Kelli Parmley, Assistant HR Director, City of San Jose

On this episode of The 3rd Question we talk with Kelli Parmley,

Video Transcript

Ryan James:

Hello and welcome to The Third Question, a video interview thought series with public sector thought leaders from around the country. And today I'm excited to be joined by Kelli Parmley from the city of San Jose here in California. Kelli, thank you so much for joining me and I welcome to the show.

Kelli Parmley:

Thanks for having me, Ryan. I'm looking forward to it.

Ryan James:

Awesome. Well, before we get into our three questions, let me ask if you would give the audience a little bit of an introduction of you and your role and the city itself.

Kelli Parmley:

Yeah, so I'm the assistant director for human resources. We're actually made up of two separate offices. Human resources handles, number one, the major functions for the city around employee benefits, health and wellness and safety, the hiring process in terms of employment and then a growing and nascent learning and development team, and the office of employee relations, which is separate, but also part of our work.

Kelli Parmley:

I came to the city almost four years ago, out of a long career in public higher education. This city, I didn't know it as an East coaster, is the 10th largest city in the United States. I thought all big things happened on the East Coast. I would say with a population of over a million residents here about 40% are foreign born, 60% speak a language other than English at home, and 180 square miles to cover. It's really an interesting and unique place to be in terms of public service and our job is to help prepare the workforce to do that.

Ryan James:

Awesome. Well, let's get into our questions. So I guess my first question is, you mentioned you're one of the larger cities in America and you're also located in the heart of Silicon Valley, so my guess is that your employees might have a different expectation of what they expect from their employer, just knowing where you're located, so as you compete for talent in your area with the Googles and Facebooks and Apple, et cetera, and as you develop and retain your employees and try and drive a culture for the city, how do you do those things and what are you doing to try and differentiate yourself with such a large diverse population?

Kelli Parmley:

First and foremost, competition when you're talking about a large public agency, 10th largest obviously, and its positioned in Silicon Valley with the very companies that you mentioned, we actually have to compete on mission. We're not going to compete on salaries, and I also think people often overstate the salary portion of it. So one of the things that I would say is that we actually have to tap the next generation by having partnerships with high schools and colleges to remind folks that the public sector exists and that we need talented people.

Kelli Parmley:

I think that in some of the very nascent work that we have done with high schools and with colleges and universities, is they are not aware that across the street from San Jose State University is actually the city of San Jose. We've been starting to work with reminding, by doing workshops, engaging with professionals on the campus, bringing folks there to ours when we could, in person, to say, "Hey, what is local government about? And why should you be interested in it?" So while you may think about the tech companies as being competition, I think the mission makes us so different that we actually have to talk about the value proposition of working in local government. I think it could be attractive to the next generation in particular because of their willingness and need and desire to make a contribution.

Kelli Parmley:

So when you think about a full service city, airport to a zoo and everything in between, every single day in local government, our employees get to make a difference, whether it's direct service, it's our work in terms of supporting the workforce to do their work or it's folks who were in city council. On any given Tuesday night, you can see government in action. And that's everything from really complicated thorny, social issues around folks who are without a home to how do you actually pick up trash and make the sewers work? I mean, those are complicated issues and, and you don't solve them overnight. I think that's attractive to a next generation.

Kelli Parmley:

I think the second part of that is you could work with the city of San Jose, and I know it's not attractive to say you've worked somewhere for 30 years, and at the same time when you track some of the career paths of some of the folks who've been here, they're very interesting that you can stay with the same employer and do 15 different things over that period of time. So again, I don't think it's direct competition. It's certainly not competition on salary. It's on the meaning and mission of the city.

Ryan James:

I've actually heard that from cities in particular, where they're trying to tap into the school-bases around them to educate and help those students and next generation to understand, "Hey, you can make an impact." That's what a lot of these younger generations really want to do, not that older generations don't, but there seems to be an innate desire to make an impact in what they do.

Kelli Parmley:

Yeah. And I've heard this even from folks who've had a fair number of folks come from those sectors to the city and have left careers because they were able to do some interesting and creative things in a technology industry, but then come and have some sort of balanced work life, can't say balanced work life is happening during COVID, but we'll get back there, and apply their skills and talents to things that make a difference, whether it's digital inclusion, to making sure that our east side has access to high-speed internet. Those are fundamental things we take for granted often. So I think when we have stories of folks with a little bit further in their career and have taken that pivot to local government that also helps as well.

Ryan James:

Right. You are in a one of those hubs of the technology world, where San Jose sits, but how have you been able to focus and take advantage of it from an HR perspective for your city? Because obviously you have a diverse population when it comes to generational, we see four or five generations in the public sector workforce right now. And sometimes that makes technology adoption a tougher challenge, put it that way when you have such a diverse population. Not to mention the expectations that people in that area, just because their neighbors might be doing things that are startups or whatever, there's just another level of expectation. So how have you been able to take advantage of the local talent from a technology perspective for the city to make those impacts you spoke about and really gain insight into your workforce through data and I'm guessing driving down some of the costs because that's what technology is supposed to do?

Kelli Parmley:

Yeah. I think the most important thing I want to say first to frame the question is really an important one. While bottom line matters clearly from a private sector perspective, and certainly we're dealing with taxpayer dollars so we want to make sure we're judicious with those resources, I think what matters from this perspective when we're talking about technology, is what is the quality of service that we're providing to our community, and it's to our community and with our community. I think using that term with is really important when we think about the human beings on the other end of the things that we're trying to do, whether it's 311 services, and there are vehicles that need to be abated or there's trash that needs to be picked up, or somebody is trying to build an addition onto their home and they want to come into our development services office and figure out, "How do I do this, what are the restrictions and compliance related to that?"

Kelli Parmley:

In addition to that, I would say their voice matters. So while companies go out and look for a bottom line and they look for profitability and they care about the customer from the perspective of will this thing sell, our job is to hear those folks and respond in a way that is both responsive to their needs but also equitable in terms of how that's distributed. So our concern is a little bit different, and I say, we have to think hard about how we use technology to do that. So I would preface everything with that perspective.

Kelli Parmley:

Then I would say you can't forget the magic of people, process and technology. I often run into situations in my prior life in higher education where I think we thought that we would build it and they would come. So I have a very strong and passionate response to the question of adoption around how are we investing in our employees, both from an organizational culture perspective, but also a skillset perspective and a mindset perspective to use technology efficiently and effectively with the customer, with the resident in mind.

Kelli Parmley:

A couple of things, we in the fall of this last year had a highly successful 15-person human-centered design learning lab that we did with an organization called civic makers, teaching our employees, how do we elicit the perspective of our residents, or who's going to be receiving a service before we build the technology. I think there are probably lots of organizations in Silicon Valley who are of that mindset and can come with us and we can find them. We're going to work with an organization called Galvanize to build data analytic capacities and pilot that with a handful of folks, because you can't do technology without having some data, without having some personal development skills.

Kelli Parmley:

I feel strongly that the relationship between technology, whether it's digital strategy externally to work with our residents, or whether it's digital strategy internally to work with our workforce, those two things are inextricably linked. And whoever we work with has to understand that and what is the intersection with our workforce? So I think that would be my second big comment when it comes to that. We are not for want of companies I think to work with. It's just a matter of, are they aligned with our values and our mission and our vision in terms of service with the community?

Kelli Parmley:

I think one of the biggest things that emerged probably for a lot of folks, but it's certainly true of government, and we've made huge progress in the last nine months is business process automation. I'm sorry to say this, but it may take a pandemic for us to adopt paperless. I'm sure we've tried these efforts to get rid of paper, but the adoption of it, there wasn't an urgency per se.

Kelli Parmley:

So we've partnered with SimpliGov, which is the vendor that we're using for business process automation. We have made enormous strides, and it's hard to explain this to folks in the Valley who are already really technically oriented and virtually oriented in terms of transactions. But we have in two quarters really banged through several projects that have done everything from digital signatures to workflow, business process automation, where we were heavily, heavily paper-based. So that sounds, I think about this big from a broader perspective, but when you're used to getting a wet signature for everything that you do and now you can't because 40% of your workforce overnight went remote, 40% went remote literally on March 18th, shelter in place. So that can't be, I don't think, minimized.

Kelli Parmley:

Then I honestly just believe from a learning and development perspective, we actually have to figure out who the early adopters are. Sometimes they're the next generation and sometimes they're not. Sometimes that creativity exists in both pockets. What's the department culture, what's the thing I'm doing, and how are you supporting me to adopt Microsoft teams, to use SharePoint effectively, to be able to use other digital service things in terms of how we develop an app for people to say and report things? It's a matter of really meeting everybody where they're at in each individual culture. I can't speak of it as a monolith because we are not a monolithic culture for sure.

Ryan James:

I get it. But I think from a springboard perspective, it's going to have a longterm positive effect because you were forced to make some changes, and public sector tend to be a little slower in adoption, but the force, the arm twisting was there, and so now there's going to be longterm positive gains out of it. That's great.

Kelli Parmley:

Yeah. Yeah. I think so.

Ryan James:

Well, we've gotten to the third question. So I'm a prop guy and behind me I have a blank check to the City of San Jose for infinity dollars. So this is real life right here. So for this season our third question is if I handed you that blank check that you could use towards your organization to help it grow, evolve, or change in some way, with the goals and objectives that I'm sure you and your peers have in the HR department there, what would you do with a blank check and why?

Kelli Parmley:

Yeah, I think this is going to sound like a terribly strange answer, and I'm going to say it anyways. I'm not afraid. I have a strong and growing sense that the power of our organization is in our people where they're at every single day doing their jobs. We can't possibly know that from the top of the organization. I think we often think that we can solve problems by making proclamations and expecting people to just go ahead and do things. I think that if we could unleash the power of our people where they're at and what they do every single day, it would be amazing. So I would call it the passion program and I would actually pay people to stop out of their current job, and for however much time their project might involve, they actually get to go over and do the thing that they know would make a difference in people's lives.

Kelli Parmley:

We give them a certain amount of time and we would pay them for their passion. I think that whether you're in the public sector, and maybe this is some of where I'm at in my own career trajectory, I think we have too many people today who are missing out on the thing that gets them up every morning. If we could invest in a way that I don't think would cost infinity, but would cost enough that it would pay back to us triple fold in terms of how we serve in the community, how we serve our employees, how they see the world in a way that's meaningful to them and meaningful to the people that we serve.

Kelli Parmley:

Because the other thing that's also very interesting to me about the City of San Jose is that our workforce is the City of San Jose for the most part. I mean, we have folks coming from everywhere, but when we serve our community well, we're serving ourselves well. And I think that's a squared return. So I would call it the passion program and I would pay people not to do their job and to figure out how they can take their passion and contribute it more effectively to the city.

Ryan James:

Well, I don't think that's a strange answer. I love that answer. It's a great, thoughtful response I wasn't expecting, so I appreciate that one. So anyway, well, Kelli, times up. You have gone through the three questions. I really appreciate you joining me on our series today. Thank you for some of that insight. I loved some of those answers.

Ryan James:

For our audience who are watching, if you want to see other interviews like this, you can go to TheThirdQuestion.com, you can subscribe there and be notified when we release new interviews with people just like Kelli. So, Kelli, thank you so much again for joining me today and I hope you have a great week.