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<br />PUBLIC WORKS ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT 7 <br />retain quality operators. Not only does the Department lack this problem, but its rules regarding position grades <br />(Operator III, II, I) allow operators to “self-promote” if they serve appropriate time-in-service and earn additional <br />licensure levels. Almost every operator in the Department has pursued this strategy, leading to most operators being <br />licensed and classed at the highest grade (Operator I). <br /> <br />Despite the strengths of the Department, there are challenges as well. Most notable among them is the heavy <br />workload in the Department and the pressures to meet service-level targets. For various groups within the <br />Department, there are concerns regarding work-life balance and morale. In short, while the Department has <br />identified appropriate service level targets and is able to meet them, the pressure and strain required to achieve them <br />has created a somewhat unsustainable environment. If left unaddressed, this level of unsustainability will likely <br />increase as the City continues to grow and assets age. <br /> <br />For example, one major issue for the operators is the ability to take paid time off (PTO). Additionally, there is a <br />noticeable lack of effective communication between operators and management regarding the overall goals and <br />vision. <br /> <br />COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF WORKLOADS OVER TIME <br />Benchmarking is typically used to compare the quantitative and/or qualitative metrics of an organization against <br />those of peer organizations or an industry as a whole. Public works departments often struggle to benchmark against <br />one another due to the numerous unique factors that set them apart, such as the differing relative sizes of the services <br />they provide (e.g., utilities, streets, parks), relative to the number of staff dedicated to that service. Some agencies <br />devote full crews to any one or all of these service offerings. Others, like Lake Elmo, expect their staff to perform <br />ALL of these services. In other words, little or dubious insight might be gained by comparing the City’s Department <br />of Public Works to those of other cities. Instead, what can provide meaningful insight is an examination of metrics <br />that quantify relative workloads and how they have changed over time. Unfortunately, there is no way to examine <br />the cumulative workload of the Department across all its services over time. Instead, the following graphs will look <br />at the Department’s component services individually: water, sewer, streets and roadways, and parks. <br /> <br />The graphs in this section present workloads normalized by total FTEs in the Department. The City’s Annual <br />Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) contains tables of statistical information, including the number of FTEs <br />allocated to each activity by year. These allocated FTEs can help indicate the amount of labor expended on an <br />activity in a year, but these allocations may be inexact. The allocation method may have changed over time, and <br />some allocated labor may not be directly related to the operation and maintenance of assets (e.g., allocated time of <br />the Administrator or Director, utility billing). For this reason, the workload metrics are normalized by the total staff <br />within the Department, as these ratios represent the total demand to do work per employee. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />