Wednesday, March 17, 2010

New Hires

I'm not suggesting that new hires to the city will have quite the rough ride that is depicted on the left, but certainly, challenges lie ahead.

In a gutsy move, City Manager Chris Murray is doing an overhaul of sorts, of his team. As reported by Andrew Dreschel in The Spec, Chris is hiring two new influential advisors to help guide the city's priorities.

His existing staff will need to re-apply if they are interested in keeping their jobs. He’s also bringing the city's legal department under his preview. The jobs are posted and if existing staff apply and don't succeed, they are to be shuffled into other departments. The postings are open to outsiders as well.

The rehaul will not add more costs to Murray's budget, as the money will be had from other departments.


Murray rejects the notion that the rehaul demonstrates a lack of confidence in his staff. Murray reasons that the city will need strong support as it takes on the Pan Am Games and continues to pursue Light Rail.

The re-org, includes hiring a new senior advisor of Inter-Governmental affairs, charged with liaising with Queen's Park and Ottawa.

 Chris is definitely showing some leadership here. Are you surprised by the rehaul? Do you agree with it? Do you think this will result in new people entering the fold, or promotions/re-hires from within? Do you find this encouraging?

8 comments:

  1. Brian Henley +Mar 17, 2010 05:35 PM
    On the surface, Mr. Murray's shake up has potential...for his office. I think the blending in of the legal department under his direct supervision is very good - that area of the city's administration is performing at an exceptionally sub par level.
    A similar shake up among the department heads could be equally as helpful as well.
    City staff are generally very good - the problems are the majority of the councillors. .. that is where changes are really needed.
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  2. Just like the councilors, there are too many people management/directors that have been there far too long and who under-perform. Mr. Murray should stop protecting them.

    Inside Staff
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  3. "The jobs are posted and if existing staff apply and don't succeed, they are to be shuffled into other departments. The postings are open to outsiders as well."

    In the REAL world, they'd be tossed on their butts

    Elvis P.
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  4. Sounds to me like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic or kicking everyone off your Island, then asking then to re-apply or be banished to some other Island down at city hall.

    How this executive purge and circling of the wagons got past Human Resources and the Unions, without hefty severance pay to go with it, is a question that begs to be answered?
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  5. I think this management shuffle should begin one level higher.
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  6. I agree with Tom's comment about starting the management shuffle one level higher. 7 more months to go and painfully counting.

    Lorne
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  7. Just like other bloggers mentioned Ican’t see how the city can get away with this. No doubt that these executives have received good work performance evaluation in the past as well as receiving yearly financial bonus thus rewarding job well done. To fire everybody and asks the same to re-apply for these jobs, I think that the city is exposing themselves to constructive and wrongful dismissal lawsuits by these potential fired executives. This reorganization implies the legal department as well, the fact that the department reports to Murray versus Peter Barkwell is a major issue that can be interpreted as constructive dismissal. I am all in favour in addressing staff issues, however they are laws to abide with. As MAW says, “This is Hamilton, get use to it”

    Yves Dubeau
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  8. It seems to be to another one of those publicity stunts that the City Hall management excel in. When one fails in dealing with the issues and deliver on promises, the best thing to do is to call for restructuring and move people around. This way the focus becomes the people rather than the problems and issues. Generally people will then tend to give time to the new people to settle in and as such demand or expect less. Well that approach may deal with the issues in the short term but in the long run nothing happens. That is why nothing positive is happening in the City Hall.

    If Mr Murray is so very keen on asking the employees to reapply for the jobs - then why is it that he authorized filling up of two director positions in public works without any competition last month. Why is it that under his leadership three new Senior Director positions were created and just filled up without any competition. Those positions were never advertised internally or externally. No other public sector organization do things like that.

    As a long time Hamilton resident and a long term employee of the city, I am extremely frustrated by what is going on at the City Hall. Many of my work collegues are demoralized like I, but then I guess like we all just get silent and go on with our lives and look forward to our retirements. We know too well what happens when someone muster the courage and speak up. In my 20 years, I can easily count of more than 25 people that were forced out or were forcefully thrown out of the City Hall.

    It is a terrible state of affairs here. Thanks for the this blog - gave me an opportunity to vent out. Thank you.
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