· While the Department maintains a strong internal technical training program pertaining to current planning and several employees believe that training overall is well done, many others are unaware of any training activity or of benefits available through labor negotiations. Still others see training as accessible only to "favored" employees and as funded by the non-profit support group for the Planning Department, "Friends of Planning." The overwhelming single staff complaint was the lack of professional development opportunities as compared to the technical training in daily operations. It is important for the Department to support professional development activities because it demonstrates awareness of staff appreciation, can be used as a performance incentive, and funding outside the Department"s budget is available.

· This is an issue that adversely affects morale because the perception of a sizeable number of employees is of an inequitable distribution of a benefit that should be equally available to all. Many employees in this Department hold advanced degrees and want to further broaden their skill/knowledge base. Also, some view the funding of certain activities by the Friends of Planning as a situation in which staff generally should not participate because of a perceived conflict of interest. Use of such funding requires appropriate policies and procedures to eliminate any possible conflict and to ensure equitable and reasonable distribution of benefits across the entire Department.

Training

Training and employee/staff development are terms commonly applied to activities that improve skills and competencies of employees in order to increase operating efficiency and organizational effectiveness. Training represents an investment in the organization"s most important resource, its people, and is also viewed as a benefit to employees as they expand their repertoire of marketable skills.

The Budget Analyst examined three basic categories of training activities in this effort: external (technical) training, internal (technical) training, and staff development. Our findings in each category are discussed in the following section, along with the training-related feedback from the focus groups.

External Training

External training involves classes conducted outside of the Department and for which varying levels of recognition and support are available. Ostensibly, such classes are generally related to the work in which the employee is engaged and requires supervisor approval in advance in order to qualify for reimbursement.

A tuition reimbursement program was conducted through the Department of Human Resources in an arrangement with the University of California Berkeley Extension Program. This was a one-time, negotiated-benefit program with centralized funding outside of the Department"s budget and a cap on the total amount available to the City over a two-year period. Exhibit 12.1 below shows the number of staff members by classification and organizational unit who participated in this external training over the 17-month period (beginning Summer Semester 2000) for which training records were available.

Exhibit 12.1
External Training Participation by Unit and Reimbursement

In summary, 24 staff members (20% of the professional staff), in 7 different position classifications and representing all 5 organizational units, attended a total of 30 different external training classes and received $19,955 in tuition reimbursement during a recent 17-month period. Participants in these technical training classes for the most part were planners and staff members in the Department"s Information Services Division. The distribution by classification of employees who participated in external technical training is shown in Exhibit 12.2.

Exhibit 12.2
External Training Participation by Classification

The point of this level of actual and planned activity is that the Department conducts internal technical training sessions an average of from 5.3 times per month to as many as 8.7 times per month. Our examination indicates that an average of approximately seven classes per month was the actual class frequency during this period with excellent attendance, averaging 10 to 15 employees per class.

Technical training in the Neighborhood Planning Division is vigorous because of demands imposed by the high volume of development applications routinely processed and the City"s complex Planning Code.¹ The training is successful mainly because one staff member in the Division is responsible for coordinating it. Although some of the technical issues commonly addressed in other Divisions make their way into the Neighborhood Planning training curriculum, the full range of training needs in the other Divisions does not receive the same level of attention as those in Neighborhood Planning due to their lack of dedicated training coordinators. In addition, the training needs of the other divisions generally are not seen as being as challenging as they are in Neighborhood Planning. An example of unresolved concern in training includes the practice of "sink-or-swim" service provision versus assigning persons to work in the Public Information Center only after they are properly trained. While this applies to all Divisions and not solely Neighborhood Planning; the impact is more pronounced in Neighborhood Planning because of the Planning Code complexity.

Staff Development

Staff Development activities are those best described as generally non-technical training in terms of day-to-day operations and other experiential learning that occur within the broader conceptual framework of the professional planning discipline and its many related subtopics. These activities are often viewed as intellectually and career-enhancing types that ensure participants remain current with state-of-the-art planning theory and practice. Some employees typically tend to think of staff development as an employer"s way of rewarding exceptional performance while many other employees see it as an employer"s method for investment preservation and appreciation. The Department benefits in reputation and returned commitment from having leading professionals on staff who feel they are valued.

In addition to the training funds in the Department"s annual appropriation, the City and County of San Francisco provides other means to underwrite the cost of employee training and development activities. Many planners are not aware of the availability of these resources, an important finding by the audit team.

While the different perspectives described above hold more commonality than disparity, the levels of managerial commitment, organizational sophistication and, most importantly, financial resources determine the effectiveness of a given staff development program. Public-sector agencies do not always have the ability to implement them, especially over long periods and in times of economic uncertainty and downturns. There are two major exceptions to this in the Planning Department: (1) benefits negotiated through labor representation, and (2) Friends of City Planning.

Negotiated Benefits

Planners in the City and County of San Francisco are represented by the INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION of PROFESSIONAL and TECHNICAL ENGINEERS, LOCAL 21, AFL-CIO. The memorandum of understanding between Local 21 and the City for 2001-02 and 2002-03 contains the following section:

IV.A. EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT FUND

Thus, about 90 Department employees represented by Local 21 have access to funding outside the Department"s budget for staff development activities through this negotiated benefit. Our examination revealed through the focus group sessions that only a relatively small number of represented employees was aware that this benefit is available. This was unfortunate in light of the general sentiment that not enough is done in the area of staff development.²

Friends of San Francisco City Planning

The Friends of San Francisco City Planning is a California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation dedicated to providing financial support to the Department in areas of need that are not or cannot be funded through the Department"s regular budget. Many -but certainly not all-of the participants in and donors to this organization are persons who are served by the Department or require departmental approval for any number of development projects.³ The Friends host an annual dinner as the primary source of contributions. Approximately twice each year, in response to an email solicitation to all staff, proposals are forwarded by staff members to the internal Liaison for the Friends. The Liaison packages the proposals administratively, then forwards them to the Director of Planning who makes the final selection(s) -with modifications as deemed appropriate-and submits it/them to the Friends for approval and funding.⁴ The Friends fund special projects and programs that fulfill the following criteria:

One of the more notable and conspicuous contributions by the "Friends" is the public computer in the Public Information Center on the first floor at 1660 Mission Street. A less visible, but nonetheless notable contribution is funding for attendance at various conferences and seminars by selected staff members. Similarly, the group supplied funding for a series of technical professionals to come in and provide a series of lectures to Department staff, for a transportation periodical subscription, for a set of environmental reference documents, and for a hand-held height measuring device .

Department employees have mixed reactions to the use of "Friends" funding, in part due to perceived conflict of interest and, in part, because of the perceived unavailability of any alternative funding for staff development activities. Also, some employees believe that this specific funding is available only to so-called favored staff members. The audit team found evidence neither to corroborate nor to contradict that favoritism serves as a determinant in selecting grant recipients. However, the absence of written guidelines and procedures does not help the Department in administering this program. For more than 20 years various organizations have provided financial support to municipal agencies restricted by their access to ad valorem funding.⁶ This is neither a conflict nor illegal. It is not unprecedented in the City and County of San Francisco.⁷ For the Planning Department the matter is compounded by the fact that the Department exercises regulatory authority over indirect benefactors who contribute to the Friends of Planning. Eliminating the perception of conflict will not occur quickly, but it can begin by establishing and distributing procedures for the selection of successful grants. Currently, there are none.

Training Feedback from Focus Groups

Another view of training adequacy was obtained through feedback in the various staff focus groups. One of the more significant responses in this regard pertained to professional development or, more accurately, the perceived lack of opportunities for it. Another significant one had to do with the appropriate type of training necessary for more effective utilization of the support staff.

Comments from the individual focus groups covered a wide spectrum of views and the audit team assembled them into the broad categories shown below with representative comments included for illustration.

1. Training policies and procedures are seen by staff as being adequate.

• Management"s support of training is much improved over the past;

• Training, generally, is encouraged;

2. Actual training practice in the Department is seen by staff as being inconsistent.

• Neither technical training nor procedural manuals are provided for the Citywide Planning Division;

• Technical training provided in house is OK;

• Allocate more time for training (interpreted as release time away from work assignments);

• Many employees won"t take money from the Friends of City Planning because they would feel soiled; however, things are so pathetic in terms of training resources that this is often the only source for training activities that are desperately needed;

• Training is sometimes provided without any implementation follow through;

• We didn"t know these resources were available.

3. There is a felt need for inter-divisional and functional cross training.

• There is no structure or integration between the Department"s units, a matter that begs the question of procedures and requirements for inter-Divisional interaction and the concomitant training;

• Training occurs on an individual basis-there is no coordination or group emphasis;

4. Specific types of training are desired.

• Professional (career) development does not happen;

• Provide staff training for dealing with the public in such areas as making presentations, handling abusive applicants, etc.;

• Clerical Support staff seem intimidated by demands of the new technology and their impact on the staffs" evolving role.

  This span of comments covers the major areas of concern cited by focus group participants and they are not listed in priority or rank order. However, they suggest that some steps can be taken almost immediately at virtually no cost to simply provide information to employees regarding available training and staff development resources. They also suggest areas in which management can take further steps to ensure an equitable distribution of training resources. Importantly, the training feedback from focus groups helped to identify areas in which the Department should conduct analyses of work processes to determine how they might be reconfigured to capitalize on available and emerging technologies. This is crucial as the Department moves toward the utilization of Web-based technologies in delivering planning services more effectively.

Conclusion

Technical training made available through external resources appears to be evenly used if not widely so in the Department. A vigorous technical training regimen is maintained in Neighborhood Planning because of dedicated staff resources, but the other Divisions do not enjoy this benefit to the same degree because they lack similar resources and their training needs are different but not as great. Staff development activities are seen as being from non-existent to available only to favorites. While many employees remain unaware of other resources available to them for staff development purposes, others decry the use of grants from the Friends of City Planning for this purpose. Other areas of unresolved concern in training include the practice of "sink-or-swim" service provision versus assigning persons to work in the Public Information Center only after they are properly trained⁸; cross training of planners in the different Divisions, particularly those involved in the area where policy and current planning converge; and all areas of technical service insufficiency identified by staff may not necessarily lend themselves to a training solution -it is possible that some could be remedied by administrative change.

Recommendations

Based on the above findings, it is recommended that the Director of the Planning Department:

12.1 Ensure that all classifications of employees are regularly made aware of the resources available and procedures required to access them for participation in the full range of training and development activities related to the various functional specializations of the Department;

12.2 Update the Department"s policies and procedures as necessary to reflect and facilitate access to training and development resources;

12.3 Establish a policy clearly stipulating that all donations from the Friends of Planning must be of a nature and for products or services that benefit the Department as a whole and not just individuals;

12.4 Create the corresponding procedures to implement the policy in 12.3, above;

12.5 The Department should periodically review problem areas in the provision of technical services to determine where administrative or procedural modifications seem warranted as well as cost effective and possibly more appropriate than training solutions;

12.6 Examine ways in which effective functional integration and cross training can be achieved among the Department"s major Divisions and implement a pilot program to accomplish this;

12.7 In the light of work process changes resulting from emerging technologies, evaluate the overall support staff function and determine how, if necessary, it might be restructured to ensure optimum utilization and effectiveness in the different Divisions; and,

12.8 Monitor the Department"s training and staff development activities and report on them to the Planning Commission annually.

Costs and Benefits

The costs to implement the above recommendations are seen as negligible as no capital expenditure is necessary and the one-time administrative costs associated with the recommendations would be absorbed by the existing staff.

Benefits of the above recommendations would include updated policy and procedures, and improved communications and morale as well as an even better trained work force. Additionally, management can be seen as responsive to a specific concern voiced by rank-and-file employees.

¹ For example, there are more than 80 different zoning districts in the City.

² Please refer to the section on Training Feedback from Focus Groups, below.

³ Included among this class of participants are project owners, project representatives, builders, contractors, architects, attorneys, etc.

⁴ Funding for each round of grants has averaged around $20,000 over the past three years.

⁵ Funding for each round of grants has averaged around $20,000 over the past three years.

⁶ Proposition 13, approved by the California electorate in 1978, imposes a cap on the amount of ad valorem taxes and annual increases

⁷ An example is the Friends of Recreation and Parks.

⁸ This item is addressed more fully in the PIC section of this report.