Leading the agency
Former general counsel at Elliott Davis Decosimo and Duke Energy president Catherine Heigel was recently confirmed as the new executive director of the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC). She talks with UBJ about motivating employees and making them feel valued.
Heigel gave a copy of “Drive” by Daniel Pink to many staff members. The book suggests that people are motivated by feeling part of something bigger than themselves, by having the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to something that matters and feeling valued in what they do, she said.
“When you work for an agency whose mission is protect and promote the public health and environmental integrity of South Carolina, it doesn’t get much better than that … on what gets your employees out of bed in the morning,” she said.
But it is also important to thank staff and let them know they are valued. “If you don’t take that time to reaffirm people’s value in that greater cause, then you miss a huge opportunity. It’s not rocket science, but it’s not something that’s intuitive for a lot of people,” said Heigel.
“[We need] dedicated resources for recruitment … also dedicated resources to training and development,” she said. “It includes career mapping and succession planning.”
Much of that planning currently happens on an ad hoc basis, Heigel said. “It’s really ingraining in the culture, just like a business, that … every manager is required to put forth names of people who could assume their role now, in one to three years or three to five years. And determine the training or experience to get them there.”
More research is needed, Heigel said. “We need to quantify the cost of churn [in the workforce] of training people, to have positions vacant, to recruit, interview and onboard people,” she said. “If we can quantify that, I would much rather spend those dollars in salary to keep these people than have organizational interruption and service interruption.”
