KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – A consultant says there is room for improvement when it comes to employee communication inside Kalamazoo city government, but there are no big issues when it comes to race or gender.
It was time for the city’s five-year assessment on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Dr. Tammy Hodo, the founder of All Things Diverse, a business consultant firm based in Jacksonville, Florida, says they did surveys and focus groups with employees, identified problems and have come up with an implementation plan and a timetable to address the issues they found.
She was brought in by the DEI department, and didn’t find any glaring issues, when it came to equity in the workplace.
“And I will say with your pay equity we didn’t see any issues in regards to sex ethnicity or anything along those lines, you do have more males in the workforce than you have females.”
Dr. Hodo was ask specifically about the use of slurs or other identity triggers. She said no.
“None of that. There was no concerns surrounding sexuality there was no concern which I was surprised surrounding race, I mean race is a social construct there was no concern brought up about that either.”
But Dr. Hodo says departments are siloed, and some supervisors need work on their management and communications skills.
“Emotional intelligence, empathy, self-awareness, self regulation, some of that is missing from some of your supervisors. It depends on the supervisor is within that department, so that single fact changes how every problem below gets solved.”
Hodo says the city needs to start doing exit interviews to learn why employees leave, need to clearly define how employees can earn promotions, improve internal and interdepartmental communications and cooperation and update organizational charts regularly so everyone knows who is doing what jobs.
“You’re at an inflection point where you could totally turn this around and make this great, or you can do nothing with this data and you’re going to have this problem it’s going to continue.”
It now becomes City Manager Malcom Hankins’ job to implement her recommendations, and he says he is up for it and has already begun the effort.
“I appreciate the fact that someone has laid out some very good clear pathways forward and you will hear the progress as we continue to work through these things,” says Hankins.
Hankins says he plans to give the commission regular updates on their progress.
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