A former IPMA-HR president, Mila Cosgrove has more than 35 years of experience in human resources and organizational development. She entered public service with the State of Alaska in 1991 and rose to the position of personnel director for the state’s executive branch. Cosgrove later moved to the City and Borough of Juneau as their HR and risk management director, serving in that capacity for 10 years prior to becoming Juneau’s deputy city manager. Since retiring from government, she has consulted with public and private sector employers across Alaska and elsewhere. Cosgrove answered IPMA-HR’s questions via email. Her responses have been lightly edited.
You’re a full-time consultant. Who are your clients, and what sorts of problems do you help them solve? Are there human resources challenges and solutions unique to Alaska?
The clients I work with are primarily in the public sector. I have provided assistance to nonprofit and private organizations, as well.
My focus is helping clients build strong, resilient organizations that are aligned to deliver the best possible service to their internal and/or external customers. I particularly enjoy working with leadership teams to develop capacity and resiliency, working with organizations to assess and build a functional culture, and working with HR organizations to create paths from transactional services to transformative ones. That said, I’ve also assisted with workplace investigations, strategic planning and stakeholder engagement initiatives. A little bit of everything is what keeps HR work interesting, and it is the same with consulting.
My practice is not limited to Alaska, and I can say organizations here have many of the same challenges as our counterparts in the Lower 48. These include recruitment, retention and effective talent management strategies.
There are times where our remoteness accentuates these difficulties. On the other hand, Alaska is a relatively young state and, therefore, not as bound by some of the antiquated civil service rules that can make innovation so hard for organizations in other states.
Some of your clients have unionized employees. What labor and contracting issues are those organizations encountering? Can you share some best practices for collective bargaining or improving grievance and arbitration procedures?
The primary issues I’m seeing in labor negotiations right now hinge on COVID-19. Obviously, the economy is concerning. Inflation is high at a time when wages were already lagging. And while many organizations were able to pay out premiums related to pandemic response, those payments were not always permanently added to the wage line. Contract negotiations are addressing wage disparities, which, in turn, will impact the public sector’s revenue base as governments consider which user fees and taxes to increase to pay for escalating personnel services costs. It can be a hard pill for elected officials to swallow.
We are also living through the Great Resignation, and organizations are feeling the associated impacts. There is a significant amount of turnover, and replacing workers is difficult. Employees are looking for employers that treat them well, whether that be in terms of higher pay or better quality of life. Teleworking arrangements are a high priority. To the extent that an organization’s workforce is unionized, these are topics that are broached at the table during collective bargaining sessions.
Throughout my own career in the public sector, I worked in heavily unionized environments. I also worked for a union representing public employees. I continue to believe that the best practices for labor-management relations are the same as for creating a positive employee experience.
My best advice to management for improving labor relations is to treat your employees as well as you possibly can. Best practices include the following:
- Create a work environment that allows people to come to work every day and do their best work while being as free from unnecessary distractions as possible
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Provide employees the training, tools and resources they need to excel.
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Set clearly defined goals and objectives, and then hold employees accountable for their performance.
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Listen to employees’ concerns and respond to those concerns to the extent possible. When you can’t fulfill an employee’s request, be transparent about why.
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Don’t fear the union and never treat union representatives as the enemy.
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Share what you can with union reps and value their input when it gives you insight into tensions among your employees.
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Be as transparent as possible in your actions.
I know some unions don’t make all of this easy. But, over time, it is possible to shift an unhealthy relationship with a union toward a functioning partnership.
What lessons from your decades in public sector HR do you find yourself consistently applying in your work with private and nonprofit employers?
At the end of the day, everything we do as HR professionals turns on trust, transparency and credibility. This is the same regardless of which sector you work in. Our business partners have to believe that we understand their needs and that we seek to find proactive solutions. I do this by applying the four lenses of strategic orientation, innovation, business acumen, and equity and inclusion identified in the HR20/20 Report.
Photo courtesy of Gillfoto
You spent your last five years in the public sector as a deputy city manager. That might sound like a job far different from your previous role as human resources & risk management director. But government operations are, literally, the things government employees do. What steps did you take to ensure HR concerns factored into budget and policy decisions?
When I joined the manager’s office, I was continuing a history going back at least 25 years of managers and deputy city managers who prioritized employee engagement and culture as a cornerstone of operational excellence. This meant I was fortunate to work in an organization that placed a high value on employees.
Even with that strong of a foundation, it took constant vigilance and creativity to ensure the principles remained solid and were put into practice. For example, I made sure to educate newly elected officials about the city and borough’s talented and engaged workforce. I knew having knowledgeable elected officials would make it easier to have conversations about increasing personnel services costs.
The city manager’s team also made sure to develop our workforce by budgeting for training for professional development, including travel for meetings and courses outside Juneau. When policies needed to be created, a driving question always was how changes would impact employees. The guiding thought was whether a proposed policy would help employees operate in an efficient and accountable way.
When you asked about steps we took to ensure HR concerns factored into budget and policy decisions, one of the first things that came to my mind was our organization’s response to COVID-19. During first 18 months of the pandemic, I served as the incident commander for our community’s emergency response, and I am so very proud of how our employees responded and met the community’s needs.
Employee after employee stepped up to provide services or support others providing frontline services. They were innovative, flexible and empathetic, and they managed to pivot over and over again as we operationalized a lengthy and fluid emergency response. We turned people’s work lives upside down, and employees rose to the occasion without question.
We couldn’t have done that without living our values of public service and protection. Throughout it all, our primary underlying policy was to meet people where they were to the extent it was possible to do so without creating harm to others.
Changing topics completely, thank you for serving as an IPMA-HR president and Executive Council member. What motivated you to seek national leadership roles? What would you say to a younger colleague who may be considering getting more involved in the Association?
I chose to become involved with IPMA-HR because I value an environment that allows me to connect with other professionals and learn from them. One of the strengths of the public sector is we are not in competition. Rather, we have the ability to lift each other up and learn from each other’s successes and failures. I stepped up into a leadership role because I wanted to be a part of that and help strengthen and lead an organization that prioritizes that broader environment of cooperation. I feel very strongly about professional development, and I have learned my most valuable lessons from my colleagues.
I would encourage anyone to get involved in IPMA-HR. The connections and resources are invaluable. The more people you connect with, the broader the pool of expertise you have access to. It is deeply rewarding to help create a system where the collective profession can thrive.
You also chaired the task force that wrote and updated the HR202/20 Report. What do you see as the highest-priority issue for public sector HR right now?
I recently reread the HR20/20 Report for another purpose and was reminded of the timeless aspect of the information. The work of shifting from transactional to transformative practice remains as critical now as it was when the report was originally drafted; the concepts are enduring.
The highest priority for public sector HR is helping the organizations we serve understand the critical importance of the employee experience. We must help foster and grow cultures that support employees doing their best work and implement the systems—recruitment, pay, work rules, talent management, to name a few—that allow employees to thrive on and off the job.
06 July 2022
Category
HR News Article