As California state government faces a growing brain drain crisis, the Department of Motor Vehicles is trying to blunt the impact by grooming its brightest, most promising workers to take over.
The department's "Leadership Academy" is a series of rigorous graduate-level courses held at the University of California Extension's K Street campus in Sacramento. Students have to apply and interview to get in, and they're expected to immediately use what they learn.
DMV pays up to $5,650 per class day for up to 30 students to attend the University of California, Davis Extension, which provides the room, materials and instructors, and runs the course. The department also pays the students' salaries for the duration of training.
DMV's commitment to training remains steadfast, despite a series of budget crises that have dried up training dollars throughout state government.
"Often training goes by the wayside in difficult budget times," said Barbara Rooney, chief of DMV's training branch. "But, really, that's the last thing that should go."
The state has tried its hand at leadership and management training before. In 1998, the government opened the State Training Center and created the California Leadership Institute to educate management and higher-level employees, choosing the University of Southern California to do the teaching.
About 200 employees from various departments graduated from the institute between 1998 and 2003. Then the USC contract expired, and the state didn't renew it.
About 35 percent of state employees will reach the state retirement age of 55 within four years. Half of its managers and supervisors can retire by 2013.
DMV figures that 72 percent of its key employees and 40 percent of its entire work force are old enough to retire or will be within the next five years. Two-thirds of staff in upper management are 50 or older.
"With numbers like this," said DMV spokesman Mike Marando,"the department must continue to move quickly to develop our work force."
California's rolling financial crises have squeezed agency and department training budgets. An example: The Board of Equalization, which employs about 4,400 workers to process state business taxes, recently cut $447,000 from this year's training budget after spending about $775,000 last year. It made the cuts to avoid laying off employees.
Such decisions are common in grim times, said executive training expert John Challenger, CEO of Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. But they can ultimately undercut employee morale and effectiveness.
"Spending money on good training is a win-win. The employer gets a more productive and motivated employee," Challenger said. "The employee becomes more marketable, more available for promotions and more engaged in their work."
Over the last five years, DMV has consistently spent about one-half of 1 percent of its budget on training, roughly $4.7 million in fiscal 2008-09.
Last week, 30 DMV managers attended the Leadership Academy for three days at a cost to the department of $16,950, plus the attendees' pay. The course runs 11 days, spread over four months.
Attending guarantees nothing. Graduates still have to go through the civil service testing process to be promoted. They're not shielded from policies that affect all state workers, such as hiring freezes or furloughs.
Still, nearly 30 percent of the 228 DMV graduates have been promoted since the program's 2005 inception. A survey found that 94 percent of those who went through the Leadership Academy believed it made them more effective in their current jobs. Fifty-three percent thought it enhanced their chances for a promotion.
"We suggested to DMV that they tell their employees, 'Treat this like you're applying to the University of California,' " said the extension's Crumley. "We don't do training. This is an education about how to think."
Professors like Paul Porter, an educational psychologist, teach the DMV leadership classes that meet in two- and three-day blocks over several months.
Recently, Porter led a morning discussion of management styles. His paradoxical thesis: Good managers treat their staff equally but also handle them differently based on their abilities and willingness to perform.
During a break, Satwinder Bajwa reflected on what he'd heard.
"I feel like I'm going back to college," said Bajwa, an office manager at DMV's Yuba City branch. "I've been thinking wrong. Every manager in this department should go through these courses."
(E-mail Jon Ortiz at jortiz(at)sacbee.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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