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The Personnel Board of Jefferson County (PBJC) was established by Alabama state statute as the human resources agency responsible for administering the civil service system (or Merit System) within Jefferson County, AL. PBJC’s Managers Preparing to Accomplish Change Today (MPACT) is a selective program designed to develop and elevate the skills of already high-performing managers in the Merit System. This program is divided into monthly classes with topics specifically selected because of their impact on participants’ careers.
Every manager with direct reports at PBJC is required to complete the MPACT program. At the end of last year, 92 percent of all managers had completed this program. The goal is to implement at least one change initiative per PBJC department in the associated year.
Program Details
Class attendees follow an application process that includes required attendance in other PBJC classes, a personality profile, and an engagement assessment conducted by the Training staff.
Component 1 of the program is the formalized class sessions. The topics of the classes include: courageous leadership, accountability, discipline, trust, communication, public speaking, influence, managing in the middle, and project management. For the longest time, PBJC training classes were held at a typical government building classroom. But the organization wanted this program to allow employees to get out of their work bubbles and into the community. So the Training Team partnered with local agencies to barter for space and guest speakers in exchange for PBJC training for their employees. As a result, MPACT classes have been held at the following locations at no charge:
- Birmingham Zoo
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
- Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve
- Alabama Sports Hall of Fame
- Sloss Furnances Historic Site
- Regions Park (minor league baseball stadium)
- McWane Science Center
Component 2 consists of an electronic forum throughout the program. The forum is used for posting class discussions, sharing best practices, and asking cohort partners for advice on real-life struggles they may be facing as a manager in civil service. After each clasroom session each month, participants must post on the electronic forum to share what they learned and what they are applying each month, and ask for advice from other participants. When they return the next month, the first 30 minutes is dedicated to a review of the forum posts and responses.
For Component 3, participants complete an MPACT project that brings demonstrable change to their department or jurisdiction. A portion of each class is devoted to the assessment and fine-tuning of the project in addition to holding them accountable for making progress.
Every MPACT participant must meet with their appointing authority (director, mayor, county manager, etc.) during the first three months of the program. They explain the program, share what they are learning, and explain what their project is and how it will benefit the agency. Then they must take a photo with their appointing authority (AA) and send it to the program facilitator. Over the last three years of this program, 100 percent of all participants met with their AA.
Employees who successfully complete the nine-month program are included in a special cohort of MPACT graduates. These graduates frequently are used as subject matter experts and are invited to special events, focus groups, and pilot classes. They also come together once a year at an MPACT networking breakfast where they can update their projects, share best practices, and continue building community with each other.
Results
Each Personnel Board manager who attended this program was required to create an innovative new way to enhance his or her department or process. Some examples of past projects include an electronic upgrade to all inventory management for a fire department, a new system of paperless police reports, a benchmark procedure for foreign language interpreters at the health department, and a new critical emergency response protocol for Jefferson County.
To date, every manager has successfully implemented his or her project. One specific example is the Personnel division manager whose project was designed to minimize the length of time it took for area managers to develop their budgets. Through research and partnerships, she devised a way to improve this process, leading to reducing the average time for managers to input annual budget requests from one week to three days.