By Desiree Casanova, assistant to the county administrator, and Melanie McGill, manager of strategy development, Sarasota County, Florida.

A high-performing local government effectively and efficiently delivers services to citizens. The question is, how do you build a culture that leads to high performance? Unfortunately, it cannot be built overnight. Becoming a high-performing organization can take months, and sometimes even years, but it starts with an organization’s employees.

Mindset Is Everything

Mindset is the key to everything in all that you do, both personally and professionally. Cities/counties must first start with a core mindset that all employees can follow. The simpler, the better. For example, Sarasota County has a One Team motto where everyone in each department knows that we all help each other because we are one organization abiding by one mission and vision. When employees feel a part of something bigger than themselves, they strive to be high performers and make their organization thrive.

Employee Recognition Makes a Difference

It is critical to recognize employees for their work. The Special Thanks and Recognition (STAR) program is an internal program for Sarasota County employees, managed and administered by the STAR committee, which is composed of representatives from all county departments. The mission of the STAR Committee is to foster and support a culture of recognition for Sarasota County government employees that translates to improved outcomes and results, along with increased employee satisfaction, motivation, and engagement. 

The goals of the STAR committee are to:

1. Serve as a voice of the employees and communicate how employees want to be recognized.
2. Evaluate current employee recognition and acknowledgment programs and make recommendations to leadership.
3. Execute employee recognition programs and employee recognition events.

Within the STAR Program, there are 5 ways to recognize employees: 

1. The Super Star Award. This award can be given by any county employee to any other county employee or county team. It’s simply on-the-spot kudos for a job well done. Peer-to-peer recognition is powerful because it shows us that our colleagues see and appreciate the work that we do. Peers often know the amount of work that went into a specific project or task. When recognizing a peer with a Super Star Award, a copy is sent to the employee with a copy to the awardee's manager.  The employee is also recognized publicly via internal communications. 
2. The Stellar Award. This quarterly award is presented for above and beyond performance and contributions.  Any employee can nominate another employee for a Stellar Award.  When efforts go above and beyond what is expected, this creates a positive, memorable experience for others, worthy of recognition.  The Stellar Award not only provides this recognition, but it also offers a monetary award of $100 net dollars or a day off, employee’s choice. 
3. The Sustainability Award. This award offers recognition for employees leading sustainability efforts within the organization and celebrates employee strategies to improve environmental, economic, and social outcomes.  The Sustainability Program also promotes innovative approaches to sustainability challenges and encourages a culture of sustainability among county employees. 
4. Anniversary Service Awards. The STAR program recognizes county employees for length of continuous service, in increments of 5, 10, 15, 20 years or more, with professionally designed awards, pins, and plaques signed and presented by the county administrator at a quarterly celebration breakfast.​
5. Special Events. Special events, such as Employee Appreciation Month, encourage the entire organization to celebrate employees and their many contributions.  Employee Appreciation Month encourages each department to recognize and thank their employees in a variety of ways, including lunches, breakfasts, small gifts, handwritten notes, and even an annual baseball game with the local professional ball teams at one of their spring training games.  Every March the county celebrates Employee Appreciation Month. 

Encourage Employee Innovation/Creativity

Everything begins with an idea! Most employees know processes like the back of their hand. They know what parts take the longest, which make sense, and which do not. Encourage your employees to make processes more effective, to enhance services, and to have their suggestions taken seriously. Sarasota County implemented a Bright Ideas platform where employees are able to submit ideas to HR identifying ways in which something can be improved or created.

Some creative ideas from current employees included adding QR codes on the back of business cards that send viewers to all open Sarasota County positions and having the ePhone contact information include administrative assistant names and phone numbers.

Optimizing Value Through Teams

At Sarasota County, we form teams of highly skilled employees to explore continuous improvement recommendations for projects identified by administration, directors, and staff.

The goal of a process improvement team (PIT) is professional development for staff who learn through creating efficient workflow processes using tools and collaboration while providing value to stakeholders.

Primary goals of a process improvement team:

• Professional development.
• Improving or creating efficient processes.
• Providing value to stakeholders.

A PIT project allows Sarasota County to create a cross-functional team to provide recommendations for an identified project to administration and the project’s sponsor. A cross-functional team is a group of people from various departments with different skills who will work together to achieve a common goal. 

While the PIT team will work on solving a problem and providing recommendations, the real purpose is professional development for the staff involved. The PIT process includes using various tools and skill sets that may or may not be used on a regular basis.  PIT projects thus provide the opportunity to learn new and fine-tune different skills.

These tools can help your organization build a culture of excellence and become a high-performance organization. Always remember:

1. Mindset is everything.
2. Employee recognition makes a difference.
3. Encourage innovation/creativity.
4. Optimize value through teams.