ISLAND COUNTY: Meet the Island Transit director candidates

Jessie Stensland reports from Island Transit for the Whidbey News-Times.

Island Transit officials hope that hiring a competent, thoughtful executive director will be key to steering the agency down the right road and resolving serious problems with morale among the rank and file.

To that end, the Island Transit board is urging community members to meet the three finalists for the position from 9:30-11:30 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 11 at the Island Transit facility near Coupeville. Afterward, a panel of managers will speak to the candidates and then the transit board will interview them….

The organization’s health report created by Nash Consulting, describes a workplace with very low morale and an overwhelming number of employees who lack confidence in leadership.

They Said It

“A majority of both employees and leaders describe the current culture and atmosphere as one of low trust, with wide-spread negativity and gossip, unfair accountability practices, favoritism and ‘witchhunts,’” the report states.

The survey finds that employees feel their supervisors have created a “low psychological safety environment.”

[Langley Councilmember Craig Cyr, who is both the board president and acting director,] said the report “is sobering reading for the Island Transit Board, its employees and the entire community in Island County.”

“Island Transit employees work hard to deliver transit services that Island County expects and it is unacceptable that the work environment has descended to the level described in the report,” he said.

In fact, [Island County Commissioner Melanie Bacon who has been working long hours as the interim director of Human Resources] and Cyr agree that many positive changes have already been made and that the atmosphere is significantly improved.

Bacon said a major cause of the problems in the agency came out of the Human Resources department. She said people lost faith when they went to the department with their concerns and nothing happened.

Bacon said she spent countless hours when she first becoming acting HR director just listening to a long line of employees who wanted to unload their pent-up frustrations. A couple of months later, few people are knocking anymore.

Cyr said he took steps to stabilize the work environment since becoming the acting executive director.

“These steps include restructuring several departments, forming inter-departmental working groups centered on vehicle purchasing and software acquisition, acquiring badly needed software to replace outdated software nearing the end of its useful life, and resetting our relationship with the union that represents our drivers and dispatchers,” he said. “And most especially giving our employees multiple channels to provide feedback to management so that we can listen to their ideas, their frustrations and suggestions which we are already benefitting from.”

While the Nash report outlines a series of ideas for improvements, both Cyr and Bacon agree that it all begins with the right leadership.

“I am confident that these changes and others to be introduced by the new executive director will see a measurable increase in the health of the work environment of Island Transit,” Cyr added.