Polk County Commissioner Bill Braswell wants a management shakeup of the county’s human resources department, or either the county manager or department director needs to go, he said during Friday’s agenda review.
Citing 2017 and 2024 efficiency studies, he said nothing has been done after both studies showed human resources is a bottleneck holding back other departments within the county.
Kandis Baker-Buford, Polk County’s director of Equity and Human Resources, and County Manager Bill Beasley were both the targets of Braswell’s frustration with HR inaction.
After sending out an email to his colleagues on the board on Feb. 12, Braswell had a chance to explain to his colleagues and many of the county’s top administrators why he’s become “tired of inaction” during the commission’s agenda review session on Friday.
“You’ve seen my letter. I think we have a failed HR system,” he said. “You had an audit and nothing changed.
“HR is seen more of a hindrance to advancement as opposed to working with the rest of the county.” He said reclassifications of employees are taking too long, and HR is “stonewalling.”
Addressing Beasley, he said “Bill, that goes right to you. These people work for you. I’m not happy with it. … I think you have the wrong people.
“And if the answer is ‘we’re working on it,’ you had seven years,” Braswell added. “That’s about six years longer than you should have had. So my point to you is you need to do something about it.”
Beasley said he had a plan to deal with the lingering issues identified within HR.
Braswell said a “management shakeup” was needed. “You have department heads who feel like they can’t get anything done.”
“For an individual to stonewall an operation of 2,200 people is just unacceptable,” Braswell said. “If it was in any private business, a lack of efficiency gets flushed out of the door real quick.”
Beasley said there is progress in the pipeline, since the fall of 2024, that is not contained in the efficiency study and that involves a crystallizing of the issues.
Further, Braswell said he wants SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures or manuals) so everyone knows what to do. But there are still none written.
Beasley said he believed there have been some incremental improvements to staffing, technology, feedback, office training and more solid operating procedures.
During a fiery exchange, Braswell interrupted the county manager saying: “But we don’t have time for that; that ship has sailed.”
“What bothers me as much as anything is an audit can be accomplished, efficiencies annotated and nothing happened. That should be a shock. They are not my employees, but I would clean house.”
“I’m not opposed to changing the top, Bill,” Braswell said. “I will be honest with you. This has pushed me to the point where big changes need to be made.”
In the email, Braswell repeated the key takeaways in an analysis of the 2017 and 2024 efficiency studies, including.
- Minimal progress since 2017 in improving planning, decentralizing authority, training, and enhancements to recruitment and communication.
- Leadership issues and strategic deficiencies due to the HR director’s heavy involvement in day-to-day operations, limiting strategic planning by staff, nor the creation of an assistant HR director position to alleviate the director’s burdens so she could focus on policy, vision, and planning.
- Recruitment and retention challenges persist because of slow hiring, inconsistent recruitment processes, and unstructured onboarding. The 2024 study suggested recruitment be brought back in-house because of inconsistent screening and inaccurate information for candidates via a third-party vendor.
- Formal training and workforce planning of managers and HR personnel have not been implemented since the 2017 recommendations, leaving staff unprepared for key functions without constant oversight.
- HR lacks Standard Operating Procedures and an IT workforce plan, and the Polk One system is not being fully utilized so service is inefficient and delayed.
- Customer service and communications problems persist with other departments because of poorly communicated policies, processes, and expectations. The efficiency studies suggested an HR manual and a satisfaction survey.
Attempts to reach Baker-Buford by phone for comment Monday were unsuccessful. In an email to The Ledger, county Communications Director Amber Smith said, “We do not have a comment at this time.”
Baker-Buford’s annual salary is $153,701.
Braswell and his colleagues need to sweep around their own back doors some. When was the last time your commissioner was in the neighborhood? If like ours…. probably never.