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Devin Brown, CHRO - Kern County

On this episode of The 3rd Question we talk with the CHRO of Kern County, Devin Brown about the evolution of their process, pivots and challenges to "keep up with the times."

 

 

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, your host, and today we are lucky to have Devin Brown, the CHRO from Kern County, California, join us. Devin, how are you doing today?

 

Devin Brown:

I'm doing well, Ryan. How are you?

 

Ryan James:

I'm good, thanks. We're in our home offices, I can see. You've got family pictures in the background, so do I. So it makes this nice and comfortable.

 

Devin Brown:

Yeah, nice to be surrounded by familiar things.

 

Ryan James:

Yes, it is. So before we get into our three questions with you, I guess I'd first love if you could do a quick introduction about who you are, your role, maybe your history in the county, and just introduce yourself to the audience.

 

Devin Brown:

I practiced law for our county, Kern County, for about six and a half years, mostly doing employment law, labor law. And so I became very well versed in that, and familiar with the employment sector, and the field of law in that area. When the time arose, I had an opportunity to take a leadership role in human resources for our county back in about 2014, and so I've been, for the last almost six years, doing that as the CHRO for Kern County, and that includes doing all of our labor negotiations with our employee unions, our hiring, being a thought leader in HR for our large organization. We're about 8,000 employees total, so we have any number of different kinds of career fields that we have in Kern County, from law enforcement to social services to mental health services, you name it.

 

Focused on trying to move our organization forward, as technology evolves and the human resource field evolves, just moving our government sector along a little bit faster. We seem to lag behind the private sector quite often, whether it's in how we hire candidates, or some of the benefits that we offer for our employees. Thinking a little bit more differently than we have done and kind of moving out of that status quo mentality. So really just trying to move forward and progress our organization so that we can deliver better services to our community.

 

Ryan James:

Awesome. Thanks for that. Well, we've got three questions. It's the name of our series. And the first question, you kind of a little bit alluded to it there in your intro, but as the CHRO for the county, what have been, maybe call it over the last couple of years, some of the priorities that you've been focused on for your organization, and maybe there are priorities that you are now focusing on going forward, and then just being in the time that we're in with COVID-19, I'd also ask if the pandemic has shifted that focus in any way and how that's happened.

 

Devin Brown:

Yeah, that's a great question, Ryan. So I would say about a couple of years ago we put a pretty strong focus on changing the way that we hire employees for the county. We tend to just post a job announcement out there and receive candidates. It's really the passive candidates that we're trying to focus on now, and go out there and attract candidates that have the qualifications, skills, and experience that we would like to fill roles in the county to get the best talent that we can. We've kind of taken a back seat in the war on talent for a number of years and just got what we got, but now we're really trying to focus on--okay, well, how do we go about getting the candidates we want to come work for us, and really changing that dynamic through things like using LinkedIn Recruiter and doing more active recruiting and sourcing of talent? Kern County has been kind of at the forefront of that in working with partners like LinkedIn, and trying to utilize those resources.

 

We've also been very focused on building a culture that we can approach candidates with, and hopefully receive a more positive outcome so that they really know what they're getting at. And so we're looking at what are the aspects of government that really are attractive to the workforce that's out there looking for jobs. And as I mentioned in my intro, I really enjoy serving my community. There's a lot of people that do, and want that aspect of having an impact and real purpose behind their work. And so we certainly have a leg up in that regard when it comes to being an employer who serves the community directly.

 

Where we are in this massive tailspin of dealing with the pandemic, and all the little things that go along with that, and making sure our workforce is safe, and that we have our employees situated, and we're responding to it appropriately, whether it's first responders or healthcare workers, in the news, they've been at the forefront. You see all these commercials thanking our healthcare workers, well those are, a lot of the time, public employees. And so it really is going to give us another notch on our belt as far as serving with a purpose, and just highlighting the aspects of public service that are out there, and certainly will help us in attracting the candidates we want.

 

Ryan James:

So the second question I have for you is, as you look at some of the county's biggest challenges, when it comes to communication, empowerment, or just providing to your employees from an HR perspective, what are some of those challenges that you're facing today, or have faced? Speed up, maybe that's a better way. Speed up how things are done in the public sector, but what are some of the challenges that you've had in some of those aspects around communication and providing for your employees?

 

Devin Brown:

The challenges that we face going into the next two, three years are developing our workforce for their next role, and developing the workforce to be more agile to respond to things like COVID-19, or whatever the case may be. These things tend to pop up and we are very reactive. Building a skill set within our workforce that we can help become a better and more efficient workforce, but also be able to be agile at the same time, and respond to whatever the crisis of the day it may be. So definitely development. We're going to be challenged with that. And so we've kind of at least begun to make a shift into focusing on--okay, how do we develop our employees so that they stay with us?

 

And it becomes, again, more of a career in government rather than what we've seen recently with millennials and generation Z--they tend to move throughout jobs quicker, and government is no different than any other private sector employer in that regard, because the hooks that we used to have, whether it's the big pension that we offered, or better benefits, we just can't financially afford those things anymore like we used to, and so those are gone, and so we have to find other ways to build a bridge to keep employees here past the three or four year mark. We're going to see even more shift of our older workforce into retirement, and those skills need to be replaced, and we're going to have a tough time doing that if we don't focus on things like developing talent.

 

Ryan James:

It's a scary thing, Devin, is you and I are going to be the old guys real soon.

 

Devin Brown:

I looked at myself in the mirror, and that doesn't seem likely, but I feel it though, when comes to the responsibility that I'm facing. It's just like okay, how did I become responsible for all this so quickly?

 

Ryan James:

I think as I talk to thought leaders across public sector, it seems that the ones that are thinking that way, thinking proactively, are the ones that are moving their organizations forward in different and new ways, whether that's, like you said, using partnerships, or technology, or just recognizing where those gaps are going to be and trying to be proactive in filling those gaps.

 

Devin Brown:

Yeah. And our other challenge, Ryan, is financial. It has been for a number of years in Kern County, and it's even getting worse now with some of the revenue shortfalls that we face through the pandemic, and so really just trying to find the most value for every dollar we spend on our employees. I think for a long time, we haven't made that calculation. We've just kind of gone on business as usual, and the situation and circumstances that we faced just don't afford us that luxury anymore. And so as we're talking about hiring the best talent, and managing that talent through their careers, we really have to focus on where our dollars are being put, the taxpayer's dollars are being spent, and how those can be leveraged in the most valuable way.

 

Ryan James:

So now we're here finally at the third question. Name of our series. So we try and have a little bit of fun with this. Our viewers might not all see it, but over my shoulder, I've got some time machine things. I've got the DeLorean, I've got the time machine by HG Wells, and I have the TARDIS from Doctor Who. You've been with the county now for 13 years, with two different roles, but if you had the telephone booth, and this is going to age you and me a little bit, but you had the telephone booth from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and you could go back in time to any point in your career, more in your HR role, what advice would you give yourself then, or what would you change and why?

 

Devin Brown:

I would look back at when I transitioned into that human resource leadership role, and go back to that time, and really kind of make sure that I knew all the challenges that we were going to face in this time period, and sort of build my team and structure of our office around that. We're now in this mode where we're kind of clean slate thinking and just building a new, better organization, and I think if we could have done that at that time, we would have been able to approach this situation a lot differently.

 

We are one of the first people that our hiring managers, or our managers throughout the county call when trouble is on its way or at their doorstep, and so having the ability to have a whole team around that rather than a handful of people who are skilled enough to answer those questions, and empowered enough to answer those questions. I think that would be where I would focus, and just think of it as holistically. We're a human resource team. We need to have human resources skills and really build on that area. I think that's one thing that I would really have gone back and told myself, "Okay, you need to build a team that can do it all, and not just the things that they're used to doing."

 

Ryan James:

Yeah. That's great. Well, I really appreciate you spending a little bit of time with us here today, and thank you for those insights and thoughts. As we continue this series, if any of our viewers want to subscribe, they can go to the3rdquestion.com and see as these interviews are rolled out, but Devin, thank you again for your time. Thank you for what you're doing, being a thought leader in this space, and I really appreciated the conversation today.

 

Devin Brown:

You're welcome, Ryan. Thanks for including me, and it's my pleasure.