oing on. But I think most of us actually want to change things and to do something that's impactful, maybe revolutionary if you're lucky, but something that kind of deviates from inertia and processes that are already in place. And this is, this looks like, this feels like us kind of doing that in terms of our sidewalks and addressing issues of equity when it comes to movement in our city and safety. I want to ask you about the, and if this is too early, just let me know. I want, since we were deliberately applying equity lens, I want to ask about appreciable and measurable differences that you notice. It had we not, in other words, if left to the way we normally do things, the scoring and prioritizing, had you not applied to equity lens, did you notice any appreciable difference on how this list would look based upon whatever priorities we use, whatever metrics we use to make these determinations? Was there any impact that you can tell thus far? Either one. I think it was clear from one of the slides that Doug presented of the first 25 locations, only five were in those purple areas. So that means that 80% of, you know, our work and our priorities were outside of the areas that come into focus using that race equity lens. And what we're talking about is given that mandate to, you know, center race equity in this prioritization process, moving away from that where those locations are only, you know, only representing 20% of the investment that we've done in response to the priorities identified in the 2017 plan and really focusing our attention and resources on those purple areas. Thanks for that. I think what's important to highlight and for our residents and citizens watching that, that 80% isn't because of insidious or nefarious intent on a part of any individual actor. It's that our systems in the way we do things have yielded that list like that. And I guess what I want to highlight in underscore here is that, you know, that's what we mean by systemic, that the process looks benign and, you know, logically based, you know, in the array, but 80% fell out of these areas that have been historically disinvested in. And as we do the work of equity, it's important that, not so much for y'all, but for us as kind of the message barriers to the folk watching and our residents and citizens that, you know, we're not punishing those folk that live in those 80% areas. What we're trying to do is address the very real systemic forces that lead to that type of array that may look benign on its surface, but need us to actually deliberately do something and take action as a government. So I want to thank you for that. I want to thank you for that. And I wanted to ask, I want us to keep kind of tracking how would this have looked different had we not applied an equity lens so we can talk to people about how equity is actually impacting and doing things that is not just lip service to it. So thank you so much for this Q of the good work. A lot of this is going to come to political will. I mean, you know, you bring us to maps and the graphics and the data, and we're going to have to still exercise political will to shift some things around, literally, and reorganize some things with a firm grasp on the history that informs that type of action. So great presentation. Thank you so much. Keep up the good work. And we got your back on this. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Council Member. Other comments? Mr. Mayer. Hey, fabulous presentation. When I read the presentation and looked at the slides, I was I was so impressed. This is the kind of work that I love how granular it is. It's not just talking about racial equity. It's getting down into the details and making it real. And I love that. So I have one question. And then a couple of comments. My question is Mr. Egan, what is it cost now to do, I'll say, a mile of sidewalk and curb and gutter? So we are seeing an average in the range of $1.5 million per mile for our recent sidewalk projects. If you look at that number that Brian gave at the beginning, that we have 300 miles of unfunded needs. That's $450 million. Closing on half a billion of unfunded needs there. That was kind of where I was going. And that doesn't include the intersection improvements that were in the other slide, right? That's correct. Those are easier to do at a low cost and quickly. Yeah. But so yeah, we're talking about somewhere between $450 and $500 million worth of infrastructure need just in this area. And so, and if you took, I mean, it'd be, yeah. So I just say to my colleagues, we're hopefully going to be doing a green and equitable infrastructure bond. And this will have to be one of the important, we're not going to be able to 200, you all are not going to be able to do $450 million worth of sidewalk. But I do think that that gives us some sense of the magnitude of the need. And but having the prioritization helps us think about what that number ought to be, which is great. So my two comments are one is a really a comment for the council. The thing that I think is important for us to keep in mind is that people often come in front of us neighborhoods with what I will call, I don't want, with, you know, pleading their own case outside of any system that we have established, this gives us a way. So we're going to have to have some courage to say no to people who are outside of this paradigm. If neighborhoods come and say, you know, we really want our sidewalk, we really think we ought to have it. Well, are you on this priority list?  And I think sometimes that takes courage on the part of the council, but I do want to say that what this gives us is a framework to make those decisions and to be able to say to people, this is the framework we're using. The other thing the other comment I have is that, you know, just to nuance the discussion a little bit about equity. When this was done in 2017, the staff was very careful to use an equity measure. It was a poverty measure, but it wasn't a race measure. And I think that we have, you know, we've got new policy goals now. And it's really interesting to me to see how those changes in equity measures have made a difference here. And so I think that the staff that did it originally, or, you know, did the 2017 study had a real equity focus as well. I remember it very well coming to us. But adding the specific racial metric, I think, has really been really, it's really interesting to me the way in which there is overlap, but there's also many ways in which there's not overlap. And so it's valuable to have this. So those are my two thoughts. And I think it's, I want to echo what my colleagues have said. And thank Councilmember Freeland for being a part of the working group. And just, it's really great. And it's just exactly what we need. I was with, at the, on the run that we had a couple of weeks ago, Sharon Davis was there and said to me after the run, you know, our racial equity officer that she was so proud of the work that the city was doing in very practical ways. And this is one of those ways. So much appreciation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilmember Freeman. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to appreciate Mayor Schultz's comments and just acknowledging like it's so, it's so difficult. It's difficult to prioritize everything and we can't. But I do want to note that it's probably not a no, it's probably not yet. And so just making sure that we're clear, like we have to be able to show folks when they come about in the process rather than saying we're not going to do it. Because I think there are a lot of infrastructural issues that we have overlooked and a lot have historic, you know, underlying discrimination tied to it. And some have just been just, we just didn't have the money. And so just making sure that we don't let folks think that we're not going to get to some of the very, you know, real issues around that infrastructure is important too. So thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Any other thoughts or comments? Thanks. Y'all really appreciate all this work. It's really, you know, putting our policy goals into practice and practical and impactful ways. And yeah, can't wait to see it, see it happen. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to share this really important work. All right, friends, our last presentation of the day is our 2021 employment engagement survey, sorry, employee engagement survey. Welcome. Good afternoon, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, Mayor Hsu, Councilmembers. I am Timothy Houses, Director of Human Resources, and we're here today to present to you on the 2021 Employee Engagement Survey. I have with me today Mr. Christopher Mulligan, who is the CEO of Talent Keepers, who has been our third-party partner over the last four administrations of the Employee Engagement Survey, 2015, 2017, 2019, and then now 2021. And he will present those results to you now. And then I will come back on to answer any questions that you have at the end. Thank you, Timothy. And good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, and Councilmembers. It's my pleasure to present the results of the Employee Engagement Survey to you today. If we can go to the first slide, we'll just take a look at what are we talking about when we say employee engagement. So, Timothy, you don't mind advancing to the next slide. An engaged employee acts like an owner. They act like a volunteer. They go above and beyond what's normally required for success in their position. And that extra effort leads to better performance. This issue of employee engagement has been studied for the past 15 years. Thousands of studies showing that engaged employees deliver more performance. So, this is a performance issue. This is not an HR nice to do. Unfortunately, the pandemic has derailed engagement in this country. Over half of all organizations have seen employee engagement decline during the pandemic. The other half, 25% were able to maintain it, and just 25% were able to increase engagement. So, it has been challenging. Everyone has rethought what they're doing, where they're doing it, and with whom they're doing it. So, I want to just give you that perspective as we begin to review your results today. If we take a look at the next slide, we'll see a high-level summary of our results, and we'll look at these in detail. Governance and public services increased or stayed the same on all 10 key metrics. Community building increased or stayed the same on all metrics except intent to stay. And admin and support realized gains in many metrics, including a 7% increase in employee engagement. Please remember my previous comments. This is very unusual that we would have any departments increasing engagement. And what we have learned in over 21 years of focusing on this as our business is that these results don't occur by happenstance. They are the result of hard work by leadership teams. And one of the best ways to leverage results like these is to lean in to those departments where we have seen increases and pick their brains. What are they saying or doing differently that is enabling their staff members to feel better about the work they do and the environment in which they work, and is enabling them to give us that discretionary effort. Conversely, we have seen some declines. Public safety declined on eight of the 10 metrics. You'll see those results throughout the presentation. And also recognize that public safety represents 41% of our respondents in the 2021 survey. So that group is going to color the overall result. It's going to have an over influence on those. We also saw that items in the department management scale declined on average for points across the city overall. This is the perception of leadership within the departments. We also saw that satisfaction declined and the sense that employees are proud to work for the city has declined. Neither of those is unique in this time of the pandemic, but it is something certainly to be concerned with.  And again, we'll look at these details as we go forward. And lastly, fewer employees agree that they rarely consider leaving the city or that they plan to stay with the city for 10 years or more. This speaks to the issue of retention. And I'm sure you have all seen in the media that 2021 is being regarded as the year of the great resignation. Or the great reevaluation. So that is impacting different elements of the workforce. Females are leaving at higher rates, traditionally than male counterparts. And there are some other groups that are more likely to leave their jobs. But one thing we know about engagement is engaged employees tend to stay longer. So it behooves us to address these issues in the best way possible to increase engagement, performance, and retention. We take a look at the next slide. We'll see participation. You can see the survey was administered back in April, from April 26th to May 20th. We had, at that time, 2,421 eligible participants. 72% of them took the general survey items. These are items about their department, our pay, all those general items, and 66% responded to questions about their immediate leader. Not unusual for the leader survey to have a slightly lower participation rate. In the table at the bottom of this slide, you can see that our participation declined slightly, from 74 to 72%. Nationally, most organizations strive to achieve 70% participation. At Talent Keepers, we like to get our clients up to 80%, but 72% is not bad. The slight decline, I would attribute more to the pandemic. People were working differently. They were stressed. I don't see a large drop there. In general, participation change, administration over administration indicates how valuable the previous survey was regarded by our team members. When team members see things change as a result of their participation in a survey, and if they hear about the results from their participation, they are more likely to participate next time. Our ability to communicate these results and to take action on them, and when we take action, overtly tying results back to what we learned in the survey will increase the likelihood that we will have more participation in the next survey. But participation is fine, where it is today. We just want that to continuously improve. Our next slide will show us the content. Now responses to the survey are anonymous. We will only see results where we had at least three team members complete the survey, whether that was evaluating their immediate leader or their department or the group that they were within. So any participation, less than three employees will not be presented. We're looking at a number of major scales. We'll see employee engagement overall, how team members feel about city management, department management, each other as team members, the work they do, their job, their satisfaction, and their direct supervisor. And the scale we use is a five point scale of agreement. We'll ask very positively worded statements on a five point scale where one is I strongly disagree and five is I strongly agree. The scale will show us how engaged the population is when they achieve an average rating on that five point scale of 3.65 or higher on all of those items. They're deemed engaged by the scale. We do have some other measures. We'll see how our satisfaction has changed, how long team members intend to stay with the city. Would they recommend the city of Durham as a good place to work, to friends and colleagues? That's our employee net promoters for. We also have an equity rating as well as some free responses to questions such as what's the number one reason you choose to stay, why would you consider leaving, and what would improve your willingness to recommend us as a good place to work. So we'll see all of these data this afternoon. If we go to the next slide, we'll begin with some key metrics. In the upper left, we have that question. Would you recommend the city as a good place to work, to friends and colleagues? This is the one question that is asked on a very different scale. It's a 10 point scale, and it's a very difficult scale. I'll show you the details as we proceed, but you can see we have a great range. This metric can range from negative 100 to positive 100. We are at a negative 16. In the previous administration, we were at a negative six. So we have declined there. The goal is to be a positive 30 or higher. However, it is not uncommon to be in the negative on this metric. And very few organizations ever achieve that 30 or higher. But you'll see as we look at how these data break out by department, that we have many departments who are positive on this particular rating. So we'll see that detail as we proceed. On the upper right, we ask how long do you intend to stay in your position with the city? And the range was from more than 10 years to less than one year. And you can see we had, in the parent next to those ranges, a 5% decline in team members saying they intend to stay with us more than 10 years. And a slight increase in those middle 10 year ranges. The good news is we have just 6% of team members intending to leave us in less than one year. This typically is an underestimate of our actual turnover rates. But it is great to see that this particular metric is low. We have been counseling your leadership team to look for more risk than they expect. They may know someone's thinking of retiring or relocating out of the city. But if they see more risk than they expect, it really is an invitation for them to be a bit more vigilant for any changes and patterns of behavior that they may observe among a team member. Team members will telegraph when they are becoming disengaged or dissatisfied. And it is incumbent upon our leadership team to ask some open-ended questions, observing what they have and seeing if there's anything that they can do to improve the likelihood that team member will stay because we know how disruptive and expensive turnover is. At the bottom of this slide, we asked two questions about satisfaction. The first is, overall, how satisfied are you at work? That's on the left side of the bottom part of this slide. And you can see 58% say they are satisfied. That is a decline from 74% in the previous administration. The goal there is to be at 70%. So we were above goal and we slipped below. We ask another question. How has your satisfaction changed over the preceding six months? 23% say it actually increased. 38% said it stayed the same and 39% declined. Again, those numbers are lower than where we were in the previous administration. This is not uncommon in the pandemic. Satisfaction, as a metric, has declined in many organizations. It tends to be driven by environmental factors. Those would include the work that I do, the physical tasks and activities that I perform in my job, the environment or location in which I work, my rate of pay and my benefits. Satisfied employee will show up on time, they'll work hard and they'll leave on time, but their affiliation is more tied to the work they do, the environment in which they perform that work and the renumeration they receive for it. So from a retention perspective, we could probably pull an employee who was merely satisfied out of their job by offering a similar set of responsibilities in a similar environment for similar pay and benefits. Engagement, on the other hand, is driven more by local leadership. This would include am I being treated like an individual by my leader? Do I perceive that my leader is my advocate who will go to bat for me when warranted? Do I see a path forward for me in the city to grow my skills and experiences? Those would drive engagement and now that affiliation for the engaged employee is tied to the people that they work with and the opportunities that they see. And we know that people stay longest in their jobs when they stay for people and opportunity. So if we proceed to the next slide, we'll start looking at our scale. So here's our satisfaction at work scale and we've broken out the major groups within the city. So you can see how they varied. The one that jumps out to you visually is public safety down 20 points. The city overall went from 66 to 58 points. Much of that decline as you can see is driven by public safety and that will be a recurring theme. That is in no way to denote any negativity about public safety. It's just a reflection of what those respondents felt at the time. And what again, we would encourage you to do and we have encouraged leadership team and participated in coaching with your directors is let's see what we can glean from these higher performing groups. Maybe there are some things that we can share with everybody else and also let's lean in to that public safety information. Let's understand exactly where we have an opportunity to improve and what they think would be effective to improve. Our next slide will show us the items that comprise the satisfaction at worst scale. The percentages that we see next to each item reflect the percentage of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. We have color coded the 21 results. Red indicates a decline from 2019. We don't have any state the same they would be in black and improvements which we'll see as we proceed will be in green. So all of these items declined. Again, the pandemic had a major impact on satisfaction with people rethinking what they were doing what where they were doing it and with whom they were doing. The next slide will show us more detail around our satisfaction change. As you saw on the previous slide it is down five points and we've broken it out by the major group. So again, you can see public safety had the biggest decline. The admin community building and governance actually increased in that area. So there is there is lots to celebrate and there is lots to lean into from strong results here that we want to continue. It's tempting when we see results like this from an engagement survey to think of these data as a report card. Did we get better? Did we get worse? How did different groups perform? I would encourage you rather than think about this as a report card to think about this as the beginning of a conversation. These data reflect feedback from our team members and leaders. And if we approach it as the beginning of a conversation and when we're reviewing results saying look I saw how you rated this item of the survey or how you felt about this issue tell me a little more what were you thinking about when you made that rating? What issue? What person? What incident influenced your rating? That ensures we're focused on the right thing. Many of these questions are very broad in general. And then a very very effective follow-up question is so what could we do differently? What could we start, stop or continue doing to be more effective in this area? Organizations who take that approach are more likely to focus on those things that will be impactful in terms of what issues were being thought of when employees made these ratings and by inviting team members into the solution generation discussion we're assured that we're on the right track in terms of things that we can do differently. Our next slide will show us our intended length of stay results. So as we saw the overall slide just 6% of respondents are intending to leave us in the next year but it is 100 employees. Replacing 100 employees is expensive and difficult work especially in an economy where we have record numbers of open positions and a dwindling supply of workers. So our ability to get in front of issues that may be influencing someone to leave can be very very helpful. Our next slide will give us the word cloud results to an open-ended question that we asked which is what's the number one reason you choose to stay with the city? Based on the size of the word you can see how prevalent these words were in the responses. So benefits jumps off the page at us longevity. We have a lot of long tenure team members and they're staying with us long term to get their longer term benefits but then you can also see job people the work I do co-workers work from home. So a lot of dispersion once we get past benefits longevity and job and then we did put in their words some examples for you at the bottom of the slide that I won't read but you can see I think all of us would be proud to have these comments from any one of our team members. Our next slide will show us the answers to another question what's the number one reason that you would consider leaving the city? Pay jumps out the page as well as management as the two more prevalent responses and then we did put in their words at the bottom of the slide two example exemplary examples of what those verbatims can be I'll just give you a moment to read through those. The free responses are often the color commentary behind the ratings and we encourage leadership to review those and take those into consideration when creating action plans based on the survey. Our next slide will give us more detail into that employee net promoter store question which is would you recommend the city is a good place to work? Here is the scale I mentioned it was a difficult scale it ranges from one to 10 but only a rating of nine or 10 where 10 is I definitely would recommend the city is a good place to work are considered promoters a rating of seven or eight falls into the passive category and anything six or lower is considered to be a detractor you can see the attributes that are typically associated with each of those radar types the calculation is shown in black we take the promoters subtract the number of detractors and divide by all that gives us that negative to positive 100 scale the next slide will show us how these data vary by the major departments within the city so we can move to the next slide we'll see again at the city level we went from negative six to negative 16 but when we look at the major groups within the city only one of them is negative our public safety so overall we did have 472 respondents give us that nine or 10 rating 524 were to seven or an eight and 747 were six or below what we ask is a follow-up question what would increase your willingness to recommend the city is a good place to work and we'll see those data on the next slide so pay jumps off the page support as another more prevalent response and then a lot of also rams but if we look at the bottom of the slide in their words you'll get some examples of what those verbatims entailed the goal on this particular metric is to move our passives to promoters and our detractors to passives so as leadership is talking through these results with team members really discussing those things that would improve that recommendation and making positive steps in that direction can improve that willingness to recommend us the willingness to recommend metric is another one that has declined from many many organizations during the pandemic so I just I mentioned that a few times because I think it is really influencing some of the data that we see here okay our next slide will show us the other engagement scales who looked at the satisfaction scale but we have six engagement scales here employee engagement city management department management how I feel about my team members my job and my direct supervisor the goal on each of these is to be at 80% and this would be the percentage of respondents who are currently engaged by each one of these scales you can see that city-wide we've been in a quite narrow range of 10 points or less as we look at 58 to 64% same with city management same with department management our team member engagement has steadily improved over these four administrations this is heartening remembering that people stay longest for people and opportunities my team members are at least one half of that people equation the other is the leader to whom I report job has remained fairly stable as well and then the other good news story in this particular view is the influence of direct supervisors they have steadily improved and are now at goal in fact they are the only group that is at goal or the only scale here that is at goal this is very good news because the one scale that can change the quickest among these is direct supervisor far easier to get a direct supervisor to lead differently to be more empathetic to be a better listener better coach than it is to change pay change benefits change the nature of what a job entails the other good news is that the direct supervisor can influence perception of all the other scales more than any other one so if we can leverage the high engagement that our direct supervisors enjoy to give their team members some different information some different perspectives it can improve perceptions of city management department management and everything else we have a saying at talent keepers that my leader is the limbs through which I view everything else if my leader is engaged they think we're making all the right decisions as a city they're excited about a growth path for them I'm likely to feel the same way if my leader feels differently that's likely to influence me too our next slide will take a deeper dive at the employee engagement scale and again we'll see how this varies by the different groups or departments within the city so we saw a nice improvement with government up 16 points community building up six points again public safety had a decline public services increased our next slide will show us those items that comprise the employee engagement scale so we did have two that remain the same having the opportunity to do what I do best every day and having the materials equipment and technology I need to do my job well remembering the goal here is also 80% on these individual items we reach that and I'm willing to put a great deal of effort beyond what is normally expected of me at 87% our low item here is at 47% I rarely think about looking for a new job outside the city and then when I tell my friends where I work I feel proud had a slight decline to 64% our next slide will show us the city management scale so nearly flat administration over administration at 38% one of the lower scales along with department management but we can see tremendous improvements in admin and support community building and governance two points up in public services which is a large group as you can see and then we started low in public safety and got lower so it's a mixed bag in terms of where these data are based on where you sit within the city administration our next slide will show us the items that comprise the city management scale we did see a couple of improvements so third one from the top I trust city management to make decisions that are the best interests of the organization and city managers open on us and transparent nice to see those improve but we also have some items that decline the other four being those that declined so we have a slight decline in city management demonstrating delivering quality customer service as a high priority and respect respect is another item that declined from many organizations during the pandemic we all were working under more stress and when we do work under stress is not uncommon to shortcut a conversation or write an email that may be perceived to be curt and leave someone feel less than respected my feel my opinions matter to the city just 33% of everyone agreed with that and I believe the city council appreciates me just 31% so these areas what we like to do when we look at the items is what we can do to accentuate our strong items and then really understanding what were people thinking about when they answered those items that are lower what issue what incident what experience and again asking so what could we do differently to be better our next slide will show us the department management scale we had a three-point decline there but again similar pattern admin support community building and governance improved as did public services the one that declined is public safety remembering the public safety is approximately 42% of the entire respondent group they're going to have a large influence over the overall scores the next slide will show us the items that compose the department management scale unfortunately we saw all of these decline but remembering where that public safety falls that's likely what's happening we had omitted those we would see improvements in the other areas and this all deals with respect work-life balance recognition can I question something without fear of penalty are they making decisions that are in the best interest of the department do they treat everyone fairly do I have satisfaction with our promotion and pay increases processes and did they address issues indicated in the previous employee opinion survey that declined from 42 to 34% this is one that is firmly within our control there will be actions taken and one thing that we want to make sure we do is we communicate that those actions were based on what we learned in the survey if you think of the most basic level what the survey represents it is the sentiments of the workforce and if we treat that as valuable information our employees will feel valued and if we take action based on what they've told us they will feel heard so we want to make sure that we're very overt when we're talking about these results and we're taking actions based on the survey the next slide will show us our team member scale so again the way I feel about the people that I work with is very influential on my decision to stay or leave and we went up three points here we saw all of these groups being at the 80% level or above except for public services and they're just four points away so team member engagement is very high not uncommon when there is an external threat or distraction as I think we would all agree the pandemic has been people tend to lean into each other and take solace and counsel with each other and I think that's what we're seeing here but that's certainly an asset within the city that we would want to continue to leverage and appreciate the next slide will show us the items that comprise the team member scale and you can see by the green numbers that most of these items improved so they believe that team members are delivering quality work there's good communication they demonstrate interest and concern in my well-being they support me and my goals they give me the support I need to be successful while working they just don't participate they seem engaged that's a very good indicator of that discretionary effort that we associate with engagement and so really a strength of the city that we can leverage here and I would encourage all of you to celebrate that when talking about those results the next slide will show us our job scale so this is about the work I do we had a slight decline here but again we saw some big improvements with governance public services up to but a large population there not as big a decline as we have seen in public safety but they did decline 11 points so again leaning into higher performing groups focusing on the lower ones not in a punitive way but rather to understand what we can do differently as a tried and true approach to improvement the next slide will show us the items that comprise the job scale and there are two slides of these items so we begin with four items that remain above our goal of 80% they're in interesting and challenging roles they know what's expected of them they would report someone who is acting on ethically and their job makes good use of their skills and abilities so some really kudos to our talent acquisition teams they're slotting people into the right roles where they are well suited to be successful physical safety declined by three points could that be for those individuals who were considered essential during the darkest days of the pandemic and were coming into work likely we have seen that in many other cases they feel empowered to make their decisions is down four points again there were probably some constraints on that during the pandemic health insurance went up five points I'm satisfied with the benefits i.e. health insurance working for the city the next slide will show us the remaining items in the job scale at this level we see more declines and a couple of staying the same so I received the training training is something that declined in many organizations during the pandemic anyone who was participating in in-person training probably couldn't do that during the pandemic team members who would travel outside the city for professional training probably could not do that so likely a high influence of the pandemic there and then we can see I received the materials and equipment and technology I need say flat at 69% decline in there is there someone at work besides my supervisor who encourages my development our lower items anytime we see something below 60% we want to lean in because that means we had 40% or more of respondents who could not agree with it I have opportunities to advance within the organizations it's flat at 55% that's one to pay attention to because prior to the pandemic for the past eight years nationally the number one reason employees were leaving their jobs voluntarily was the perceived lack of growth opportunities so something we certainly want to have leaders talking about the pandemic has changed that the number one reason that people have been leaving during the pandemic certainly in 2021 has been burnout so I suspect as we recover from the pandemic that desire for growth will reemerge as the top as the top element and then pay pay is normally the lowest one in this particular scale unfortunately we drop six points my pay is proportional to the contributions that I make and we did see that as a prevalent response on the reasons that I would consider leaving our next slide will show us our direct supervisor scale so this is really good news this is not an easy one to improve because it takes all leaders behaving differently this is the questions where when an employee was responding their immediate supervisor's name was literally in the survey so there was no confusion as to who they were rating so all leaders contribute to this and to achieve 80% is remarkable especially during a challenging time and our next slide will show us the items that comprise the direct supervisor scale most of these items are green I won't read through these but you can see it's regarding communication coaching being concerned guidance on how I can improve holding people accountable all positive statements that we would want in every one of our team members and leaders our next slide will show us how all leaders within the city who had at least three team members rate them performed on that direct supervisor scale you can see we have a green line here at 80% that is our goal we would want each leader to have at least 80% of their direct reports engaged by them as an immediate leader and that represents 59% of all leaders in the city who had enough data to get a score and that's up seven points from the previous administration with then we now have another line here at 50% in yellow that's something to be concerned about if a leader has less than half of their team engaged by them that's something to lean into 17% of leaders within the city fell there and that's a decline of three so in the previous administration we had 20% so more leaders did better and achieved that 80% fewer achieved that lower bound at 50% and then under the bottom of the slide you can see leader insights 71% of direct supervisors improved or stayed above 80% these are the leaders that we want to talk to right we want to pick their brains so what are you saying and doing differently about these areas that we might be able to leverage with others and just 29% declined or stayed below that 80% our next slide will show us some questions that were specific to the city's response to the pandemic very strong scores here you can see a lot of these items at 70% or higher regarding support they need can they access information do they have the equipment do they have the support from their leader they need all the information that they need they felt that they could carry out their duties without concern for their health that dropped to 64 they're not feeling more stressed 52% in their role than before the pandemic and then return to work remember this was done back in April and May so it was very unclear as to what the country was going to do in that regard and we're seeing just half of them said they were ready to return at that time so just to give you a sense for where we have been and the next slide to present these results we begin reviewing this with the city manager on July 30th we then met with all department directors we encouraged department directors to share those results we had some coaching that we did for department directors and you can see where those were mentioned the results were mentioned in the midday moments an article in city week and all directors were doing action plans that were due by November 1st and now we're here today presenting to you so that concludes our presentation I see Timothy is back on video for any questions anyone might have and we are here Mayor Pro Tem, Mayor Shu for any questions that you may have regarding the employee engagement survey from 2021 thanks so much y'all questions, comments from council members council member Fee Wan yes thank you so much for the comprehensive presentation this was a lot of data when I got the file and just started swiping through I was like wow it's not over you know just it's long it's a lot of info so kudos to you and your team for doing a great job I just first just wanted to thank you for the work that's that's gone in here I think now is a really important time to solicit feedback because of the unprecedented times that we're in with the pandemic and the way that that's impacting people's lives we've seen I mean in the short time that I've been on council you know we've seen really recently a lot of a lot of employee feedback especially around the you know vaccine mandates and things of that nature which I was expecting to you know have an impact here but I just had a really quick comment just something that I noticed I really like the sheets where you where you showed the employee responses by the size of the of the feedback that they gave and while looking at that I just kind of noticed that some of the words were kind of synonyms you know like it would be like salary pay then someone else would say paid someone else would say raise someone else would say money and you know as we're just at a glance evaluating what people care about it occurred to me that you know some there might be other words that show up bigger if you accounted for the fact that people may use different words to express the same thing so nothing big it was just it was just something that I noticed and wondered if that's something you accounted for when you're doing your analysis we do councilman Freeland try and consolidate those words the software will pick out what occurs first and sometimes that can create sub categories there the real benefit of the free responses is at the department level where directors can review the comments from their department in detail and they have access to that the word cloud is directionally helpful but the granularity and you saw in the examples in their words how passionate many of those responses were so your your comment is on point and well noted and I would just add that the individual director departments data can see those verbatims okay wonderful well again just a very comprehensive report a lot to dig through and consider and I really appreciated that last slide you didn't go into the appendix I see which goes on for several slides as well but that last slide it was really helpful for me to see the timeline of how staff is taking this information and moving forward with it and I like what you said earlier too about showing staff that their feedback is being considered and and implemented in helping shape the workspace so that's really great so thanks so much it was a wonderful presentation thank you councilmember other comments questions councilmember freeman oh miss madam manager do you want to jump in I'll wait okay thank you I was just going to add I appreciate that comment from councilmember freeman and I'm just going to add if there are going to be recommendations because I know the memo laid out just kind of what was happening if there are going to be recommendations I think I think there were some there were a few that you stated but it would be great to have them in writing so that we can can actually start to move that forward that would be helpful that was all and then again thank you I think it was very detailed I appreciate the level of how you bring out the departments and also just kind of digging in like on word choice yeah it's offered a lot to really think about thank you thank you councilmember madam manager thank you okay thank you madam and pro tem I just wanted to pop in very briefly to thank the team that is presenting today but just acknowledge that there has been a lot of work not just for the folks who took the time to take the survey as is you know common when we do these surveys but since the survey results have been received the consultant services that talent keeper is providing to us as an organization is very helpful in working on all of our our action planning around responding to the results that you see here so while Chris was here I wanted to make sure that I said that in his presence as well as thank the HR team for leading this engagement survey on an on a by annual basis thank you very much madam manager Mr. Mayor thank you madam mayor pro tem to me this survey was a tale of just almost two different workforces you have a very satisfied workforce even during the pandemic and then you have people in public safety especially in the police department but not only in the police department who aren't happy and it crosses almost every single category to me it was the by far the most defining thing in this survey so we have encouraged and the manager is going to be bringing us outside the budget cycle pay adjustments they're working on now for our public safety departments and I think that's going to be critical but it also he says to me that our new you know chief Andrews has a work cut out for we have got to support our publics and also deputy manager Ferguson we've got to support our public safety departments and we have to make them understand that we do support them and that's very that's just I think going to be very important but that's what I read in this survey there was a lot of good as long as you weren't looking at public safety when you looked at public safety almost every category we weren't where we wanted to be so I think that there are external reasons for this having to do with national mood and so forth but a lot of it is where we are so I'll just encourage my colleagues and I know our staff is already paying attention thank you Mr. Mayor you Mr. Mayor Council Member Middleton thank you Madam Mayor for attending Timothy good to see you sir you as well Council Member Chris thank you for being with us I want to appreciate of the work I'm going to associate myself also with the Mayor's comments I you know it's I heard your admonishment admonition Chris not to read it as a report card of course sitting at the top of the org chart it's it's it's hard not to read it as a report card and I'm wondering and one thought I had was as you know as a council we don't actually govern the day to day operations of the city our manager does that so I'm wondering how what what type of things we could do to get our numbers up I know Tim you you folks do I think a Wednesday thing where we've been invited to come in and kind of talk to the employees and perhaps that's something we could avail ourselves of as a council moving forward just more access and more exposure to the workforce like I said we're not in the trenches every day we have a fine professional staff that does that but I'd be curious to to hear ways that perhaps our recommendations best practices of council kind of getting our numbers up I didn't want to ask was the survey administered was it all online electronic or was the actual pen and paper how how was it administered it was all online yeah and folks self identified if they wanted to or just kind of volunteered to take it if they wanted to or how do you know how it was presented to the workforce yeah certainly voluntary but encouraged for people to participate and so they can affect change within the city absolutely and we did we did some relief efforts we went out to solid waste and a couple other departments to actually sit there and allow them to take the survey on laptops from our technology solution departments and so we helped facilitate some of that discussion for those individuals that needed additional assistance we had some staff that was out there with them and also we we were in all of our publications and the city week and on our midday moments program and I will take this short moment because you mentioned it Mayor Shull has been on the program before our manager obviously has spent a lot of time with us on midday moments I would heartily invite you to come and that gives a chance for the individual employees to learn more about who you are as an individual and some of the things that and ideas that you have for the city it is every Wednesday we're off for a couple weeks after we're coming out of leadership conference but we'd love to have you we've sent we'll send another request through the clerk and hopefully we can get you guys to come on and be a part of that it's a it's a live show that's done every Wednesday from noon to one absolutely I well could count me in definitely I'm sure all my colleagues will at some point of schedule allow to do that I know when we first got elected uh what's the name of our show city uh city happening city city views city life the view whatever it's called city life city life is a good idea I know we we had an opportunity to be on city life and and got great a feedback from folk uh and that so that's something that that uh I would encourage us to do think about it as a council since the mayor is trying to make that trail for us thank you so much for the work and for this very useful information and I look forward to seeing how it translates into into tweaking our policy or at least our posture not policy thank you very much thanks ma'am Madam Mayor Pro Tem thank you council member again thank you for this report I found it really really useful I was going to ask y'all when the when the survey was done I think you said May May 26th through uh excuse me April 26th through May 20th okay got you because that's that's before we pass our most recent budget which included some premium pay and some and some raises so I'm hoping that along with the public safety increases that we're going to be pursuing next year that we'll see more more satisfaction with regard to pay and that will be will be closer to market and market's going up in this in this time and we need to we need to predict you know we know that that's coming so we need to be prepared for it so thanks y'all so much for for your work and yeah I look forward to coming on your show for sure that sounds like a great opportunity look forward to having you all have a great day thank you you all for the opportunity thank you all council member Freeman did you want to say something oh just a quick question are we will we have a survey next year because I thought after yes so it's 2023 correct it's 2020 thank you all right everybody we have reached the end of our agenda of course we have a closed session as well but mr. mayor hello mayor pretender I'm sorry to interrupt you I had an announcement that I wanted to make during announcements and then of course I was not here for announcements is this okay can I go ahead of course yeah go for it I met with our members of our staff the manager the city attorney our tech people and to talk about the how we're going to proceed with our hybrid meetings that were that are coming up so as we move into our hybrid meetings on November 15th where people will be able to attend both virtually and in person we'll no longer be enabling the chat feature during our meetings this follows the practice of the county commission and of the great majority of municipalities around the state so people wishing to pull an item of course can still do so from the consent agenda but as it says on our website they must do so about two o'clock on the day of the meeting and to do that they can go to the www www www.dermansy.gov go to the city council page and they will find the agenda center there so just wanted to let you all know that and appreciate your the opportunity to make the announcement Madam Mayor go to him thank you Mr. Mayor so I believe our next task is to settle the agenda before we go into closed session oh we have we have uh appointment sorry Madam Clerk please go ahead good afternoon everyone I have a very short report the Durham cultural affairs cultural advisory board nomination as Connor Nielsen the Durham workers rights commission appointment representing diverse backgrounds is Deshaun B. Campbell and Abigail C. Wooten and the Mayor's Hispanic Latino committee appointments representing Hispanic Latino individuals of Hispanic Latino descent there are three Denise Kasseb Luis F. Oliveieri Robert and Mo Rivera and that's the end of my report thank you you're welcome all righty now I think we settle the agenda thank you Madam Manager uh thank you Madam Mayor Pro Tem members of the council for consent I have items one through five and items seven through 15 and for public hearings items 18 through 20 thank you I have a motion on the agenda so moved seconded moved by council member Freeman seconded by council member Freelon Madam Clerk would you call the roll please mere sure ah Mayor Pro Tem Johnson aye council member Freelon aye council member Freeman aye and council member Middleton I will die thank you thank you our next item is a closed session how do folks feel about a five-minute break we've been sitting here for a good while okay we'll take a five-minute break and return for a closed session


First instinct versus first instinct extreme versus first instinct blue Hey, what's up guys, it's Josh here. I just want to do a quick little comparison video today I've reviewed all these as separate videos that have been testing them side by side giving them all their own day of wearing I do have a definite winner of which one is my favorite So I'm gonna kind of go over all three really quick and then explain which one I like the best and which one is best for You starting off with the first first instinct I did post the very first video about this and then a several others posted a lot better videos and Eventually caught on a lot of high-pricing how many people in the fragrance community started to hype this fragrance and give it the praise It deserves normally with Abercrombie people just never give it the light of day will they say that oh fierce was good And back in the day, but it sucks now It's basically all everyone's gonna say this one actually caught traction being posted as being a teeny-bopper fragrance It kind of is to me that that's the one problem with it It's really enjoyable, but it's almost unisex or Teenagery it's hard for me to comment if I would want to wear this as a teen It's definitely more youthful They usually find that I get better attention and compliments when I wear manly style sense even at that age You know the more manly might be better But besides that the smell is very good tropical light a little bit transparent It's got a little bit of a boozy vibe in there, too But generally it was just a little bit too youthful for me this time around Although it is it's pretty nice and for the right person. It's definitely worth keeping in your collection It's definitely worth trying because it is pretty solid and it's really not that much smells like it It's just too youthful for me where I'm at in my journey. All right first instinct extreme It's more of a normal style set in my opinion the original first instinct has parts of it that make it a little bit more Unique it's almost a little transparent which is kind of a little bit hard to pull off in the right fragrance This is also a little bit tropical. I would say so it pulls on a lot of things. It's sweet. It's fresh. It's tropical It's transparent. It's got a little bit of pepper a little bit of boosiness in there This one's a little bit more simple. I think it's supposed to have like some leather and stuff in the background I'll put the notes on the screen. It smells probably about 90% the same It's hard for me to recommend this if you don't like the original first instinct because it definitely has that same Familiar style fruity sweetness that you get with the original this one's just so much more easy to wear I can't really explain why I didn't actually mind wearing this when I'd wear the other two I would just be like this is just a little bit too off for me I would say this one is a little bit less unique, but it's also so much more wearable It definitely loses a little bit of uniqueness compared to the original first instinct blue And I had a lot of good things to say about first instinct blue. I actually really do like it It's really unlike the first instinct line They keep the bottle, but it's really just not like a blue version of first instinct at all I would say it's closer to Abercrombie if it's fierce or something like parfums de Marley Percival A little bit of sweetness a little bit of fresh a little bit of blue well done for the price The only problem with this one and again if in the future if it changes, but this one has terrible terrible projection guys Like I could spray this, you know, maybe 10 times and then maybe an hour and a half It you probably wouldn't smell almost anything or I wouldn't think out anybody would really smell me with it I've talked to a subscriber of mine a few other people have tried it and they get a little bit better projection longevity Even compared to the original first instinct. I felt like this. I'm spraying almost nothing on there And it's unfortunate because this one might be number one out of the first instinct line But again, it's just so unlike first instinct. It seems a little bit like a cash grab Whereas first instinct extreme actually is a little bit different and it's definitely worth Creating a new bottle different but enough to be called first instinct. This one's really not however I really do like the smell. I really do enjoy the smell to great smell Great $20 fragrance for a blue fragrance to be somewhat unique and for me to recommend it is a little bit rare The longevity and projection. I just couldn't do it So what do I recommend out of all these if you really really really really like fierce I recommend trying this one.  It definitely lasts a decent amount But then I just noticed like it overspray It just goes away But if you can picture a blue fierce and you like fierce definitely get this for $20 you get a huge bottle For me, the winner was ever coming fish first instinct extreme It just was so much more easy to wear. It's more full. It's less transparent It's a little bit less feminine or unisex-y the smell smells great on both But there's just a little bit of like a femininity that it's hard for me to get over in the first one Just personally, I'd recommend this one if you're really young. I would recommend this one But again, I would say this is just a tad less unique But so much more wearable at the same time. This one's more unique more youthy and then I guess fierce blue That's just for people who really want a blue fierce. I recommend that. So anyways guys, that's been my review I'm going to go with first instinct extreme is my favorite. Let me know if you've tried any of these three Are they too youthful for you? Do you incorporate them? Do you like any of these? I would be very interested to see down below We're in the road of 25,000 subscribers and I couldn't do without any of you guys Let's hope you guys are the best. I'm having a great day out here. Hopefully you're having a great day at home See you all in the next video. Peace Um you I definitely


Hello, and welcome to the Webmaster Conference Lightning Talk series. In this series, we share short versions of the content that we might share at Webmaster Conferences around the world as well. This time, we will talk about everyone's favorite links in JavaScript web apps. Alright, I think everyone who has ever used the web has seen them. They take users from one page to another, either within the same site or on another site. They were the killer feature of the web when it was introduced, and they are a pretty big deal today as well. But besides letting users navigate between different content, they also serve an important purpose for bots and search engines, such as Google Search. First and foremost, they allow crawlers to find other pages of your website and move from page to page by finding the links in a page and then following them. The other important purpose is that by following links, the crawler gains an understanding of site structure and information architecture. This is helpful when understanding what pages might be relevant to a given topic. But now, how do you make a link? It turns out that this isn't as straightforward as one might think. The most straightforward way to put a link on your website is to just use a good old A tag with the URL of the page it points to in the href attribute. You may also sprinkle a little bit of JavaScript on your link. That's absolutely fine. This way the link stays functional and you can upgrade it with JavaScript functionality too. Now, you may consider leaving out the href attribute, but that's not a good idea. This way the link only works when JavaScript works properly and crawlers can't really find out where the link goes to. This is making your link more brittle, so it's better to avoid it. It also doesn't help to add an href attribute without a useful URL or with a pseudo URL like this JavaScript URL here. The result is the same as with the link without an href attribute. It's not a good idea. Using a button might seem an option, but that's not a good idea either. The rule of thumb is if it does something on the current page, it should probably be a button. If it takes the user to a different piece of content that wasn't on the page before, it should be a link. It's worthwhile to say that you also shouldn't simulate links by using any other HTML element and, you know, add a click handler in JavaScript. This breaks the build-in accessibility features and isn't a good idea either. That all goes to say, use semantic HTML link markup and point your link to a proper URL. So what's a proper URL? Well, we've ruled out pseudo URLs like the JavaScript colon, something, something, but let's take a look at URLs for a moment. These URLs are typical examples. There's a protocol, basically the language that it's spoken when accessing the URL, in this case HTTP or HTTPS. It also has a host, example.com here, so a name that some computer or multiple computers respond to. Last but not least, it also has a path to a specific piece of content on that computer. This URL here also has another part, a fragment identifier. That fragment identifier isn't a different piece of content. If we leave it out, we get the same content. What the fragment identifier does, though, is it points to a specific part of the document. And here's the thing, because fragments aren't meant to point to different content, colonists ignore them. They just pretend that the fragments don't exist. But that means if you build a single page application with URLs that look like this, crawlers won't follow these links. So to sum it all up, use proper link markup. Do not use fragment URLs for links that you want crawlers to discover and follow. And you should be building websites that work well with JavaScript, and the links will be found. Thank you very much for listening. Have a great time and see you soon again.