Happy Employee Appreciation Day!

Wonderful job, County employees! You work hard, have HEART and make San Diego a great place to live and work. For Employee Appreciation Day we are giving thanks to you.

While there are countless ways to recognize your peers, the simplest is to write a “thank you” note. Share your thanks as a comment below.

With much gratitude, here are some videos, photos and notes of appreciation:

“I would like to thank the Behavioral Health Services, Quality Improvement, Performance Improvement Team for not only doing a fantastic job, but for making it enjoyable to come to work every day!”

-Chris Strows, Admin Analyst III, Behavioral Health Services, Quality Improvement, Performance Improvement Team

“I would like to post my heartfelt appreciation for ALL employees that dedicate their skills, their heart, their compassion and commitment to our SDCPH patients. Our inpatient units and emergency room staff serve 24/7 some of the most severely mental ill individuals from within the county and beyond. Each day the staff face complex decisions and dangerous circumstances. It is their dedication and humanity that provides solace and safety to these individuals and their families and ultimately the community as a whole. I am so proud and grateful to work with this staff, as part of our mission to serve.”

-Izabela Karmach, Deputy Director Departmental Operations, San Diego County Psychiatric Hospital

“I just want to thank all of my staff for continuing to provide excellent customer service not only to their customers but among themselves. I have never seen a more cohesive, strong, transparent team than DPW HR Team. I can’t thank them enough everyday but they know that I sincerely appreciate and recognize all their unselfish contributions to the department. They concentrate more on what unites them than divides them; they set aside their differences in order to advance the mission of the department and the County as a whole. Thank you, staff!”

-Lita Santos, Sr. DHRO, Department of Public Works

“A big thank you to our Office of Revenue and Recovery Team! Your efforts and hard work is greatly appreciated today and every day!!! Know you make a difference! In business, it’s important to find people you can count on. You are one of those reliable employees and one of the reasons for our success as it can never be achieved unless someone, like you, has the shared vision, commitment and desire to achieve it. Our office is enhanced by your presence. Thank you for your excellence and for being our greatest and most valuable asset! Our sincerest thanks for all your dedication, hard work and for being such an important part of our team. Words cannot describe how much you are appreciated. Best wishes for a wonderful Employee Appreciation Day and weekend!”

-Sean S. Sander, Director, Office of Revenue and Recovery

“I would like to personally thank Jayme Gravett-Miller and Connie Myrick for their contribution as team members of the Project Management Division, Department of General Services. The administrative and fiscal support they provide to all the PMD staff is exemplary. With employees like them, it makes my job as a supervisor much easier!”

-Amie Meegan, Department of General Services

 “Thank you for always being an awesome team and going the extra mile. I appreciate everyone’s hard work and dedication. Each of your individual contributions to our division’s goals and vision combined with teamwork consistently take us to the next level.  I am proud to be part of the ABO Dream Team (Apple, Dan, Erendy, -Linda, Lorena, Mary, Max, Miriam, Peter, Rissa and Rocio).”

-Ardee Apostol, Revenue & Budget Manager, Agency Budget Office, Health & Human Services Agency

“It is such a privilege to work every day with such a dedicated and professional team. This team has served over 7000 customers in 2016. You have provided the public with excellent records and protected the confidentiality of the clients served in Child Welfare Services. You are sensitive to the needs of our customers and have demonstrated excellent customer service while meeting the individual needs of our clients. I appreciate every day walking into an office where the people who work here serve the public good while maintaining a positive attitude and wanting to do more to better the quality of what we do. I am so proud to be a team member for Legal Support Services and thank each of you for all the hard work you do.”

-Marie Hommel, Protective Services Supervisor, Child Welfare Services Policy and Program Support, Legal Support Services

Rita A.M. Smith, Sr. DHRO, County Library, submitted this selfie photo with her fellow DHR employees.

CTO staff really takes the cake!

PerkSpot Alert: Save on Tax Preparation Tools

PerkSpot is offering County employees 15 percent off Turbo Tax Online federal products. You can file your taxes early and save!

PerkSpot offers benefits and discounts through hundreds of service providers and retailers, from movie theaters to florists and jewelers. Go to SDCounty.PerkSpot.com and shop. If you are new, click on “Create an Account” to register.

Each month, one of the most popular PerkSpot deals will be highlighted on InSite.

Make Ethics Your Personal Cause

Doing what is right is not always easy. March is your time to reaffirm your commitment to ethical conduct. During Ethics Awareness Month, the Office of Ethics and Compliance will host several events and opportunities for County employees to hear about upholding the highest of ethical standards.

How to Celebrate:

1. Ethics in action: Send a short (1 – 3 minute) video of “what ethics means to you” or the “dos and don’ts of ethical behavior at work” to OEC by March 24. You may win a prize and a chance to have your video highlighted on InSite, so get creative. Videos can be shot in any style—commercial, talk show, documentary or even comedy. For additional questions regarding this contest and how to submit your video, call 619- 531-5174 or email Nicole.deltorocummings@sdcounty.ca.gov.

2. The fair way: Attend the Ethics Awareness Month Information Fair from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., March 23 at the County Operations Center Commons. There will be free goodies, a raffle and resources for County employees. Confirmed participants include several County departments, employee resource groups (ERGs), and the Resource Team for Diversity & Inclusion.

3. Listen up: Join the speaker series with freshman Supervisor Kristin Gaspar from noon to 1 p.m., March 13 in the County Operations Center Chambers. Gaspar will speak about public trust.

4. Knowledge is power: Take the online Ethics 101 class. The video training can be found on LMS by searching for “ethics.” You can learn even more by visiting the Office of Ethics and Compliance on InSite to review the County’s Code of Ethics, and find answers to frequently asked questions.

5. Crash course on ethics: Complete “Ethics in a Box” team exercises. The Office of Ethics and Compliance has developed several educational exercises that can be used to lead discussions with staff and explore our Code of Ethics and Statement of Values.

County employees who suspect or are aware of fraud, waste, abuse or other misconduct by other County employees, contractors, vendors or other business partners have an obligation to report such activity to their immediate supervisor, manager, department head, Department of Human Resources or Office of Ethics and Compliance. If you’re not comfortable with any of these options, or would like to make an anonymous report, the Ethics Hotline is always an option. Call (866) 549-0004. Additionally, you are always welcome to call the Office of Ethics and Compliance for advice and/or guidance.

To learn more about ethics, visit the Office of Ethics and Compliance on InSite.

InTouch – Looking into the Future

Who doesn’t want to take a peek into the future?

Your department leaders and I recently got a glimpse, and I want to share with you a bit of what we saw. We heard from Mary O’Hara-Devereaux, who does forecasting for dozens of corporations and nonprofits.

She’s not magic, creating some crystal clear vision of the world to come. But drawing on her experience and using some scientific analysis, she’s able to paint some good outlines.

It’s not an idle daydream exercise. This is meant to get us thinking long and hard about how we prepare the County for the years ahead. And while Mary gave us the lay of the land, it will be up to us how we navigate it.

She covered a lot of ground, so I’m picking out a couple themes of particular interest for us at the County.

The first is who our customers will be. In a word: older. You may have heard of the “Silver Tsunami” bearing down on us. But hearing more details on the numbers was a wake-up call to just how dramatic this will be. By 2035, more people will be over 65 than under 21. Our fastest growing age group now is people over 85 years old.

Think about that. 85 used to be quite a milestone. Now it’s just the entry to an age bracket that will include people routinely hitting 100.

U.S. Census Bureau numbers for U.S. population.

The demands that will make on a County department like Aging and Independence Services are obvious. But it goes beyond that.

Do we have enough hiking trails or exercise equipment suitable for these advanced age people? Will our libraries have materials in the form older adults want?

Homes will need more accessibility features. How will that affect our code compliance work?

We want our customers to go online for services whenever possible. Are our websites and apps easy to read and use for all ages?

What we’ll also see is “healthy longevity.” Not just more years, but more of higher quality. So much so, that Mary sees the phase from 60 to 80 years old becoming “second middle age.” They will want to grow and have active, engaged – thriving – lives.

What do we need in place to make that possible? How can we harness their collective experience and direct it back to helping us achieve our goals?

Having so many years of life is going to totally rewrite the rules of personal financial planning. The first millennials will be eligible for Social Security in about 30 years. That means about 2047 – not that far away when we’re taking the long view – that already strained system will need to support boomers, Gen Xers and millennials at the same time.    

While we will have more people aging well, not everyone will be so lucky. The number of seniors having some kind of difficulty or another with self-care will increase dramatically. Meeting their needs for things like transportation will be an immense challenge. It’s difficult already for adult children to care for aging parents. What happens when those children are aging themselves? How will adults cope if they’re taking care of parents and grandparents?

A couple more notes about this population. We’re about at the point now where more seniors are single than married. That trend is going to continue. And women will not only keep outliving men but widen that gap.

U.S. Census BureauAre you ready to serve 95-year-old single women? Because that’s going to be a significant demographic group for us to consider. Puts a new spin on “All the Single Ladies.”

Meanwhile, we can’t ignore the other end of the age spectrum. Sorry millennials, but you’re so last decade. Generation Z is now emerging into the workforce. While we need to be wary of any sweeping generalization of generations, trend-watchers see Gen Z as distrustful of authority, but also team players. As a government, we’re the definition of authority. How do we gain the trust of these young people, seize on that desire to work as a team, and make them partners in our vision?

A big part of our challenge is figuring not just how we address one of these groups or another, but how we address all of them. That entire spectrum is stretching. How do we make a service available to someone who has never used a computer and someone who lives by Snapchat?

I’ll use that question as a bridge to the next theme I want to touch on: technology. Specifically, artificial intelligence. We’re just at the dawn of how this will change our lives.

We’re big on partnerships here at the County. Now that’s going to include collaboration between humans and machines.

What will self-driving cars mean for County roads? Or for the deputies who patrol them?

“Hey, Alexa, explain how I adopt a child.” How do we build the system that turns that into a conversation – and have that result in a new family?

AI’s ability to look across all the data we gather, analyze it, reveal connections and make predictions will be transformative. It will come into play for everything from tracking communicable diseases to fraud detection to assessing disaster risk – and on and on.   

But as Mary pointed out, technology doesn’t drive change. Human choices make change. As the power of AI enhances our work, we’ll need to focus more on the human side of the equation. The challenge that Mary calls “defining our human comparative advantage.”

That means we need to place a premium on our employees having qualities like empathy. Cross-generational, cross-cultural. Cross-anything outside our own personal experience.

We are on the right track. Know Our Customers is one of the main steps in the Customer Experience Initiative. Empathy is the essence of being trauma-informed. Our Diversity & Inclusion Initiative is designed to build understanding of one another.

Empathy is really just a form of imagination. That takes us to Mary’s final point.

Our biggest risk going forward: a failure of imagination.

Luckily – well, by design really – we’ve long stressed the importance of innovation at the County. It’s part of our culture, and I’m in awe of the great ideas I constantly see gush forth from this organization. We’ll need to imagine and innovate like never before. But even if the future is uncertain, my experience here has given me great certainty in our ability to meet the challenges ahead. With that kind of confidence, I’m excited to head into the future. See you there!

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A Series of Unusual (and Lifesaving) Events

Skylar Lane, a student worker in HHSA's Aging and Independence Services, was in the right place at the right time to adminster life-saving CPR to County Library employee Paul Klatt.

There has to be something that explains why Skylar Lane was in the right place at the right time to save the life of County Library employee Paul Klatt.

Whatever the reason, a series of unusual circumstances put Lane in position to perform CPR on Klatt when he suffered a cardiac arrest in the lobby of 5560 Overland in the County Operations Center campus.

Lane is a student worker for HHSA’s Aging & Independence Services. The incident happened on a Tuesday, which happens to be the only day of the week the UCSD student is at AIS for a full day.

Her supervisor was out of work with an illness and so another supervisor asked her if she’d like to attend a meeting with her. The regular meeting room on the third floor was in use and so the meeting was moved to one of the first floor lobby training rooms.

They decided to head down to the meeting 20 minutes before it was scheduled to start to see if they needed to rearrange the room.

And that’s when a co-worker looked out the windows on the room and said, “Someone must have fallen.”

It was Klatt, a senior office assistant for the library. He had suffered a cardiac arrest. According to the American Heart Association, the survival rate for an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in 2015 was 10.6 percent. Nearly one in three victims, however, survives if the arrest is witnessed by a bystander.

Klatt doesn’t remember what happened.

“From what I was told, I was in the lobby of our building,” he said. “Apparently I passed out, went down on one knee and had a cardiac arrest.

“I honestly don’t remember. I don’t know if I was going in or coming out of the building or what office I was in front of.”

Lane said there was only one other person in the lobby when she and her co-workers came out of their meeting room to check on Klatt.

“I saw that he was blue from the neck up,” she said.

People were yelling for someone to grab the AED (Automated External Defibrillator) and call 9-1-1 and were starting to provide first aid.

Lane knew what to do and began administering CPR until the paramedics arrived. Lane had spent six months on a first responder internship with an Israeli medical emergency service. She had performed CPR three times before but unfortunately none of those people survived.

What she had done didn’t hit her right away.

“I had so much adrenaline from doing the chest compressions,” she said. “I didn’t really take in what happened.”

She eventually returned to the meeting where she was greeted by a standing ovation.

It finally sank in when someone told her they had received word from the hospital that Klatt was in stable condition.

“I just lost it when they told me that,” she said. “When I got home, I just curled up with my dog and bawled.”

Klatt suffered two more cardiac arrests in the hospital within 24 hours of the first one.

“It’s rare to survive a cardiac arrest, and they say I’m lucky because there were people around,” he said. “They were really amazed I survived after having three of them.

“What was discovered is that I had pretty bad diabetes. That’s what caused the heart to have the arrhythmia. Based on speaking to physicians since then, I now recognize the symptoms I was having that lead up to that day.”

In one more coincidence, Lane’s senior thesis happens to be on diabetes.

Klatt hasn’t returned to work yet, but when he does he’s hoping to meet Lane.

“The first thing I’m going to say is, ‘thank you,’ and go from there,” he said. “All I can say is how grateful I am.”

Klatt said he’s also thankful for all the well wishes and prayers from co-workers. “Sometimes it takes an incident like this to tell you how important you are to people.”

“My recovery has been well and I’m doing great,” he said. “I just can’t over-exert myself.

“I can do laundry though. As long as it’s not too heavy.”

If you’re interested in becoming certified, or need to be recertified, in CPR/AED/First Aid, you can register through the County’s Learning Management System.

Employee Wellness Turns 5!

Since 2012, the County has taken wellness to the next level. Consider these milestones as we celebrate five years since the Employee Wellness Program launched: You’ve recorded an impressive 660 million steps, participated in more than 18,000 hours of onsite fitness classes, and attended 13,486 biometric screenings and had 27,231 flu shots. That’s quite the success for the first 5 years of Employee Wellness.

“The things we've accomplished together are a testament to all the hard work and engagement of our employees,” said Employee Wellness Director William Erese. “You are the heart and soul of the Wellness program.”

Here’s to the next 5 years! Learn more about Employee Wellness on InSite.

Show Your Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

"Uniquely different, united as one."

This is one of several powerful and vibrant messages on Diversity & Inclusion displays and swag you may have seen across County. The Resource Team for D&I recently created posters, colorful lanyards and other expressive items with D&I branding for employees to display and wear proudly!

Shop the Promotional Items Catalog. Many items have minimum order requirements—so get your office, or even group, in on the County initiative. Individual items may be found at Diversity & Inclusion information booths at upcoming events, including the Ethics Awareness Information Fair from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., March 23 at the County Operations Center Commons.

Learn more about the initiative and find a permanent link to the catalog on the Diversity & Inclusion Initiative website.

Relax! Meditation Sessions Are Here

Learn how to eliminate stress, gain calmness and clarity and improve your physical and emotional health through guided meditation, relaxation, visual reminders and breathing techniques at onsite Relaxation and Meditation Sessions. Learn more on Employee Wellness’s InSite page.

PerkSpot Alert: Save on Valentine’s Day Gifts

Fall head over heels in love with these Valentine’s Day deals. PerkSpot has sweet deals on chocolates and other edible gifts at retailers such as Godiva and Shari’s Berries. You can even get a 20 percent discount on flowers through 1-800-FLOWERS and FTD.

PerkSpot offers benefits and discounts to County employees through hundreds of service providers and retailers, from movie theaters to florists and jewelers. Go to SDCounty.PerkSpot.com and shop. If you are new, click on “Create an Account” to register.

Each month, one of the most popular PerkSpot deals will be highlighted on InSite.

InTouch – Stepping Up Our Fight Against Homelessness

Many of you started your day last Friday a few hours before dawn, joining the annual Point-in-Time Count of homeless people. Thank you to everyone who took part.

That tally helps determine amounts of federal funding our region receives to address homelessness. So know that dragging yourself out of bed one morning leads directly to finding beds for those who need them.

This is the fourth year the County has thrown its weight behind the count. And it’s just one of the ways in recent years that we’ve expanded our role in tackling the challenge of homelessness. It’s a role you’ll see continue to grow. I want to share a bit more about what we’ve been doing and where we’re going from here.

First of all, homelessness is an extremely complex issue. Each person without a home is an individual, as unique as you and I. Unique in background, circumstances and needs. Progress is going to take a multi-pronged approach and collaboration across our entire region. The County is playing a significant part, but we’re working with multiple partners: cities, housing agencies, service providers, hospitals and more. There may be no greater example of where we’ll need to harness the power of collective impact.     

It was just over a year ago we and a group of partners announced the launch of Project One for All. The program focuses on homeless people with serious mental illness. This is an area where the County is going to have a stronger presence because of our role in mental health service delivery.

Many of the homeless people coping with mental illness are distrustful of service providers, and that just adds to the difficulty of getting them into housing. Since the housing component of Project One for All began in July, we’ve gotten more than 200 people into bridge or permanent housing.  That’s coupled with comprehensive services meant to get them eventually taking care of themselves. The project’s goal is to extend that to 1,250 people.

The housing is made possible in part through Section 8 vouchers, which are handled by our Department of Housing and Community Development Services. That connection between mental health and housing is what led us to move HCDS into the Health and Human Services Agency, making it easier to work more closely with Behavioral Health Services.  

Having those departments work together is a natural combination, but our efforts on homelessness cross department lines in ways you may not expect. We’re providing outreach training to members of departments like Public Works, Library and Parks. They all have staff who could encounter homeless people in the course of their work. Those employees learn how to approach them and refer them to County-funded mental health resources. That someone who inspects storm drains is now involved in outreach speaks to our all-hands-on-deck strategy.   We’re bringing that training not just to our own employees, but to staff for other agencies in the region.

We continue to strengthen the collaboration with our public safety departments, because a significant number of people in the justice system struggle with mental illness. Treatment is part of the wraparound services we bring to probationers to make sure they neither reoffend nor wind up on the street.

We’re also giving extra attention to one specific set of people: homeless Medi-Cal recipients with serious mental illness, substance addiction or chronic health conditions whom we’ve identified as repeatedly winding up in emergency rooms. An enormous amount of resources gets devoted to this relatively small number of people. In response, we’re developing an effort called Whole Person Wellness, which puts an intensive focus on these individuals, getting them connected to the network of resources they need. Addressing the root causes of these recurring crises will be better for the person in the long run – and more cost-effective.

While helping homeless people with mental illness is our main area of concern, we’re exploring ways we can leverage our resources to help additional sub-groups of homeless people, like veterans, seniors, families with children.

The region has moved to the “housing first” model, but among the challenges of that approach is the availability of housing in San Diego. Last year we offered up $400,000 in incentives to landlords who will rent to homeless veterans. Under Project One for All, over $1.5 million will be used to involve landlords in solutions, including financial incentives.

Looking ahead, the state is developing a program called No Place Like Home. We’ll get a share of $2 billion that will go toward permanent supportive housing. We’re working with the state now on the details and expect to see that funding arrive in about a year.   

That’s a quick overview of a few of the recent, additional steps we’ve taken in grappling with this challenge. Like any large problem, we’re not going to see radical changes overnight. But we are in this for the long haul. We’ll continue to improve coordination with the other players in this effort, and we’ll be open-minded and flexible about trying innovative new tactics.

It all comes back, as with everything we do, to our vision of a healthy, safe and thriving region. We have a population that’s both right in our midst and disconnected from that vision in so many ways. We need to help build those connections, and as I’ve stressed before, make sure our vision reaches everyone who lives here. 

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