Attitude Reflects Leadership

According to the latest customer survey, Central Arkansas Water (CAW) provided excellent water quality with decent customer service at a bargain price. So the question was, “how can it improve?” Starting with a realization that “a utility doesn’t get better on its own, the people at the utility get better,” CAW began exploring was to improve – both in water quality and customer service. This session will discuss the journey that CAW has engaged in to improve employee performance, the lessons learned and the path it continues to follow.Performance improvement starts at the top, the very top. It must include the Board and the CEO – note the importance of “Attitude Reflects Leadership” in the title of this session. From there I will discuss the “hiring dilemma” and the reasons for new employee failure. Costs (both monetary and non-monetary) are big reasons to avoid failure to hire the right people.From there, I will discuss the three types of employees – engaged, disengaged, and actively disengaged – and their impact on the utility and the utility’s impact on them. I will also discuss how to deal with the disengaged and actively disengaged employees and how to keep and reward the engaged employees.So what is an excellent or engaged employee? An excellent employee is “high performing, innovative, values driven, informed, and passionate. I will discuss each of these components with an underlying philosophy that front line people in an organization can achieve amazing results if we care for them, invest in them, and hold them to high expectations.Finally I will look at how employee training and succession planning are intertwined and how to get the best results out of both. CAW is looking at massive turn over in key executive and director level positions within the next few years. I will examine how it is preparing for changes in the short-term as well as the long-term through individual employee development and utility reorganization to meet changing needs, as well as the elimination of islands and silos. Team work and career path development has been instrumental in meeting the current and future needs of the utility. Change in these areas has provided a means for succession and personal opportunity growth for individual operators that are independent from position hierarchy.In conclusion, this session will present an overview of the process used to engage the organization staff and the outcomes of this successful process to reengage and strengthen the leadership and staff within CAW. From the top to the bottom, from the hiring process to retirement, a multi-disciplinary approach to employee management fosters the best in your employees and provides the means to achieve high levels of utility success.