Morale: Hard to quantify, but you'll fail without it.

By Jason T Howard

Discussion on how the low morale amongst the Oakdale city employees will incur a significant cost over time.

As part of my campaign preparation, I have met, and am still meeting with as many city employees as I possibly can. In talking with them, it seems the common thread is an overall lack of morale. This is troubling to say the least, as only a few years ago these were the same employees that would literally go out of their way by not charging the city for overtime or coming in on a Saturday to see that their city could maintain a level of service that made it the envy of every city in the county. That level of commitment has been replaced by a sense of dread or a longing to simply clock out and end their shift.

Morale, it seems, is a hard thing to quantify. There is no single set of figures that will indicate the level morale within a workforce. And while you may not be able to easily judge the level of morale, you can certainly tell when it is gone.

Before he retired, my grandfather used to head up the streets and maintenance department for the City of Fremont in the Bay Area. For the most part the city treated him quite well, though I'm not saying they weren't without their flaws. I remember heading out with him one day to buy a model airplane (he used to love to build model airplanes). This was long after he had retired from the city; I was probably ten or eleven at the time. In any case, about halfway to the store he rather unexpectedly pulled over and got out of his car. Apparently, someone had dropped a whole bag of nails in the middle of the road. My grandfather was quite concerned that someone might come by and flatten their tire, so he pulled over, got out, and picked up every one of those nails. Come to find out, he was always doing things like this. He had a genuine interest in seeing that his city was a pleasurable place to live. That is what morale gets you.

The city leadership would have you believe that the low morale is due to the recent economic downturn and the very recent 5% pay cut and most certainly not anything they are doing wrong. I, however, believe differently. This is a chronic problem that doesn't have a single cause; something that you can point to and say "yes, there was the mistake, that is why everyone is so unhappy". Instead, it is a sort of "death by a million cuts". It is a result of poor management over the past several years and the lack of guidence from the city administration (did you know that many city employees haven't received evaluations in quite some time, in some cases over 3 years. But I digress. We'll talk about that some other time). It is ultimately, and I apologize for sounding sappy or pandering, a failure on the city leadership's part to utilize the strengths of the single most important asset we have: the workforce.