Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robinson at work in his office at City Hall in Vancouver January 19, 2010.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Only a quarter of Vancouver city employees have confidence in the leadership at city hall, according to a first-ever employee survey.
The comprehensive survey, which more than half of the city's 10,000 employees completed, also showed that only half of employees generally thought the city is a good place to work.
"Our employees don't have trust and confidence in management. They're not even convinced we're going to work on the issues in this survey," acknowledged city manager Penny Ballem during a two-hour session at council Tuesday.
She said the survey shows that city managers need to do a better job of communicating what the city's overall goals are and making employees feel they're integral to the organization.
"We have a lot of change going on and that can be a challenge," she said. "We've been told you've got to completely involve employees, don't take on too much, set reasonable targets. And you can never do enough communication."
The results showed that city employees' responses were below the norm in most areas compared to other public-sector organizations and to the private sector.
Those groups' surveys typically show that about 70 per cent of employees thought their company or organization was a good place to work.
An employee survey at the Vancouver Police Department, released the same day as the city survey, showed 71 per cent of those surveyed were satisfied with their work.
Mark Jackson, a representative of the Hay Group, the company that did the survey, said getting a 54-per-cent overall approval rating is not unusual in a first-time survey.
In answers to questions from Vision councillors, he said some groups have had as low as 40 per cent and that cities are unusual challenges because they're such complex organizations.
Vancouver has a history of bad labour relations, which was the subject of a second consultants' report presented by Ms. Ballem. There was a six-month city workers' strike in 2007, as well as other lengthy strikes in 2000 and 1994.
Under former mayor Sam Sullivan, several senior managers left over the course of his three-year term.
The pace of departures has accelerated since the Vision Vancouver team headed by Mayor Gregor Robertson came into office in December, 2008. Mr. Robertson quickly fired city manager Judy Rogers and installed Ms. Ballem in her place.
Since then, a series of senior managers have left, including two deputy city managers, the head of Olympic operations, the chief engineer and the city's freedom-of-information officer.
While some employees and managers say they find the changes at city hall refreshing and much-needed, others have objected to Ms. Ballem's acknowledged mission to make the city more centralized and what they call her tendency to micromanage and undermine employees by taking authority away from them.
But it was hard to tell from the survey exactly whose leadership employees weren't confident in, as it could have meant an immediate superior or it could mean the entire management team.
"It wasn't directed at council, though," Mr. Jackson said.