PSHRA's Public Eye Podcast: Recent Episodes
Public Sector HR Association
Ellie Voepel, Human Resources Director with the City of Garden City Kansas, joins us to discuss the keys to a successful sick leave donation program: what prompted them to implement one, the challenges along the way, the tangible benefits the organization realized, and what surprised her most about the experience.
Laura Putnam is a workplace well-being expert, international public speaker, and author of "Workplace Wellness That Works." Laura has worked with over 15,000 CEOs and managers to implement workplace well-being strategies. Our conversation centers on the five ways employers can prioritize their employees' well-being.
Sandie Coutts is the Human Resources Director for the Jefferson Center for Mental Health. We speak about what brought her from the UK to the US in 2001, the lessons on leadership she took from the pandemic, and the lure that meaningful work has for today’s younger cohort entertaining a career in the private sector.
Dr. Kelly Drummond is the Director of HR for the City of Knoxville (TN). Dr. Drummond brings over 30 years of experience in developing employee relationships, succession planning, and policy development. She joins us to discuss her “sustaining” model and how it can help female HR professionals get a seat at the table and ensure they have a valued voice at the table.
Hank Kim is Executive Director and Counsel for NCPERS - the National Conference of Public Employee Retirement Systems. We discuss what public agencies are doing regarding retirement planning, the challenges facing HR in light of the "silver tsunami," and whether pensions are the answer to the public sector worker shortage.
Alexander Volberding is a Labor Relations Attorney at Liebert Cassidy Whitmore. He has spent much of his 15+ year career working for and on behalf of public agencies in the State of California. We discuss labor strikes in the public sector and what agencies need to know in order to be prepared.
Dr. Leslie Blanchard is executive director of the Leadership Development Institute at Louisiana State University. She joins us to discuss the LADDER assessment and coaching system she developed to help public sector employees - at all levels - develop "leadership capacity." Dr. Blanchard talks about adapting/evolving leadership skills to meet the changing needs and expectations of today's workforce. (LADDER stands for Leadership Alphabet of Disposition Development
Engagement and Reflection.)
Cara Woodson Welch, the executive director of PSHRA, and Gerald Young, Senior Analyst with Mission Square Research Institute, discuss the State and Local Workforce 2023 report, an annual survey of human resource professionals that tracks key challenges facing state and local governments in the recruitment and retention of talented employees and the strategies being employed to manage and compensate those staff (https://tinyurl.com/3e2zyh8h). They speak to the report’s most salient – in some cases, surprising – findings, and the implications for public sector agencies going forward.
Liza Zamd, a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, spoke to us in her role as a board member at the DOJ Gender Equality Network (GEN), an employee advocacy group. We discussed the unjust impact on women and minorities when salary history is used to set pay in their workplaces, the group's advocacy for pay equity government-wide, and other pay issues in the federal workforce.
Mark McGraw, the editor of Public Eye, PSHRA's bi-monthly digital magazine, joins us to discuss several of the top articles in the June-July issue: The Future is Flexible, finds public sector employers working to find the right balance between remote and in-person work; Stressed in the Public Sector, which delves into burnout that is more prevalent in the public sector and ways to mitigate it. Flexibility as a benefit is a recurring theme throughout the issue. We discuss these and other timely topics from the latest issue of Public Eye.
Shelline Bennett is the Managing Partner of Liebert Cassidy Whitmore’s Fresno Office and has represented public agencies for over 20 years. TikTok is just starting to make inroads in the workplace. Shelline helps demystify TikTok: how it works, what makes it different (vs. other social platforms), who is using it, and why Congress and the Biden Whitehouse have banned it. We discuss the delicate balance between an employee’s first amendment rights and making sure employees aren’t using it to share inappropriate content, as well as how public sector agencies can use it to reach a younger talent pool.