When People Leave, We Need to Learn

This morning, I learned that we currently do not have a full time Town Clerk. I learned this because I got a notification that the position was posted on the Town’s website. In addition to having concerns about how the Town will execute the upcoming election - this news also got me thinking again about employee turnover at the Town Hall.

While departures can be challenging, they are also an opportunity. Exit interviews are an underused tool. In the past five years (and frankly extending beyond that) we have seen a lot of turnover in the Town Hall – but why?

We need to ask the right questions, and we need to get honest answers from those who decide to leave the Town Hall (whether publicly, or confidentially). Exit interviews can help us understand what’s working, what’s not, and provide a foundation by which to make change.

Our first thought when someone resigns cannot simply be, “how do we fill this position?” It needs to be about understanding why people leave and what that says about the Town Hall's systems, workload, communication, or culture. Those insights are critical if we want to retain qualified people, strengthen our operations, and build a town government that grows smarter with every change rather than repeating the same errors.

If we want our Town to keep improving, we can’t just move on when someone leaves. We must ask, listen, and learn. As a Town Councilor, I will make sure that procedures are in-place to ask these important questions, and that proper inquiry into departures and removals (as is allowed by Town Charter) is performed to make sure we are continually learning and don't repeat mistakes.

Root cause analysis is a process by which a problem or outcome is deeply and thoughtfully analyzed to figure out the underlying cause of said problem, in part, to prevent the recurrence of the problem. As an engineer I take this approach to problems all the time. As a Town Councilor I will bring that attention and rigor to problems we are facing – like high turnover at Town Hall.