and transparent operation of the corporation.

Our IT department is currently a team of 3 technology specialists providing strategic leadership in IT planning, business process re-engineering and day-to-day IT management for network operations, systems security, data storage, application servers, disaster recovery, mobile communications, desktop PC’s and end user support. Our Communications department provides strategic communications planning and advice, leadership and direction for marketing campaigns, brand coherence, media buying and placement, media relations and monitoring, event planning, social media, Internet and website strategy

HR, COMMUNICATIONS & IT

HR, COMMUNICATIONS & IT

and related services. The customer service representative, with back-up from the Finance department, provides public interface support, such as first point-of-contact via phone and email, and facilitates administrative tasks to support the organization (mail, supplies, etc.) Our human resources service, provided by two part-time employees with the leadership of the Director, includes organizational development, recruitment and retention, training and development, performance

management, labour relations including collective agreement interpretation and labour management, and occupational health, safety and wellness.

At A Glance

HR & Communications

 52 full-time employees, 9 part-time employees and 4 casual or time durated in the City workforce, excluding RCMP and Parks and Recreation services, which are contracted through agreements with the City of Maple Ridge.

 The average age of City employees is 46.9 years with an average of 8.59 years of service.  As of October 2014, the HR department has processed 24 job postings, 2 reclassification

requests, 0 grievances, reviewed over 1000 resumes and conducted 60 candidate interviews.

 As an organization, we have had 2 WCB reportable injuries with no time loss for injury (YTD).

 Combined corporate knowledge base (in years of service): 541compared to 490 for 2013.  City website unique visitors in 2014 (projected to year end): 96,137; Facebook likes 1,142 (an increase of 90% over last year) and average reach per post in last quarter: 645 users. City Twitter followers: 1,169.

 City Talks Email newsletter distribution: 58.2% opened by recipients (industry avg 19%); links in emails clicked – 6.2% (industry avg 2.3%).

 My Waste app downloads: 219 (increase of 53% in one year); 26 “Report-A-Problem” reports submitted by users to the City via smartphone.

Human Resources, Communications & IT

 278 newspaper ads produced and run YTD – negotiated and received over $20,000 worth of free advertising.

IT

 IT logged 732 help desk tickets between Jan 1 and Oct 29.

 Our Exchange email server handles 17,000 inbound emails per month.

 IT manages 20.82 KM of private optic

cabling connecting City Hall to the works yard, Annex, Pitt Meadows Family Recreation Centre and Fire Hall.

 The City maintains 7 terabytes of data and it continues to grow each year. (1 Terabyte = 1,000,000 Mega Bytes).

 IT manages 60 desktop PC’s, 17 smartphones and 27 mobile tablets.

Staff Complement

Human Resources, Communications & IT

2014 Achievements

HR, Communications

 Once in a Hundred Years. 45,000 individuals attended over 17 events to mark the City’s 100th _{birthday, and by all accounts,}

it was a huge success. Under the coordination of Erin Mark and co-chairs Rick Higgs,

Michael Hayes and Leslie Norman, and supported by a planning committee of 35 community members, the centennial team planned the City’s first Centennial Heritage

Fair, sold-out Gala and Citizens of the Century recognition event. Traditional events throughout the community saw previous attendance figures double.

 Centennial Legacies. These include a Children’s Activity book about Pitt Meadows, a new Centennial stage for use at community events, Heritage Exhibit Panel and the Museum memory band, Students’ Time Capsule, Centennial tree, veteran banners, may poles, Centennial mural and other artwork, strong partnerships, and increased community pride; just a few of the ongoing memories that will be forever part of the City’s centennial celebrations.

 Expanded social media and communication presence. Engaged residents on special events, government and partner initiatives and citizen voting. We have seen a 90% increase in social media traffic in the past twelve months. Key stories included Multi Materials BC changes to the recycling program, backyard hens and CP Rail crossing closure. Internal communications were enhanced through the staff intranet which includes staff polling and links to news about Pitt Meadows via Google and Twitter feeds.

 Support and promotion of Council activities. Special events (Centennial, CPO opening,) community blitzes around the Centennial, Shop Local, Your Vote Counts 2014, and our partnership with ICBC, Fire, Police on pedestrian driving safety and the CP Harris Road Rail closure were all very warmly received.

 Occupational Health and Safety. Creation and recruitment of a part-time coordinator to oversee and enhance the City’s Health, Safety and Wellness programs.

 Staff Training and Development. This was a very robust year for staff training and development, including WCB-required Respectful Workplace, Ergonomics, Asbestos Handling, Leadership, and Microsoft Office. Investing less than 1% of payroll, we were able to provide staff access to over 51 different courses.

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Visit from Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, Judith Guichon

 Staff Engagement. There is nothing like a Centennial to bring staff together and nearly everyone had a role to play. Also, the creation of an employee wellness committee and some new

recommendations from that group is starting to materialize in terms of reduced sick leave and positive engagement – “You want your people to feel cared for and cared about, morale stays high, and a

healthy workforce performs at a much higher level.”

IT

 Corporate IT Strategic Plan and Core Business System Renewal Plan. Sponsored the development of a new Corporate IT Strategic Plan and Core Business System Renewal Plan as visioning documents providing direction for IT and the

implementation of new business system solutions needed to increase operational efficiency.  Infrastructure Upgrades. An end-of-life switch replacement project and a telephone

system upgrade significantly reducing infrastructure management overhead and improving end user experience.

 Network Security. Conclusion of an eighteen-month network security enhancement project culminating in an audit of our network. IT is eagerly waiting on the results and further security recommendations.

 Renewed Mobile Communication Contract. Renewal of our three-year mobile contract with Telus. New features and improved plans have reduced our mobile costs significantly over previous contracts.

 Website refresh. A cleaner look and feel, better search capability, user-centric links to key content/pages and full mobile capabilities have been adopted and will be released shortly.

 Private Cloud. A pilot project to implement a private cloud solution enabling staff to upload and download City data from any internet connection.

 CartêGraph. Water PRV stations and valves, fire hydrants, sanitary lift stations, storm pump stations, bar screens and flood gates assets have been implemented into the system allowing the capture of event history on the specific assets, improving maintenance planning and supporting analysis for preventative maintenance.

 Time Capture Implementation. Began implementation of an electronic time capture and approval system for all inside staff.

Key Challenges for 2015

 Redefining the workforce. Explosion of smart phone mobile and cloud technology and skill gaps are driving a huge wedge between the four different generations now working in our organization; knowledge becomes quickly obsolete in this fast moving world. For various reasons, employees may have little desire or little motivation to take on additional responsibility which will present a leadership challenge at all levels, especially acute for emerging and next generation leaders. The expectations of work/life balance, as well as changing workplace priorities continue to affect workplace attitudes. Challenges must be met with creative solutions in what still is a very traditional workplace.

 Business Analytics. The stress placed on HR/IT and Communications and the entire organization continues to rise with higher expectations from citizens and more demands for open government and transparency. Readily accessible data is crucial to be able to look at patterns to determine what has happened and to make predictions for the future. Wisely using business analytics and technology increases transparency and improves decision-making.

 Stretched resources. Staff wear multi-hats with not enough depth at times to cover everything and limited time for significant projects. Layered on top of these challenges are small departments with no back-up, that are too small to fully automate many of the time consuming and labour intensive processes.

 Recruiting and Retaining Employees. Qualified talent is becoming harder to secure as we compete with both the private and public sector. Retaining and growing existing talent is easier and more cost effective than hiring new employees, but often difficult if incentives including flexibility are not there.

 City Website and the Online Culture. Our website continues to be a key source of information for the public. Web self-service is commonplace in the municipal sphere. The City is falling behind in this area and needs to implement similar or better web-based self-service features to serve our constituents and businesses to interact and conduct business with the City.

 Core Business System. Our current business systems do not support our existing business processes well. The City’s business systems are to a large extent manual, inefficient and error prone representing a significant risk for the City. IT will be moving forward in 2015 with a systems replacement project to implement a modern property

based municipal business system and enhance our existing financial system. The goal is to significantly reduce the issues and shortcomings of our current systems.

 IT Staffing. The current resourcing of the IT department is inadequate to effectively support the services and the evolving technology. This problem will be further exacerbated with the implementation of new business systems.

 Technology Changes. Technological change is fast, constant and significant. Our data holdings are growing faster than ever before challenging our IT infrastructure to manage them. Our citizens, businesses and staff expect current technologies to interact with the City and perform business functions. IT must balance the cost of change with user expectation and available resources.

 Staff Training and Development. Just as the demands to keep up with technology keep changing so do the regulations to keep us safe and working (i.e. ongoing certification demands in public works, Work Safe compliance). We are juggling the cost of training with the risks associated by delaying and taking away from the actual work that needs

completing.

 Legislated or Mandated requirements. Meeting up-to-date demands and legislation has meant that we require fewer, if any, unskilled positions as they are replaced with higher skilled and higher paid positions. With the cost of labour as one of the largest percentage of cost drivers, high-negotiated or arbitrated settlements have a ratcheting effect on all labour costs. Recent settlements for Fire in the 20% range over 8 years will put further pressure on our other labour groups. The bar is being set so high that taxpayers are asking if we can really afford this.

 Regular changes to WCB regulations and rules and costs. Meeting the new and diverse standards requires ongoing education, documentation, review and revision to ensure compliance. Claims, disability and leave management is becoming more and more complex, more frequent and more costly with ever increasing costs on benefit plans and WCB premiums.

 Evolving Methods of Engagement. The 2012 Citizen survey emphasized that there are significant differences in how various demographics prefer to receive communication and further suggests that “no single communication method is best for a majority of

residents; rather, a combination of

reaching out and engaging the community as a whole.” However, taking this multi-faceted approach requires resources.

Key Initiatives 2015

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Division Initiative Target

Human Resources _{HR Manual Review and Audit. Gap analysis of Human Resource} Policies and development of outstanding and incomplete policies. Psychologically Healthy Workplace Training – Providing manag-ers and staff with support tools to identify and deal with mental health issues in the workplace.

Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and Interna-tional Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Negotiations – Prepa-ration of bargaining for these two agreements following regional stan-dards.

Refresh of Human Resource Strategic Plan – Building on work done in 2009, a re-examination of the values and skills necessary to continue to build organizational capacity.

Development of a Health and Safety Strategic Plan – Vision for the overall corporate program.

Renewal of the Exempt Agreement – Renewal of the current agreement. Q2 Q2 Q2/4 Q3 Q2 Q4 Communications _{Creation of a Civic Recognition Policy – Creation of a new}

Coun-cil policy to recognize citizen achievements.

Expand outreach and engagement opportunities for citizens. Conduct Citizen Satisfaction Survey as part of ongoing program of benchmarking/monitoring citizen’s values and service satisfaction. Review of communications policies

Creation of City sponsorship policy to examine other revenue source opportunities.

Refresh and Organization of Public Photobank

Q1 Q1-Q4 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q4 Information

Technology Core Business Systems Renewal

 Begin procurement process and implementation of a modern, prop-erty based municipal business system

 Support Finance with Chart of Account restructure

Broadcast High Definition Camera System for Council Cham-bers to allow high definition broadcast for both Shaw and through our web streaming service.

Q1- Q4 Q2

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Division Initiative Target

Information Technology (cont’d)

Broadcast Audio System for Meadows Room (Council In Committee venue) to allow capture and streaming of audio.

Desktop Computer Replacement as per lifecycle management plan Installation of Flat Panel Displays in Rivers Room and Council Chambers overflow

Q3 Q1 Q2

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Decision Package A: Business Analyst

Description

Creation of a single position responsible for corporate analysis of business systems and proc-esses has been identified as a high priority by many employees and by CLT (Corporate Leader-ship Team) during numerous previous discussions. The recently completed IT Strategic Plan clearly articulated the risks associated with a “do nothing approach” including business proc-esses that continue to lag behind citizens’ expectations for online services and accessible data. “The IT Strategic plan and the recommended renewal of the Core Business Systems allows the City to remedy the current pain points and issues that it currently experiences and positions the city for the future. As the City grows, changes in IT will have to occur at some point to reverse a loss of effi-ciency.“*

A Business Analyst will be a champion of continuous improvement providing key skills in analy-sis, development, documentation, deployment and training of business process and related ac-tivities. The Business Analyst would become the resident business application expert support-ing and guidsupport-ing the use of our financial system, the planned property based municipal business system and our infrastructure asset management system.

Recommendation

A. Approve an ongoing operating expenditure of $89,000 to fund a new Business Analyst position.

Financial Implications

Annual Salary/Benefits = $89,000 (estimate based on skill set/education required) Position is at Coordinator Level (unionized)

Reporting to: IT Manager

Department/Division: HR, IT & Communications Submitted by: Lorna Jones/Dave Philp Estimated Capital Cost: $

Estimated Annual Operating Costs: One time: $ Ongoing: $ 89,000

*City of Pitt Meadows IT Strategic Plan—Final Report, CGI Information Systems and Management Consultants Inc.

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Funding:

1st Year 25% Operational 75% Capital (Core Business System Renewal) 2nd Year 75% Operational 25% Capital (Core Business System Renewal) 3rd Year 100% Operational

Discussion

This role is currently being performed to varying degrees of success, “off the side” of our IT Manager and other manager staff desks. These functions are much too important and time con-suming to be adequately managed in this manner and are clearly not sustainable moving for-ward. Serious ramifications exist if the City is unable to undertake and maintain the myriad of complex and broad-spectrum responsibilities. A coordinated approach to continuous business process improvement is required to ensure that the City does not lag behind in terms of ser-vice standards and the expectations of our citizens and businesses.

Complex business systems demand in-house expertise to ensure the City is achieving the most value from the systems and staff must have a dedicated capable resource to assist with com-plex business problems. This position will guide senior management and staff in the effective use and application of business systems, improving productivity overall. The Business Analyst position can be considered complimentary to the existing Network Services Specialist position where as the Network Services Specialist is the expert resource for managing our network, disaster recovery and related infrastructure.

The Business Analyst is the expert for our organization software applications and related busi-ness processes.

Alternatives

Maintain status quo and expect continued erosion of IT’s ability to support the organization in the areas of business process and business application optimization. This situation will see the City lag behind peer municipalities in our ability to provide services effectively, efficiently and without error. The successful implementation of new business systems will be jeopardized with the current staff complement.

Summary

Clearly the current situation is unsustainable. The addition of a dedicated Business Analyst to IT is required to support existing system and ensure the success with implementation and on-going management of new business systems.

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Decision Package B: Operational Support for Special Events

Description

The City either supports or promotes over 45 local events throughout the community. Many of these events are primarily run by volunteer groups with additional staffing support from the joint Parks and Leisure Services staff and require little or no additional assistance from City staff except in the form of promotional/protocol guidance that the Communications Depart-ment provides as part of our community service initiatives.

There are a few events however, that due to the nature or scale of the event (i.e. A Pitt Mead-ows Christmas, Earth Day and City booths at events such as the Home Show, etc) that staff play a more prominent role in either setting up, securing goods or in the case of Earth Day and Home Show participating directly in the event. In these cases, staff time is generally absorbed into the department operating budgets or staff are present in a volunteer capacity. However, in the case of Public Works these hours must be billed directly to a general ledger line and allo-cated for the transport of equipment or heavy supplies. As these events continue to grow, so do the requirements for additional labour support and speciality delivery/equipment.

Staying true to the community development model, at this point staff are requesting additional funding to only cover the direct costs associated with the transport or labour provided by the Public Works department to augment staffing or volunteers.

Recommendation

A. Approve an ongoing operating expenditure of $3,000 to fund operational special event labour services.

Financial Implications

Department/Division: HR and Public Works Submitted by: Lorna Jones/Randy Evans Estimated Capital Cost: $

Human Resources, Communications & IT

Discussion

As the number, complexity and associated risks/requests of events continue to grow, the staff-ing response and ability to support these events must be re-assessed especially when resourc-ing requests directly impact work plans. In the case of a Pitt Meadows Christmas, sandbags, tables and tents are primarily moved by volunteers with support from city and Parks and Lei-sure staff both working and volunteering. The ice sculpture, for instance would not be possible without the cooperation of our city works crew and the Arena staff.

Alternatives

The City would continue to support the events as resourcing is available but would no longer be able to commit to the provision of general labour support.

Summary

As special events grow and community volunteers are stretched, the City is asked to assist and support in ways that may not have been contemplated or predicted. With budget reductions and a higher level of accountability, the true impact and cost of special events is being identified and the impact that this support is having is now beginning to impact work plans and stretch resources to the point where additional support is necessary.