The wait was over on Wednesday as John Scholten, regional president of the Michigan Leadership Institute, presented the results of the organizational culture survey that the board of commissioners hired him to prepare in November. Almost every seat in the large board of commissioners meeting room was occupied by members of the public and staff from many county departments.
The report was like the early stages of therapy in the opinion of commissioner Jamie Kramer: “It’s gross, It’s ugly, It hurts, and it doesn’t feel good.” But by bringing some of the underlying issues contributing to the resignation of many county employees to the surface, she said they can now address them.
The county board contracted the MLI for $6,500 on Nov. 6 to perform the survey, with former Glen Lake Superintendent John Scholten of the MLI coming to the government center for three days to invite employees to oneon- one interviews. In these meetings, he encouraged them to talk candidly about the positive and negatives about working for the county.
Through these face-to-face surveys and an online form, 85 of 117 county employees participated in this study. As an indicator of the overall environment, Scholten asked these employees to rate the work culture on a scale from one to 10, with one being broken and 10 being healthy. Scholten said the average score was a “concerning” 3.8.
To encourage employees to clearly identify the challenges facing the county without fear of reprisal, they were granted anonymity for the survey. Scholten presented a summary of the most common responses to his questions.
The county clerk’s office appears to have received much criticism from employees in other departments. According to Scholten, employees complained about inequality of pay, with three employees — clerk Michelle Crocker, deputy clerk Jennifer Zywicki, and interim finance director Cathy Hartesvelt — receiving stipends for taking on finance duties, while other staff do extra work without additional pay.
Moreover, Scholten said that survey respondents identified Crocker and Zywicki as “vindictive and somewhat dishonest” and sources of drama in the government center and high staff turnover. In many cases, this was probably tied with another point: the need, in some employees’ eyes, to “pull off the Band Aid” and fully separate finance and human resources duties from the clerk’s office.
After unusually little discussion, the previous county board stripped control of county finances and HR duties from the clerk’s office in May 2021 and assigned the duties to new departments. This decision was not only controversial but poorly planned, according to some current commissioners. And in the opinion of some employees — and an assessment by the county’s advisory firm Rehmann from the middle of last year –—many finance and HR controls remain in the clerk’s office.
Another person who was called out by name was county commissioner Melinda Lautner. Lautner was vocal in her opposition of conducting this survey in the first place, feeling that awarding the contract to MLI before the board’s monthly regular meeting in November circumvented the process. Lautner was apparently characterized as “toxic, meanspirited, anti-employee, (having) erratic behavior, conduit to the clerk/chief deputy (clerk), doesn’t know employees or departments,” according to the report.
But the entire board received criticism from employees for showing an apparent lack of leadership. They also are relying too heavily upon and favoring the clerk’s office where they should be coming to other departments with questions, employees said. This extended to county administrator Deb Allen, who received criticism for not having an open door and not providing “code of conduct” training. Though employees also said that the administrator lacks support from the board of commissioners to do this effectively.
At the same time, there were feelings among county employees that the board was not “staying in its lane,” with elected officials — which includes both the county commissioners and the clerk — stepping over boundaries. Moreover, Scholten identified a “dangerous” perception that employees cannot “touch” elected officials. Scholten encouraged the board to pursue governance training moving forward so they can better understand their role.
Other common complaints included employees’ pay being too low to pay the cost of living in Michigan’s wealthiest county – a problem that Scholten said he wasn’t certain that the county’s coffers are capable of redressing, but he said they need to “show that you’re working with and doing the best you can do with their wages.”
Since these results were presented at a committee of the whole meeting, the board of commissioners could not take any action on them. But after the meeting, county board chairman Ty Wessell told the newspaper that the board will start working on acting on these survey results at their next executive session on Jan. 9. In his opinion, this will be their “number one issue of the year.”
At the executive session on Tuesday, the commissioners sent to their next regular meeting a resolution to enroll in the MLI’s effective governance training workshop at no cost to the county, to be taught by former county administrator Chet Janik. While discussing the workshop, the board also directed chairman Wessell to request more documentation on the survey.
Commissioner Doug Rexroat asked that the board chairman reach out to Scholten to request the “raw data” that informed his analysis, on the condition that some information be redacted to maintain the anonymity of the employees that he interviewed.
Commissioner Lautner was highly critical of the survey in the days following the results presentation, and at Tuesday’s meeting, she redirected the discussion on the governance workshop to getting the “entire report, only with the names redacted.” Kramer also seemed to have some second thoughts about the results.
“We need to gain back the trust that we just lost with several employees, so that’s why the full report needs to come out. They need their voices to be heard, and we’ve lost so much trust in this building over that report – that report that I refuse to call a survey – and we need to gain that back. We can’t move forward until we gain that back,” Lautner said at the Jan. 9 meeting.
“I also think we could have done better. I know (the personnel committee) did your due diligence, and you looked into different places, but even sitting there as an observer watching the report, it did not feel professional. It did not feel like we did the county justice by what we did,” Kramer said. “It’s really not sitting well with me, and I think we need to figure out a better way to move forward.”
Kama Ross, District 5 commissioner and county personnel committee chair, said she felt that Scholten carried out the organizational culture survey exactly as he said that he would in November, and said that some board members’ criticism of the results this week was “frustrating.”
“I’m really frustrated that we don’t respect people. We hire people, we sign a contract, and then we complain about what they do for us. I don’t like that, and I’m not going to be a part of all of that,” Ross said.
Wessell said that he would ask Scholten if there was any more information that he could provide, and that he would report back with the MLI regional president’s response at the board’s regular meeting at 7 p.m. on Jan 16.
