8/7 Weekly Email + Employee Development Day

Hi all, 

I have a few quick items this week, then a writeup on this week’s Employee Development Day. 

August Member Meeting: Our next member meeting will be at the JGM Water Plant on Thursday, August 21st, from 12-1PM. You can rsvp here until next Thursday, August 14th, at 5PM. Please remember that we now need rsvps 1 week in advance to give people union business time for our meetings. 

Please note that the parking for the JGM Plant is a little hard to find if you haven’t been there before. Please reference the attached photo or the instructions on our Events Page if you need directions. 

Employee of the Quarter: Our next round of Employee of the Quarter closes on September 1st (finalists will be announced in our October newsletter). If you would like to be considered (or would like to nominate a peer), please fill out the application (it takes 5 minutes) before the end of day on September 1st. If you would like a refresher on program rules, check out this blog post. One thing that’s important to the Executive Team is making sure we recognize employees from as many departments as possible - we have not seen a lot of applicants from Water, Strategic Management, Financial Services, the Park Ranger team, the non-sworn side of PD, Courts, Sustainability, and a few other areas. While it’s not the only consideration, you have a better chance of recognition if your nomination is for someone in an area we haven’t acknowledged yet.

Board Member Highlight: I want to highlight one of our UAEA Board Members this week, Citywide Representative Annette Betancourt. As a reminder, Citywide Representatives handle the majority of disciplinary matters at the ground floor, working with members on their disciplines and trying to address workgroup issues with their department prior to the union needing to escalate things. Here’s a few words from Annette:

“Hi, everyone! I have served as a Fire Inspector with the City of Tempe for nearly four years. My responsibilities in that role include site plan review, overseeing inspections for new construction, helping to coordinate special events, and conducting fire investigations. 

I became a member of UAEA because I believe in supporting organizations that are committed to improving our workplace. After joining, I was fortunate enough to take on the role of UAEA Citywide Representative, which has given me valuable insight into the dedication and hard work that takes place behind the scenes. It has been a rewarding experience, and I am proud to be a part of such a meaningful organization.”

Annette is a valued member of our team who has helped members with a variety of disciplines and workplace concerns over her tenure. She attends most of our membership meetings if you ever want to say hi or chat about fire safety - I know I’ve definitely picked up a few tips from her during the time we’ve worked together. 

Employee Development Takeaways: I attended Employee Development day at Tempe Center for the Arts on Monday and came away with a few takeaways. One thing I noticed is that the crowd seemingly leaned towards supervisors and managers - I saw a few UAEA employees but they weren’t a high percentage of the total crowd. I completely understand that many employees have daily responsibilities that may have made it difficult to get away but I want to reiterate yet again that our City Manager has made it clear training is a priority - if you want to attend something like this, departments need to accommodate you. The exception of course is if multiple people in a workgroup want to attend and that might create operational problems, but that’s just a further reason that you should request the time as early as possible. 

I spoke to all of the colleges that were present - each is part of our educational partnership program. Almost every college offers several dozen completely online degree programs which you can complete at your own pace. These programs either cover your tuition or reimburse you for educational expenses up to $6,500/year - while that isn’t a huge amount, it can go a long way towards a degree at a community college or could cover one of the educational partnership programs, such as the Masters in Public Administration cohort. Many of the main colleges (NAU, GCU, and ASU) all offer transfer opportunities - you can finish your degree at a cheaper rate at a smaller school and then transfer to those schools so your final degree is from them, not a community college. There also are a few partners that offer non-degree programs such as educational certificates - ABL IT Cyber Academy, for instance, offers a variety of IT courses and a Project Management Certification (PMP). PMP certification can be helpful in a variety of fields - it is internationally recognized proof of project management competency. One thing to keep in mind is that college classes can either help you with your career goals or allow you to make a complete career change. Another thing is that I attended the leadership Q+A with Community Services Director Craig Hayton, Deputy City Manager Keith Burke, and Court Director Alexis Allen. Each has been with Tempe over 25 years and credited the educational opportunities as one of the reasons they’ve found success and growth within the City - each of them has earned at least one degree since they started with the City. There may be other ways to get to where they are by the end of your time with Tempe, but I generally find it’s helpful to duplicate the methods that have historically worked. 

IT was at the event and promoting some of their technology classes. They have in-house training on a variety of programs ranging from Adobe Acrobat to Microsoft Outlook, Excel, Word, and Sharepoint. I think many city employees are familiar with these computer programs but maybe don’t have official training. I’ve taken all levels of the Word and Excel courses and can promise you there are a lot of advanced tips at the higher levels that can save you or your workgroup a lot of manual work - basically every task you might do involving manual data entry can be automated in some way. Being proficient with many Microsoft programs is also a requirement for many supervisory roles - even if you’re very skilled at the work you do in your current position, if you can’t send an email or don’t know how to work a spreadsheet, you may not be considered for a higher-level role. 

Tempe Professional Development Network (TPDN) was also present at the event. While I don’t have personal experience with the group I can attest that they’re a team of like-minded City employees who want to help people develop their professional skills. They host a variety of events throughout each year like mixers, professional speakers, and learning activities. Their next event is August 13th - they’re bringing in writer Jenny Locklin to talk about public speaking skills. The group used to be $35/year to join but their fees have been waived for 2025 - if you were interested in what they do but hesitant about the cost, now would be a great time to join. You can fill out the attached form and submit it to any of the board members on their Bridge page above. 

Finally, I took a few notes from the educational sessions I attended. Note that I’m trying to condense 45 minute lectures into a paragraph - this content is not fully reflective of everything that was covered. 

Nicole Lance spoke about leading at every level of an organization. One helpful takeaway from was the acronym CIA, which she says stands for Control, Influence, and Accept. If you’re struggling to figure out which issues to deal with and how to best address them, it’s helpful to sort them into buckets. Things you can control are places you can make a genuine impact, things you can influence are places where you can assist others, and things you must accept are things you need to worry less about because you can’t meaningfully change them. In her mind, 80-90% of issues can be controlled or influenced and you can stop worrying about the remaining items that are out of your hands. You can also use the 3 B’s - can you “better” this situation, can you “barter” to improve it, or should you just mentally “bag” it? She also spoke a lot about methods to change - one quote that stood out was “hope is not a method.” If you want to change something you need an actual plan - wanting the world to be different isn’t enough. Some suggestions involve joining an accountability group to hold you to your goals (groups like TPDN might be a good option to find like-minded people to help with that), doing research on how others have addressed similar problems in the past, and talking to your peers to see if they have similar concerns. 

Human Resources Deputy Director (and leader of the Employee Development workgroup) Jeremy King also spoke about providing meaningful and direct feedback. He pointed out that many people psyche themselves out about feedback for a variety of reasons and that it’s helpful to reframe how you think about it. Feedback is an opportunity to build relationships by being emotionally honest with people - it also is one of the few ways you can achieve meaningful change if you have concerns about your working environment. Some general feedback “do’s” are delivering it in a private space away from other people, sandwiching it between positive affirmations (the “sandwich” rule), approaching the conversation with curiosity and giving the person an opportunity to share their side, and maintaining a calm tone. Some “don’ts” include using it as an opportunity for personal attacks, providing feedback in public spaces or meetings in front of peers, coming in with a planned outcome and not being receptive to the other person’s perspective, making comments that are vague or about someone’s attitude, and holding certain individuals to different standards than their peers (or your coworkers). The general structure of a piece of feedback should be stating the behavior you’ve noticed (it must be objective actions, not just your opinion on what they’re doing), explaining the impact of that behavior on you or the group, asking them what their perspective is on the situation/their actions, and then reiterating that you want to continue working together in the future. Jeremy suggested that part of successful feedback is modeling that you yourself are also open to feedback - he suggested that people can do so by asking their peers for feedback on a frequent basis, applauding people for improvements, and making feedback a consistent part of your relationship with another person. If you have a monthly meeting with a supervisor, for instance, it’s helpful to provide one or two notes each session. Jeremy acknowledged that feedback is hard but said he wants to be a resource - if you want to discuss feedback strategies with him more, he is available for one-on-one coaching or can respond to one-on-one questions. 

Thanks for a great week, everyone!