DIRECTOR ED LAKE UPDATE, AUGUST 2013

Director Ed Lake: I wanted to take this opportunity, having finished my seventh month in DHS and we're starting a new fiscal year, to talk to you a little about what I've been learning from you and from our stakeholders, and legislators and others across the state. 

First of all, I've learned that this is a very dedicated workforce. There are so many employees who are working really hard every day to live up to the standards that we aspire to. But I've also learned that there are extremely high expectations of us from our citizens across the state that we do perform to a very high level and I know you take that seriously and I certainly take it seriously. This first seven months has been every bit as interesting and challenging and rewarding as I thought it would be and as I hope you feel your jobs are. 

No Audio: Director Lake visiting offices across the state.

This summer I'm starting to visit all of our offices across the state, looking forward to meeting folks. I've planned to do this all the way through December to try to cover all of our many offices. I've already learned, for example, that the Guymon office is a long way away and it's really flat out there. 

Fortunately, I've learned a few other things than that that are more valuable. For example, through the beginning of my administration here we conducted the listening tours and we have also polled employees to get additional feedback. We have a survey that you completed that helps us understand what's important to our employees all across the state. We started the "Ask Ed" website and this is just a few of the "Ask Ed" pieces that have come in. 

We have been accumulating all of this feedback, whether it was from the survey, from the beginnings of my county office visits, from the "Ask Eds" and all manner of other ways of listening and hearing from employees, to develop some action plans. It's important to me that if we are going to craft goals and objectives in a strategic plan that that be a very much in the near-term focus. That we want to get cracking on some of the issues that are important to this department and important to you as employees. 

As an executive team, we've been working to bring together a road map of where we want to be going. There's no reason to say, "Well we want to do this and we want to do that," and not have a coherent plan for getting there. And that's something that you will be seeing in the coming weeks from us. Essentially, we think we've got four important goals here in Oklahoma DHS to accomplish. 

No Audio: Stronger Oklahomans

First of all it's our service to our client population, to Oklahomans, that we're here to help people lead safer, healthier, more independent lives. We are going to accomplish that by working very hard to engage our communities to work with us towards that effort to improve the lives of Oklahomans. 

No Audio: Stronger Workforce

But we're not going to get there without an engaged and supported and effective workforce. Study after study after study has shown that a satisfied, engaged and supported workforce provides better customer service and produces better results than any other type of workforce. And that's what we're going to strive to do. 

No Audio: Stronger Practices

And then, last but not least, a goal will be that we'll be a department that has a culture of continuous improvement. In other words, we're never going to be satisfied with the way we're doing things now. We're constantly going to be critiquing what we do and trying to do it better. There is always a better way to do things. 

Now let's turn our attention to what's really on your mind and that has to do with the lack of salary increases. That was A-Number 1 when I first came to the department. We tried to explain why our employees and other state employees needed attention salary-wise and during this session of the legislature. But the legislature decided that what we needed to do was do an independent study - look at salaries across departments and across state government. And, even more particular, to see if we could work to develop a pay plan that was more performance-based. 

That study should be completed this fall and hopefully will be ready for legislature to consider this next session. I'm optimistic that movement will finally be made on this issue, but what form that takes, I have no idea at this point. 

No Audio: OKDHS Budget by Division showing how the money is divided seven ways.

I did want to take a couple of minutes to explain why DHS can't simply provide salary increases itself for our employees. We are allocated funds, usually for specific purposes. When appropriated money we're basically told, "This is what the money is supposed to go to." We do have payroll funds that we use, of course, to pay our employees. 

No Audio: OKDHS Budget by Category showing how the money is divided three ways with no money left over.

But we don't have any extra money that doesn't go for operations or programs and services and some of our overhead like our buildings and supplies and communications and equipment and systems and all those things that help run our offices. So there's not much left over that we can plug back in to our payroll. 

The other problem is that it's an ongoing expense. So for example, within the monies that we have allocated for payroll, there will be times when we have turnover that creates what we call "slippage" or lapsed funding. It simply means there's a difference between how much was allocated for payroll and how much is actually spent during the year. Because when we have turnover, there are often times periods when there is no money being paid out for that particular position. 

Now some of that money is eroded by virtue of our, what we call "double fills," where there are more than one person is occupying a position. So some of our lapsed funding for payroll is taken up in providing for those double fills that have become really essential for helping us meet our workload demands in certain areas of the department. Even with the slippage at the end of the year there's not enough money there left over to fund pay raises for our employees. 

Another example, specifically, if we were to provide just a 2.5% salary increase for all department employees who qualified, it would cost on the order of $6.5 million total. It would be about $3 million in state funds with the rest being federal matching funds. We're not going to accumulate that significant amount of money through payroll slippage and on top of that, that cost accrues year after year after year. 

So slippage is basically one time money that we sometimes can carry over into the next year, but that's about it. It isn't funding that's there for the next five years. That's why this department has such difficulty - with as many employees as it has and the cost to do a modest pay increase - why we can't just do it ourselves and why we're dependent on statewide appropriations for pay increases. 

One last thing that I would like to talk about today that has come up through the "Ask Eds" and also through other means, and I've noticed already on my office visits, are concerns about the state of affairs in our offices. We have some beautiful offices but we have many that are not up to standards and that's something we're going to be working on. 

Again, that's a costly proposition and we are going to set priorities for how we attack these problems, but we are going to address facility issues as quickly as we can with the funding that we'll have to do that with. Also, overcrowding is a major problem because of the dramatic influx of new Child Welfare positions and I know that there are offices that... it's just almost an intolerable situation with space for workers. 

And believe me, we are working as fast as we possibly can to alleviate that issue. Please bear with us. I can tell you I know how it feels. I can remember when I started out with the Department of Human Services in Tennessee and shared office space with another employee in a hallway between wall lockers in an old school building. 

No Audio: Director Lake visiting county offices.

I really look forward to seeing all of you during my county office visits and having chance to see your offices and meet you, talk about what issues concern you. In the meantime, keep up the good work. I think we're getting better and I appreciate the energy and enthusiasm that you have for helping us be the department we want to be.