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Alex Smith, CHRO - City of Memphis

On this episode of The 3rd Question we talk with City of Memphis CHRO, Alex Smith, about priority shifts in the current climate, change management and her top priority - keeping employees safe.

 

 

Video Transcript

 

Ryan James: Hello, and welcome to The 3rd Question, a video interview series with public sector thought leaders from around the country. My name is Ryan James. I'm your host, and today we are lucky enough to be joined by Alex Smith. Alex is the CHRO for the City of Memphis. Alex, thank you so much for joining us today.

 

Alex Smith: Absolutely. Glad to be here.

 

Ryan James: Before we get started into our three questions, I guess I'd just ask if you'd give a quick introduction of who you are, what you do at the city, maybe a little bit about the city itself. That'd be awesome.

 

Alex Smith: Sure. My name is Alex Smith. I'm the Chief HR Officer for the City of Memphis. The City of Memphis as a city has over 650,000 residents that live in the mid-South here in Memphis, and you look at the greater Memphis area is over about a million people in total. The City of Memphis as an employer, we are 8,000 employees, of that 6,500 full time, 1,500 part time. As the chief HR officer, I cover everything from compensation and benefits, pension, diversity and inclusion, talent management... everything from recruiting, learning and development, promotional testing, safety, wellness, and all other things that are employee-related.

 

Ryan James: Awesome. Well, thanks for that. All right. Well, let's get with the first question. The first question is this. As the CHRO for the City of Memphis, what have been, let's say over the last year or two or going forward, some of the priorities that you've been focused on for your organization. I guess as a Part B of that question, based on what we're dealing with today from COVID-19, the pandemic, and even some of the social unrest that's been going on, has any of this shifted any of those priorities and focus?

 

Alex Smith: Absolutely. I would say pre-COVID, we had three main focus areas. One was attracting and retaining talent for the city. Number two was really focused around driving employee engagement, and then number three was around being more operationally efficient as an HR organization.

 

We've talked about post-COVID and now the civil unrest that we are experiencing, it really is about keeping employees safe. I would say I really have just really focused in on that one sentence, keeping employees safe. That's everything from ensuring that we have the right policies, expanding our flexible work options, expanding our personal protective equipment procedures and requirements, changing our sick leave, and expanding our vacation leave opportunities. We've created a new hazard pay program, a new vacation buyback program. I literally have created more policies in order to focus on keeping our employees safe in the last two months than I've ever done in my HR career.

 

It is by far one of the most vast and ever-changing environments that we're in and the guidance changes. You look on the CDC's website on March 1st and the guidance from March 1st to where it is today, June 3rd, is different, completely different. We have had to evolve as an HR organization along with that, but we're doing everything we can to keep our employees safe right now.

 

Once the mayor declared a state of emergency and put us in a health crisis, clarifying that we are in the state of health crisis, that allowed for us to really fast track some things. Luckily, we already had a good management process of meeting on a regular basis as a senior leadership team, so we meet weekly and during the COVID crisis, we're meeting daily. We talk about being able to make rapid responses, rapid changes as new guidance developed or as just the environment started to change. We were able to do that and respond quickly.

 

In addition to that, my HR team, we were meeting daily as well, and only until recently, we've actually slowed down and started to meet weekly once again. But yeah, that rapid fire change and being adaptable and flexible in the moment, researching, and literally just doing the best you can with the information that you have available to you. That's exactly what we've had to do in changing our policies.

 

Ryan James: Okay. Thanks. All right. The second question is this. What would you say or view as some of the city's biggest challenges, or maybe it's your HR department more specifically when it comes to some of those goals that you've talked about, empowering your employees, communicating with them and really providing some of those things that you're trying to build up for your employees from an HR perspective. What are the challenges that get in the way of that?

 

Alex Smith: Absolutely. I would say change management, change management, change management. As a team, we had talked about change management before, and we had started to dabble in it in terms of, okay, what's our good change management methodology? How do we get the appropriate stakeholder analysis? But it really wasn't until this crisis where it became even more apparent and critical that we understand the change management methodology.

 

Just recently, we had a situation where we implemented a new vacation buyback program. Although our change management framework had us meeting with our employee associations or what we could call unions in advance, we were moving rapid fire pace, and we didn't get a chance to do that. We quickly got a lot of feedback from them and had to respond and talk to them and bring them into the fold, and we did that.

 

Ryan James: All right. The third question, and that's the name of this series. We try and make this last question a little bit more fun. The third question is this. You've been with the City now for almost five years, or right close to five years. If I gave you, and our viewers might not see it because there's both of us on the screen, but over my shoulder here, I've got some time machine stuff. I've got a DeLorean car, I've got The Time Machine by HG Wells book, I've got a TARDIS from the Doctor Who.

 

If I gave you the DeLorean, a little Back to the Future, and you could go back at any point in your current role with the City, and you could change something or maybe tap yourself on the shoulder and tell yourself something or some advice, what would it be and why?

 

Alex Smith: Yeah. I think if I could go back, I would go to my first two months in the role. I'd been in the role about 60 days, and I decided as a good HR person, I was going to do a listening tour and I was going to go around to different employee groups and have conversations. In my previous life, when you're in I would say the high tech sector or other industries, it's very common for leaders to do that. Employees engage and you get good feedback.

 

When I did that tour with the city employees, I was met with a lot of resistance. There was a lot of anger and a lot of frustration, and if I could go back in time, I would say everything improves with time, and just to give myself that little extra push of encouragement to say, yes, it seems really dark. It seems really bleak right now. Yes, they're angry. They're angry for a number of different reasons, but if you keep working at it, eventually you will be able to make progress, and you will be able to improve the employee experience, and you'll be able to improve the outcomes for employees.

 

Five, almost five years later, I can say that is the case. Our Glassdoor review has gone from a 2.7, now it's over 3.5. Our employee engagement scores went up from 50% to 74%, and to just give myself the encouragement that yes, it's going to happen and you stay the course and it's going to be okay.

 

Ryan James: Well, listen, I want to thank you for joining us on The 3rd Question. If any of our viewers want to subscribe, they can go to the3rdquestion.com and they can see the series that we're going to continue to expand on with public sector thought leaders.

 

But Alex, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it, and maybe we can do this again in the future, as well as things change a little bit around us.

 

Alex Smith: Absolutely. If I could just give one tag. If people would like to connect with me, I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn at CHRO Alex Smith and happy to connect with anybody.

 

Ryan James: Alex could be a great source of information and knowledge, so I encourage you all to follow her on Twitter. I know I do, so anyway. Thank you, Alex. Have a great day, stay safe and I really appreciate your time again.

 

Alex Smith: Absolutely.

 

Ryan James: All right. Take care.