2018-05-09 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board May 9, 2018 I believe, historically, what I provide the MAB with—or what the Director generally provides the MAB with is just a basic, I guess, spreadsheet of what I identify as my top and primary goals to, hopefully, allow us to meet departmental and County -wide and the community expectations as to what areas of priority that I feel that, as administrator, we should set for our department going forward. And pursuant to that, I have three specific performance goals that I would like to address this year—on July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018. The first goal would be develop and implement a County -wide supervisor and manager training and certification program. And I think I alluded to that in one of my previous quarterly reports to the MAB that topic area. We've been in conjunct—communications with Hawaii Community College and, most recently, with University of Hawaii at Hilo. And it's been brought to my attention by both departmental heads as well as the administration the mayor—primarily and directly, is that as the administration changes, one of the effects of that is the new boss comes in and he brings his people—he or she brings their people. And, I think because we were in a cycle where the previous administration was in the position of running the County for eight years, a lot of that institutional knowledge and historical knowledge was kept within that group. And, as the new administration came in, there was a lot of transition. I think this was one of the most—how shall I say it—fluid exchanges of personnel that we have seen in more recent time. `Cause when Harry was serving—when the current Mayor, Harry Kim, was serving his first term when he termed out after his second term, a lot of his directors, deputies, and administrators was held over by the Kenoi Administration. CHR. NAHUINA: Yes. MR. BRILHANTE: But as the Kenoi Administration progressed and went forward, there was a lot of transition. And then, when Mayor Kenoi termed out, unfortunately, there wasn't that continual carry over of the personnel. So, a lot of new people were brought in. And with that— think hatthink a lot of the new people that were brought in didn't have the real strong governmental knowledge base that is so unique from the private sector. There're significantly different management style and management approach when you're dealing with governmental employees—civil service employees—as opposed to the private sector employees. And I think that gap between those two sectors, are types of employees—wasn't really bridged significantly and a lot of questions were—would be—would come up from the departments "Well, how do we approach this situation? Or how do we approach that situation?" And I think—and what the mayor communicated to me was that we don't have a current program in place that would be there to educate the new administration, and the new managers, and the new department heads. And not just educate but to, I guess, allow them to the opportunity to be introduced to how the governmental sector works. And I know, just the top of our head, we've had significant conversations with various departments regarding disciplinary action—what's the proper disciplinary action. What do we do if an employee is sick, doesn't show up to work, and we don't hear from him? What's the Page 9