Jana Still - Director of Human Resources at Escambia County Board of County Commissioners

Video Transcript 

Ryan James:

Hello and welcome to The Third Question, a video interview series with public sector thought leaders from around the country. And today I am lucky enough to be joined by Jana Still. Jana is the Director of HR at Escambia county in Florida. So Jana, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jana Still:

Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

Ryan James:

Awesome. Well, before we get into our three questions, why don't you give the audience a little bit of an introduction of you and your history in the public sector and about a Escambia County as well?

Jana Still:

All right. Well, I'll start with Escambia County. It's the Escambia County Board of County Commissioners. We're a political subdivision of the state of Florida. So we serve the Board of County Commissioners to an extent, but reporting structure is to the county administrator, but we started the citizens and the entirety of Escambia county with 22 departments, everything from corrections and public safety to engineering public works. So we run the gambit in that forum. In terms of my background educationally, I have double major in undergrad, and then I have a master's degree in industrial organizational psychology, which is a mouthful. And it's a fancy way of saying business psychology is essentially what it is. And so I started off doing a little bit of consulting, work at the Gate, was fortunate enough to do some private sector consulting. So I have the uniqueness of having the perspective of both sides.

Jana Still:

I've done consulting projects with four different private entities, an academic entity, which it was state funded, and then spent a lot of my career in the public sector. So of one of my first, I call big girl jobs, was with the Mobile County Merit system. And we covered 22 jurisdictions of Mobile County, 168 departments and 5,500 employees. So that was a lot of fun times, never a dull moment, didn't even do the same thing every day. And that's probably the thing I love most about my job. As much I feel like I'm constantly fighting the fight, I still really like the fact that every time I'm like, "You know what? There's nothing that will surprise me." Careful what you say, because the next day I'm like "What? We're doing what? Okay." I've consulted with other municipalities, from everything from leadership coaching, supervisory development, some training aspects, a lot of assessment and recruitment needs with a lot of municipalities.

Jana Still:

And then just because I'm unnecessary, I also teach at the University of South Alabama. The three main courses I teach, of course, I'm only teaching one this semester because it's a lot. I teach Industrial Organizational Psychology. I teach the General Psych class. But I also teach Behavioral Neuroscience, which I know it's a random wrench in there, but people always think I'm analyzing them. And to an extent kind of am, but we all do that. We all are assessing somebody when we're speaking to them. And it gives a unique perspective in an employer relations forum or fashion because I'm a brain nerd. And so, I don't know, I'm always thinking about the operations and the goings on of the person that I'm speaking to.

Jana Still:

Wow. You have a very, a very diverse background. I love talking to folk in the public sector who've also had private sector experience, because I think that being able to see both sides of that coin, there's a lot of talent on both sides, but there's a lot of different ways things are done in both worlds. And so that's part of what I'm excited about these questions, because I think you'll be able to give some really good insight into some of the ways maybe public sector could take on some of the best practices of private sector or vice versa. So I'm going to jump into my first question with you because you've had this chance to work across not just both private and public sector verticals, but also multiple counties. You've done consulting as well. I would love to hear if you are going to look into the future now to the next few years, what would you say would be the top three areas that you think should be best focused on by public sector organizations from an HR perspective when it comes to their employees?

Jana Still:

The first one, and this is applicable to both private and public sector would be employee development and training. So I say this all the time. People probably get sick of hearing me say it, but your employees for the most part in almost every organization, not all, but most organizations, your majority, they're your number one resource. They are your workforce. They are your work product. They're what gets it done for you. And so you should just like any other resource that you would have or want something from, you should invest in your employees. And the best way to invest in them is not always a monetary value from a salary standpoint. Yes, that's important. That helps attract some recruitment pool, but there's a lot of other things about employment that keeps people engaged that makes them committed and loyal to an organization. And that makes them want to stay there forever.

Jana Still:

I'm not saying that you want everyone forever, but I mean, it's good to get new perspectives in. So it's good to have some turnover, but you don't want to have the constant revolving door. You lose a lot of knowledge that way you can never gain footing that way. So really investing from an employee development standpoint and the training aspect, so, hey, even though you're not at this level yet, you might aspire to be there. So offer that type of training to get you to that point. And I think, and one thing that we are actually going to be implementing fairly soon in Escambia County is leadership training for all, not just supervisors. While supervisors and managers absolutely need that training because they're in a role that is indicative of leadership. However, title does not make a leader. So leadership training is a big thing that I think that needs to be invested at the forefront.

Jana Still:

Your frontline folk are the ones they can leave and they have the ear of the employees more so sometimes than your managers. And so that's where you need to start so focusing on developing, and that also let your employees know that, hey, I don't see you as a number. I see you as a person that brings value to this organization. And because you're bringing value to organization and you're here to work towards our goals, we're going to in return, invest in you to help you work towards your goals. So regardless of whether or not you even stay with a company, this will better you and your future. So employee development, I could literally go on forever because it is my biggest one. The other thing is surprisingly enough sometimes to some people is policy development. While I'm not saying... You can overdo it on policy and procedures sometimes.

Jana Still:

Honestly you can bog people down so much if you're just putting everything in and it's so hard lace and strict. But especially in the public sector, I will say it is very important and imperative that you do have that policy development and document management. And I say document management, because what I found in a lot of public sector organizations is that they may have updated their policies over the years. However, they didn't readily update it everywhere. So you had some departments who didn't get the memo that this policy was updated two years ago. So doing a better job at managing that, staying abreast of the changes and the laws, best practices, what have you, stuff like this is very helpful in terms of ideas, having that peer to peer interaction like, hey, it's nice to talk to somebody else and be like, "Oh, y'all are experiencing this too." It's not just us. We're not just crazy. Okay, great."

Jana Still:

And the third one is actually a tie-in to both really is performance management. Performance management is something that in every organization I've worked in, unfortunately has been put to the wayside, and I get it. It's hard because people are just they have it in their mind, annual evaluation, just an annual evaluation. Okay. Well the annual evaluation important to an extent, but that's actually not important enough. You need to have constant constructive feedback to your employees. It's not fair to an employee if you wait a year to be like, "Oh, by the way, I'm not real happy with this." Well, why didn't you tell me nine months ago? So I'm not saying that you have to have the quarterly, but even as much as like a check-in, "Hey, here's some goals that you help set." And that's the other part of performance management that I think people miss out on.

Jana Still:

They're only looking at the job description itself, and that is the base of where you build the metrics absolutely. And you should cater the metrics to the position. However, you also need to cater it to the person. And part of that is the involvement of the employee. So what I like to do is sit down with my employees and say, "Hey, here's my perspective. And here's what I foresee as being a good metric and goal to set for this position. And for you, what do you think, give me some goals, where do you want to be?" So employee development training, policy development, and performance management.

Ryan James:

Yeah. And I've seen even on the performance management side, the evolution of that is not even leader to employee, but they're starting to do it where it's team evaluation. So it's more that 360. There's more than just one person interacting with each other on a daily basis. So good stuff. Well, thank you. I know you probably could keep talking and talking about it, but these are the nuggets that we're looking for. I know the audience likes to hear too. So I'm going to kind of move into this from some of the things you just said, because I think that when you think about technology, especially in the public sector, especially HR technology, it tends to have gotten pushed back on the priority list very often. Really, I dare say it's more regular than it should be.

Ryan James:

Right? So budget items, I get it. It's taxpayer dollars. It's got to be going towards a lot of the priorities of servicing the community and HR technology and the employees. Like you said, those frontline workers, they're part of that as well. And it doesn't get hit as much as it should be. So the long way to get to my question, but as it relates to HR tech and attracting employees, the next generation with so many eligible for retire in public sector in the next few years, communicating with your current employees, educating, like you said, the training and then also retention. How are you keeping those employees in your workforce? What do you think are some of the key areas that technology could help your organization and other public sector groups as they look to kind of leverage that technology in their HR departments?

Jana Still:

It's a great question, and you are spot on with the assessment and the assertion that the technology forefront of HR is really always pushed kind of to the wayside. It's a tomorrow request versus a no, we need it right now, because sometimes it's hard to see the efficiencies that you can tell the efficiencies it's going to create. But it's hard to see that down the road when you're, I need something over here now. So the irony of COVID or the catch 22 of COVID while would have rather not had it, it did force the hand of several municipalities, us including, to automate a lot of paper-based processes. We're 35 years behind the cusp in terms of technology. So it forced the, hey, this is an immediate need. We don't have time to have the conversation. We have to get there. So the automation perspective and the technology perspective, I think has changed vastly just in the past year for several public sector organizations.

Jana Still:

Because again, we couldn't play the waiting game any longer. But in terms of getting to your question, one of the best ways to leverage your technology in your organization that I foresee is from a recruitment standpoint. And oddly enough, a lot of it's free in terms of you need someone that can manage it, but there is all kinds of social media forums that you could utilize to leverage your organization. The whole point of attracting people to your organization to come to your organization is to get the message out there that, "Hey, we're here, we're available. This is what we're about." And it's important in so many reasons. You're trying to attract high quality folks, but it's not just about somebody who has a good skillset or knowledge base. It's not enough. They need to understand whether or not they fit with your organization. You need to be able to on the forefront externally, show your external customers, "Hey, this is who we are. This is what we're about. And if you can be about the same thing we would love to have you come join our team."

Jana Still:

So I've seen a lot of people getting creative in their recruitment efforts. We actually have had a hard time recruiting corrections officers because God love them. You couldn't pay me enough to do their job. I mean, honestly they are fantastic. So we see a lot of recruitment videos that make the job look real cool. And I'm not saying it's not cool, but it's eye catching. And that they're utilizing YouTube and you other social media forums like LinkedIn, Twitter, what have you to be able to post a video so somebody who's coming fresh out of high school might see this and be like, "Oh, that looks cool. I think I'll give that a go."

Jana Still:

And it also gives someone a realistic job preview. So you don't get those people who come on board and a week into it they're like, "Yeah, no, thanks. I'm sorry." So it's to benefit everyone. So from a technology perspective, I think, you know, leveraging the free resources, you have to help recruit employees. And that has a ripple effect for retention in that when you have good employees who fit well with the organization come on board, they effectively become a support to the people who are currently there. And when you have that support and integration, that's another way you retain your employees. I think people forget about that sometimes when they're looking at retention. It's just as much about the people that you are able to get in to help support than it is about what you can do for your current incumbents.

Ryan James:

Yeah. Well, I think even what you just said, in working with a lot of public sector organizations, budget is always, doesn't matter if it was a COVID year or in the best economic years ever, budget is always tight. And budget dollars are always hard to argue for or justify in certain areas. And so even taking that little step of going, hey, there's some free ways that are out there. Yeah, you have to somewhat manage it, but there's free ways to be putting the word out about who we are, what we do, and try and show what the positive experience of public service could be. That's a good starting point. Even if you don't have the budget to go buy a new HRS system, by the way. There's still other ways you can go about it.

Jana Still:

Which we did just do that, thankfully. When I say new, we don't currently have one. So that has been a big yes for us to get that, but yeah, I'm all about free resources.

Ryan James:

Yep. I hear you. Well, This is a good segue into the third question. So for season two and I use a prop, a nice big blank, well, it's an infinity check, infinity dollars.

Jana Still:

Can we cash that?

Ryan James:

Well, you can try. I'm not going to say it's going to go very far. But if I gave you a blank check towards what you could do for your part of the organization, for HR to grow, evolve, or change in some way, how would you use it and why?

Jana Still:

So I'm going to sound like a broken record because the blank check, I would turn it around and invest right back into the employees. And again, I don't just mean from a monetary value of salary. I would invest in employee development and employee engagement initiatives. And part of the employee engagement initiative has to do with employee morale. So actually Escambia County does. We have a fund source. It's called the employee morale account. Now, sadly enough, it's not as large as we really should be, could be. But what that allows us to do is kind of break up the monotony of the days sometimes to have a lunch and just to say, "Hey guys, I realize it's been tough. You worked all throughout COVID. This is the literally the least I can do to tell you how much I appreciate you in the form of like a luncheon and maybe like a game."

Jana Still:

So having games and what have you, appropriate games mind you, but it seems small, but a little can go a long way with employees. I mean, yes, rewarding someone from a monetary perspective of increasing their salary does say, "Hey, look, I appreciate you. I recognize what you're doing." But in terms of a lasting impression, I have almost always seen this with individuals that the lasting impression that it has on people come from the small things. Perfect example, an employee in my department, actually. So I wrote a note to the county administrator just saying, how great this employee had been, a long time employee and how much she had stepped up to the plate and really helped out, and what have you. And it was just a note I wrote to the county administrator to say like, "Hey, I just want to let you know that she's doing a fantastic job."

Jana Still:

And she had told me that she was going to write a card to the employee. What she didn't tell me was that she was going to include what I had written about her. She sent an Escambia County card. She wrote a personal note to my employee that was like, I appreciate you, thank you for doing such a great job. But then she attached to my note to it. And this particular employee who doesn't readily show her emotions. She wears the straight face, which is great for her position, honestly, was about in tears when she finally got it. And she immediately framed it. And honestly, it's not like a certificate with a golden stamp. It's not monetary, but to her, it meant more to her than a raise or what have you.

Jana Still:

And that is more typical than most people would think. The thing that when I've done leadership coaching, talking about how to get, because I get that question a lot. They're like, "Well, how do I get employees motivated to do their job? They just expect this, they're so entitled." And da da da. And it kind of cracks me up because that is true. I see a lot of entitlement with employees, but it cracks me up only because from a leadership standpoint, you're acting entitled because you're saying, I want my employee to do this, but you're not willing to invest in them. And just like any investment, if you were to put money in an investment account, and you never actually invested it anywhere, do you expect a return? That's illogical. My thing is motivating employees really isn't as hard as people think it is.

Jana Still:

The problem there, the catch there is that it is far easier to de-motivate an employee than it is to motivate them. Even the smallest things or the lack of doing the smallest thing can quickly kill the motivation of some of your best employees. I mean, when I first got here, I saw a lot of, not just my own department, but the county as a whole, a lot of learned helplessness had taken place. And that's because employees were never really empowered and, or they had their hand slapped. When they did take the initiative, they were like, no, call it back. So honestly investing in your employees, I would do more development and more employee morale opportunities to build that camaraderie, build that trust, build that teamwork. I want people to want to be here. When I have an employee telling me their favorite thing about coming to work is being with their coworkers. That means more to me than anything I can say.

Ryan James:

And again, you're hitting on something that isn't monetary very often, right? Those words of encouragement, words of praise, recognition, some of those are the easiest things to do that sometimes get missed. I can say also as a father of three young ones that there's some truth there as well. I'm learning that they could help Sarah as well.

Jana Still:

And just to tie to that, leaders need to be more mindful about the de-motivation facts, because if you say something in a public forum, or if you say something off putting to some employees, employees talk to each other. So even if they weren't at that public forum, or even if they didn't hear you say that, saying one thing that could be construed as negative will de-motivate people. And so it's more about being cognizant of, hey, look a little goes a long way, but also be mindful that you don't dog your employees. There's a difference between holding people accountable and trying to correct action and improvement, improve them versus throwing them under the bus. I tell myself all the time, look, I live under a bus because HR, we live under a bus. However, I will never put you there.

Ryan James:

Listen, I think there's a lot of mind brain science coming out of you today. I hear it. There's a lot of things that I can see how much it can impact the workforce, the public sector workforce, the private sector workforce. And I'm sure that Escambia County is very lucky to have you in their HR role. So I'm lucky that you were able to join me today for a little bit to answer my three questions for our series. I wish you the best of luck. I look forward to staying in touch with you and really appreciate you sharing this with our audience today. So thank you so much.

Jana Still:

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.