News 14 Carolina - Political Connections

I spent the morning at DOT's employee meeting. Secretary Lyndo Tippett stood up with his fellow big wigs in front of an audience of about 300 and took questions.

This comes after that report which included a survey of 9000 DOT employees that slammed the department. It's all part of a multi million dollar project to transform DOT. According to the report and employees there are clearly inefficiencies, a lack of direction and priorities, and there needs to be change.

This is on top of the fact another blue ribbon committee is looking at ways to help the department spend and build more efficiently and find money to pay for an enormous price tag to build and fix roads in the next 25 years.

This morning was an effort for the department to beef up communication and be more transparent. It was a Q and A session.

At first, as you might expect, the employees were apprehensive to speak up and ask questions. But eventually people did and they raised many of the same concerns that were in the survey.

It ranged from complaints about an outdated email system and computer operating systems to a lack of priorities on projects. As you might imagine, salaries also came up.

As I sat there and listened to all of this one thought came to mind. If your company handed out an anonymous survey are you so sure you wouldn't have the same responses? And keep in mind this is a government agency with 14,000 employees.

I'm not judging either side and I'm sure there are plenty of areas in that department in particular that need help.

It just got me thinking that point. What would you say about your workplace and what might change if your company had meetings like this to listen?