A. Engage an organizational psychologist to identify gaps and opportunities to enhance agency culture.

B. Improve internal communication and collaboration among teams and team members by identifying best practices and creating a set of behavioral expectations.

C. Create a strategy to engage and grow relationships with IPS leadership and agencies, university leadership, and university departments.

A. Ensure consistent and systematic posting of position vacancies on websites and in professional associations.

B. Create and house a collection of resources, tools, and templates to improve search, selection, and onboarding practices.

1. Through a firm, develop a standard package for MTAS positions.

2. Shorten the hiring time.

3. Provide a realistic job preview.

4. Administer an assessment center for each consultant vacancy.

C. Develop a comprehensive new employee onboarding process that emphasizes support, promotes relationship building, and ensures consistency in agency processes and procedures.

A. Create and promote opportunities for two-way communication, such as Q&A sessions, open-door policies, and/or anonymous feedback platforms, where employees can voice concerns and ask questions directly to leadership.

B. Align leadership communication across all levels of the agency by conducting annual employee evaluation of leadership communication for consistency, clarity, and timeliness.

C. Improve communication and collaboration between leadership and employees by identifying best practices and standardizing communication processes.

D. The leadership team will complete annual training on leadership topics such as effective communication, active listening, empathy, and the ability to convey complex information in an accessible way.

E. Create and maintain a strategic plan dashboard to track progress on goals.

A. Create a working group to evaluate current performance measures and metrics.

B. Once performance measures are evaluated, identify appropriate measures and benchmarks for each position.

C. Create position-based metrics and apply consistently across the agency.

A. Form a dedicated cross-functional team that will identify recalibration points, gaps, and inconsistencies. Compile findings into a report that will be shared agency wide.

A. Identify a process to create, house, and maintain standards of practice.

B. Design a template to create and format standards of practice. Pilot the template for feedback.

C. Train staff to implement the process and use the template.

D. Create standards of practice at the agency, leadership team, and program team levels.

1. The leadership team, working with their team members, will identify a list of standards needed at the agency level.

2. Program managers will work with their team members to develop a list of standards of practice needed at the team level.

3. The leadership team will review team-level progress for feedback and/or approval.

A. Update and expand the development process for professional publications such as articles and information resources.

B. Proactively develop content for newsletters and publications in the different consulting areas.

A. Hire a new position or contract with a firm to oversee and implement strategy for customer outreach and marketing, including recruitment efforts to promote open positions.

B. Evaluate the efficacy of existing customer communication practices and types of information shared with customers.

1. Identify and implement improvements to customer communication and outreach.

2. Develop an annual report that effectively communicates our impact and accomplishments in support of municipalities.

3. Provide internal training and resources on consistent agency branding and best practices in information accessibility across communication modes.

4. Develop and deploy a customer-facing app to facilitate communication.

C. Evaluate and improve the quality of MTAS website functionality and content.

1. Work with a website design and implementation company to design, develop, and launch an improved website to enhance customer experience.

2. Determine key metrics for web analytics.

3. Gather usage statistics and identify trends to guide information development.

4. Optimize the search function to enable searching the entire website.

5. Identify and implement best practices to maintain the most current city directories.

A. Identify and respond to customer needs by conducting: 1) an annual customer satisfaction survey, and 2) a biennial training needs assessment.

B. Provide municipal leaders with a template that outlines employment best practices and establishes benchmarks for excellence.

C. Provide municipal leaders with a set of service quality assessment and improvement tools by researching the best methods for customer surveys and feedback.

D. Provide municipalities with resources to assess workforce and community engagement.

E. Offer training opportunities on emotional intelligence, civility, and related topics that support municipal leaders in forging meaningful, productive relationships at work and with the public.

F. Identify the needs of our customers as they relate to artificial intelligence (AI) and related technology and develop a responsive strategy to provide necessary resources.