Human Resources

Toxic acts have no place at work, yet too often, people experience harm. Without the right mindset, leaders might overestimate the problems their people face. Preventing harm takes more than only stopping the most severe behaviors. Unaddressed, minor behaviors and violations at any level heighten isolation, derail creativity, and erode trust. Research estimates that only 3 of 10 workers feel like their voices matter. And almost 75% of violations faced at work go unreported. 

Your people’s unfiltered opinions and creative ideas are your greatest assets. How can you be sure they feel safe enough to speak up? How can you guarantee they feel empowered to advocate for themselves and others?
 
Attendees will adopt an empathy-driven framework to label rooted issues and identify organizational initiatives that restore trust. Managers will acquire skills to ensure that their people feel empowered to speak up, regardless of their role, tenure, or social capital.
 

Prior to the Course:

• You are encouraged – but not required – to complete this survey.

The survey will help customize content for the three upcoming virtual workshops brought to you by Create Safe on behalf of the City of Madison. During the workshops, the Create Safe team will never share data collected from an individual response, but overall trends will be discussed. Create Safe will only share the overall trends with the City, and will clean and make anonymous all provided information when weighing the total feedback.

We matter. Since we spend nearly 90,000 hours working, we deserve to feel this at our jobs. Neurologically, a lack of safety prevents us from experiencing this truth. No matter the reason, when safety gaps emerge, we have no reason to show up and meaningfully engage. 

Our voices matter. To believe this, we must trust that our leaders value our perspectives and care about remedying issues. How can we advocate for others if we lack the skills or practice advocating for ourselves? And how can we ensure that everyone feels comfortable speaking up? 

This program challenges ineffective and outdated status quos to address what truly matters when building healthy, people-centered workplaces. In an authentic discussion, we will explore the importance of and how to define our safety needs. By adopting skills that enhance work relationships, participants will learn to advocate for themselves and others confidently.
 

Prior to the Course:

• You are encouraged – but not required – to complete this survey.

The survey will help customize content for the three upcoming virtual workshops brought to you by Create Safe on behalf of the City of Madison. During the workshops, the Create Safe team will never share data collected from an individual response, but overall trends will be discussed. Create Safe will only share the overall trends with the City, and will clean and make anonymous all provided information when weighing the total feedback.

The March 15, 2023 session has been canceled due to upcoming staffing changes. Please keep an eye on our upcoming courses should future offerings become available. Thanks for your understanding! 

Burnout is a growing challenge for leaders and teams. Many employees are struggling with exhaustion, loss of confidence, and disengagement. But burnout is not just an individual problem, it’s a systems and leadership issue too. This session focuses on workplace culture and leadership factors that contribute to burnout. This course is not a lecture; most of your time will be in small and large group discussion to analyze strategies for improving our workplace.

Note: If you are having a personal struggle with burnout, you are not alone. Consider reaching out to the Employee Assistance Program or their external partner, FEI Workforce Resilience for free, confidential support.

Learning Objectives:

• Define burnout
• Describe six common causes of employee burnout
• Discuss leadership actions that contribute to workplace vitality

During Conflict Management, participants will have an opportunity to increase their self-awareness regarding their common styles to approaching and navigating conflict. Additionally, attendees will be encouraged to recognize different behaviors that they may engage in that lead to inadvertently increasing tension during a conflict. Finally, they will also be offered strategies and tools to defuse and resolve conflict in ways that honor their values, boundaries, and those of the other person involved. In spite of our focus being on the professional and collegial setting during the training, all of these skills are transferable to other contexts.

Learning Objectives:

• Increasing self awareness about one's personal style of managing conflict

• Recognizing how different behaviors may increase tension
• Exploring tools and strategies to successfully navigate conflict

Note:

Because this course is interactive, we request that you join from a computer or smart device. This course incorporates break-out sessions and we encourage your full participation in the virtual space.

You may have grown comfortable with Zoom for meetings and trainings…maybe so comfortable that you don’t realize that the status quo may be unintentionally excluding participants. Did you know that there are strategies and tips that you can use that can make your trainings and meetings more inclusive and effective for people with disabilities? This session will broaden your perspective and you will leave with actionable tips to use in future trainings and meetings.

Learning Objectives:

1. Increase your understanding of disability-related barriers in virtual meetings
2. Obtain practical skills to remove access barriers
3. Be a better disability ally at work

Course Handouts:

• Course Agenda
• Slide Deck
• Slide Deck - Text

Build awareness on how bias, both explicit and implicit, can impact hiring decisions. Learn how to create an interview process by incorporating job-related behavioral questions with measurable benchmarks to effectively address bias in the interview process and for more objective candidate evaluations.

This course is mandatory for all supervisors and recommended for all interview panelists.
 

Course Resources:

• Position Description Example:  Payroll Clerk
• Handout: Interview Tips
• Handout:  Types of Bias
• Handout: Job Interview Bias Exercise
• Handout: Traditional to Behavioral Interview Questions Exercise
• Handout: Red Flag Process for Hiring Managers

Feeling safe is vital in creating spaces where people can engage as their best selves. On a neurological level, it is impossible to be present if we feel unsafe. This is true no matter the type or severity of harm faced. Unaddressed or recurring safety gaps erode organizational trust, limit productivity, stifle people's voices, and ultimately cause us to check out.

But when we do feel safe? The results are profound. People who feel safe build stronger relationships, are more engaged, make creative decisions, and experience a deeper sense of belonging.

Creating safe environments doesn't happen by chance. It requires intentional organizational efforts and investing in our people's voices to drive inclusive change.

Applying the Feel Safe framework to their culture, participants work through a process that empowers them to reimagine a people-centered workplace. Participants will diagnose safety gaps before distinguishing individual and organizational paths that foster feelings of safety.
 

Prior to the Course:

• You are encouraged – but not required – to complete this survey.

The survey will help customize content for the three upcoming virtual workshops brought to you by Create Safe on behalf of the City of Madison. During the workshops, the Create Safe team will never share data collected from an individual response, but overall trends will be discussed. Create Safe will only share the overall trends with the City, and will clean and make anonymous all provided information when weighing the total feedback.

Additional City of Madison offerings by Tim Mousseau:

• People-Centered: Because We Matter: Advocating for Each Other to Build Healthy & High-Performing Teams
• Manager-Centered: Alone In A Crowded Office: How Leaders Can Overcome Harmful Behaviors That Foster Isolation

Making decisions can be one of the most difficult and stressful things leaders do. Involving others can relieve some of that stress as you gain new perspectives. Inclusive leaders make decisions with, not for, those who are impacted. This improves the quality of our work and relationships with each other. This session will cover basics of stakeholder mapping and group decision-making. 

Course Materials

• Course Handout
• Fillable Empathy Map
• Course Slides

View a recording of this course on our Online Courses webpage. For a more in-depth learning experience, register for future sessions using the register button. 

Do you want to learn how you can create a welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ colleagues, friends, city residents, and visitors? You’ll get an overview of LGBTQ issues with a focus on issues that affect transgender people. With this foundation, you’ll be ready to discuss LGBTQ+ inclusion and how to create a welcoming environment in your workplace and in other spaces you participate in. You are also encouraged to register for LGBTQ+ Part 2: Contributing to Systemic Change

Learning Objectives:

• Define basic LGBTQ+ terms and differentiate the concepts of gender and expression, sex assigned at birth, and sexual orientation.
• Understand and apply key LGBTQ+ concepts to yourself and others
• Name two disparities experienced by LGBTQ+ communities

Course Materials:

• LGBTQ+ Part 1 Slide Deck

A follow-up to the foundational welcoming skills discussed in LGBTQ+ Inclusion Part 1, this course dives deeper into institutional inequity for LGBTQ+ people and discusses how to create systemic change. You will engage in reflection and discussion of how to involve the voices of transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people in decision-making in City operations. You are also encouraged to register for LGBTQ+ Part 1: Creating Inclusive Spaces prior to this session. 

Learning Objectives:

• Name two examples of institutional biases experienced by transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming people
• Identify ways to involve the voices of transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people indecision-making
• Name ways the City upholds institutional biases, and how City employees can work to deconstruct these systems

Course Materials:

• LGBTQ+ Part 2 Slide Deck

The City of Madison provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities or long-term medical conditions when the accommodations are directly related to performing the essential functions of a job, competing for a job, or for enjoyment of equal opportunities. These accommodations help our employees, our agencies, and our organization to be more inclusive, innovative, and thriving. Supervisors have a critical role in the accommodations process. This course will provide the fundamentals of accommodations, explore the role of the Supervisor in this process, and inspire us to creatively look at our positions and job functions in a way that supports employees toward individual and organization excellence.

This course is mandatory for all supervisors.

Whether we call it Public Participation or Community Engagement, we’re often wondering about how to do it in an authentic manner. Join us to learn more about the 5 R’s to Getting Authentic and resources and tools to create an inclusive public participation strategy. You will review the RESJI Public Participation Guide, learn about the City’s efforts to cultivate a shared approach and set of values for community engagement, and discuss best practices and lessons learned.

Learning Objectives

1. Learn the importance of embedding racial equity in public participation
2. Familiarize yourself with the RESJI Public Participation Resource Guide
3. Gain insight and tools to build an inclusive public participation strategy

Course Materials

• May 2, 2023 Slide Deck
• RESJI Public Participation Resource Guide

About the Facilitators

This training will be facilitated by the RESJI Community Connections Team. The RESJI Community Connections team is composed of staff of multiple departments. All team members are dedicated to embedding racial equity into our work with community members. The team authored the RESJI Public Participation Resource Guide and are proponents of elevating the role of public participation at the City of Madison, developing a shared approach and set of values for community engagement, and centering racial equity and inclusion when planning for public participation and when developing projects, programs, and policies. 

Congrats! Your team did a thing! A very cool thing! A new policy, a massive project, a successful program, a game-changing new procedure. How do you share your success so the City can learn from and collaborate with you? And perhaps more importantly, how do we share our progress and setbacks with those impacted by our work?

With these resources, you’ll learn how to tell your success story and deliver a powerful report-out to internal and public stakeholders.

Course Resources

Report Out Techniques Flipbook
Reimagining Report-Outs Slides
 

Finally back by popular demand! This course is for those beginning their learning on racial equity and social justice, or seeking a foundational primer. This course is for those wondering "What is racial equity? What does it have to do with my job? What can I do about it?" To explore these questions we'll use slides, handouts, videos, art, comedy, local and national case studies, pair and group dialogue, and activities to build "equity muscles." 

The course has three sections:

1. SELF: identifying one's own social identities and examining power, privilege, marginalization and their intersections. 
2. SYSTEMS: exploring the different levels of racism: individual, institutional, and structural. 
3. SOLIDARITY: finding our roles in building towards inclusion and belonging.

Learning Objectives:

1. Be able to describe key concepts related to equity and structural racism,
2. Practice talking about race constructively with others as it relates to oneself, one's work, and one's department/division,
3. Identify tools and practices for counteracting bias in one's work and practices, and
4. Identify opportunities to advance racial equity in their relationships, work, and life. 

Course Materials:

• RESJI Foundations Part 1 Slide Deck
• Social Identity Wheel

Have you experienced a stressful, perhaps traumatic event in the workplace? As a supervisor or manager do you feel prepared to handle and support your staff through these abnormal events? Join us to learn more about critical incidents, how they present in the workplace, normal reactions your employees may experience, and your role as a supervisor. We will share resources, skills, and information to better prepare you for handling these events in a trauma-informed way that will leave your staff feeling supported and will provide a smoother transition back to normal operations.

Learning Objectives:

• Discussing what a critical incident looks like and how it impacts employees
• Increasing awareness about supervisor’s/manager’s role in addressing the critical incident and supporting employees who were impacted
• Learning about resources to assist when a critical incident occurs and how EAP will be involved in the response

Because this course is interactive, we request that you join from a computer or smart device. This course incorporates break-out sessions and we encourage your full participation in the virtual space.

Module 1: “Let’s Talk About It” – Things that are NOT better left unsaid.
Everyday acts of exclusion are hidden in plain sight at work. They can make us and our colleagues feel invisible, unwelcome, and unvalued. This workshop opens up a conversation about subtle acts of exclusion and how they create barriers to genuine inclusion. Participants will learn about different types of bias, and how bias can show up as a subtle act of exclusion in the workplace. We will explore ways to counteract bias and the importance of cultural humility.

Module 1 Learning Objectives:

1. Orient participants to the Multicultural Affairs Committee (MAC) and Women’s Initiatives Committee (WIC) Climate survey.
2. Learn what subtle acts of exclusions are and how they relate to the City’s Prohibited Harassment and Discrimination Policy.
3. Understand how subtle acts of exclusions impact the City of Madison’s employees and its workplace culture.

Supervisor Orientation is a training program that equips supervisors with the tools and information to excel in their roles. Participants will begin by exploring the City of Madison’s Mission, Vision, Values, and Service Promises. By becoming familiar with these primary elements, we can begin to align our actions and behaviors with the City’s leadership framework – Values-Based Leadership. Through the Strengths, Teamwork, Alignment, and Results (STARS) framework, supervisors will analyze their team’s situation so they can adapt to meet need and make impact. This training emphasizes situational mindfulness, enabling supervisors to nurture the employee experience, and connects them with valuable resources for ongoing support and development. 

Course Materials:

• Supervisor Orientation Slide Deck
• Supervisor Orientation Learner Workbook - Fillable

Recommended Resources & Gatherings:

• Our new Supervisory Collective is a community for supervisors, by supervisors. It's a great space for new supervisors to make connections in a collaborative learning space.
• Check out the new Supervisor Resources on EmployeeNet. This is a collection of information and tools that support you in your day-to-day management work.

Recommended for Supervisors who completed Supervisor Development Program more than 5 years ago (pre-2017), as a refresher and/or Supervisors of supervisors, to support you in onboarding, coaching and developing your staff. 

Are you a supervisor that wants more tips and insights in how you can support your LGBTQ+ staff and foster an inclusive work environment for existing and new employees? In this course, you will learn more about your responsibilities as a supervisor and come away with actionable ways to promote inclusion within your team.

The material covered in this course is for supervisors - if this topic is relatively new to you, we recommend you first attend the following two courses for more general, foundational knowledge. 

• LGBTQ+ Part 1: Creating Inclusive Spaces

• LGBTQ+ Part 2: Contributing to Systemic Change.

Learning Objectives: 

1. State supervisor roles in supporting transitioning employees and all transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming employees regardless of transition status
2. Name ways to protect legal name and sex assigned at birth information
3. Demonstrate prevention and recognition of and response to harassment in the workplace

Course Materials:

• Slide Deck
• In Course Examples Handout

Even before the COVID pandemic, trauma was widely prevalent in our society. The collective trauma we are all experiencing now as the result of this pandemic has only exacerbated the issue. Moreover, trauma has negatively affected organizations, taxing already stressed systems of care and practitioner wellness. Trauma-informed care (TIC) is an intervention and organizational approach that focuses on how trauma may affect an individual’s life and their response to supervision. Trauma-informed supervision (TIS) is taking the key principles of TIC and applying them in a relational way with supervisees. This presentation will take a closer look at how the application of the six values of trauma-informed care in supervisory practice can and will drive connection and can be applied in multiple service settings. We will also examine implicit bias and ways supervisors can address their own biases to better connect with a diverse and inclusive workforce. Never has this topic been more relevant and needed in our workspaces.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the significance of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) study as a public health and workplace concern.
• Define and identify key terminology and concepts related to trauma
• Articulate what trauma-informed care is and identify the six principles of a trauma-informed, compassionate work culture.
• Understand how past trauma and a traumatized workspace can affect employee engagement, health, and productivity.
• Identify some of the best practices of trauma-informed supervision.
• Define implicit bias and identify ways to overcome it.
• Become familiar with diversity, equity and inclusion and its place in the trauma-informed workspace.
• Describe the next steps to implementing trauma-informed care in the workplace.

Note:

Course Materials:

• Trauma-Informed Supervision One-Pager
• Four Steps to Identifying and Stopping Implicit Bias for Managers
• The CLEAR Model
• Trauma-Informed Supervision Practice Opportunities

“We must transform ourselves to transform the world.” -Grace Lee Boggs

As managers and leaders who recognize there are systems of oppression in the workplace that we must reckon with and dismantle, we must also tend to the internal work within ourselves to build equity, inclusion, and belonging. We cannot wait for the “system to transform” – we also have to “transform ourselves.”
This session is for managers, or anyone who leads teams, to explore how their own identities shape their worldview and thus their management style and approach. Participants will explore concepts such as intersectionality, positionality, identity salience, reflective practice, and deep listening. Through individual and group activities and a case study, participants will use their own self-awareness, behaviors, and interactions as sites of learning.

Learning Objectives:

1. Exposure to the concepts of intersectionality, positionality, identity salience, and reflective practice
2. Practice reflecting on one’s own identities
3. Practice deep listening skills with colleagues
4. Practice a liberating structure model for solution building