Taxpayers charged $70K to probe worker happiness

Buried in the depths of a $120 million spending plan in the City of Kelowna’s 2016 budget was a relatively small item that drew some councillors’ interest.

The proposal was to spend $70,000 of taxpayers’ money to find out if city employees were happy.

The so-called Employee Engagement Study aimed to find out if municipal employees were content in their jobs and, if not, what could be done to put smiles on their faces.

Measured against the overall budget, the item was the proverbial hill of beans. But it’s often precisely these small spending initiatives that generate the most debate in council chambers.

Perhaps that’s because the amounts involved are almost relatable, in personal finance terms, and the stated purposes are relatively straightforward.

Councillors may not feel themselves able to fairly judge the necessity of spending, say, $2.3 million on a sewer project. But they can probably feel on solid ground discussing the merits of a $70,000 study aimed at finding out if city workers were happy or malcontent.

As ever during budget deliberations, councillors on Dec. 17, 2015, whizzed through page after page of spending projects with little or no discussion.

But things halted, briefly, when they got to page L12.

A similar study had been done just two years earlier. It found 71 per cent of nearly 900 civic employees were satisfied with their jobs.

At the December 2015 meeting, Coun. Charlie Hodge referenced the 2013 employee satisfaction survey, and wondered about the need to undertake another one so soon.

“I can’t see a whole lot having changed in that short a time period,” Hodge said.

But Coun. Gail Given said such employee surveys are a “best practice” among large organizations. And Mayor Colin Basran said the survey was important as it reflected what he said was the city’s determination to hire and retain the best employees.

After the day’s deliberations were done, city councillors had added items to the budget, and increased the municipal tax increase from 4.11 per cent to 4.12 per cent.

Voting to discuss dropping the $70,000 employee satisfaction survey from the budget were councillors Charlie Hodge, Tracy Gray, and Brad Sieben.

Voting to keep the $70,000 expense in the budget and not even discuss dropping it were Mayor Colin Basran, and councillors Gail Given, Luke Stack, Maxine DeHart, Mohini Singh, and Ryan Donn.