Unlike some other counties in Oregon and across the country, Multnomah County has remained committed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts. However, a recent audit found that the county has some work to do on its DEI initiatives. Across the county Asian employees are less likely to be supervisors, Black or African American employees are less likely to pass the trial service period and are more likely to be fired, and LGBTQIA employees are more likely to quit. Multnomah County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk joins us to discuss the audit findings.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Unlike some other counties in Oregon and across the country, Multnomah County has explicitly reaffirmed its support for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. But the county does have some work to do on these equity initiatives – that is according to a recent audit. It found that Asian employees are less likely to be supervisors, Black or African American employees are less likely to pass their trial service period, and LGBTQ employees are more likely to quit.
Jennifer McGuirk is a Multnomah County auditor. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Jennifer McGuirk: Thank you. Great to be here.
Miller: I want to start with some background here. What are Multnomah County’s goals in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion?
McGuirk: Thank you. In an audit, that’s the kind of thing that we use as our criteria. What has Multnomah County said it’s going to do? So at Multnomah County, the board has consistently stated that diversity, equity and inclusion are important to supporting employees and the communities the county serves. We have an Office of Diversity and Equity. Many departments have equity managers. There’s a lot of employee interest in training around equity and diversity. And the county also has employee resource groups, which are groups that employees create to connect with others who have shared lived experience.
In 2018, the county adopted its first Workforce Equity Strategic Plan, which was really supposed to ensure that, as the county grows and develops, equity is the central core function or value that is carried along the way. But employees were really concerned about [whether] this was going to be something that looked great on paper but didn’t come out in practice, and some of those concerns came to pass. There was also then a renewal of the Workforce Equity Strategic Plan that was happening while we were conducting our audit. So we made sure we weren’t duplicating that work, really focused more on what is the framework for accountability for all of these measures.
Miller: And just to be clear, these measures are countywide, meaning in the DA’s office, the sheriff’s office and the health department?
McGuirk: Yes. The ways to achieve those different goals might be different, but they were countywide goals that were established.
Miller: How much is Multnomah County still committed to its DEI work at a time when jurisdictions all across the country are reviewing their policies to make sure that they’re not going to run afoul of new federal guidelines and that they’ll still be eligible for billions of dollars of federal funding?
McGuirk: I don’t know if I can say how much, because I think that’s still to be seen. But so far, the board has doubled down on their commitment to our serving many communities that historically have been underserved. We know that race is unfortunately a predictor of poor outcomes with regard to health and a variety of other things. So the county has been clear that its commitment isn’t going away. We’re only in month seven of the Trump administration. So I don’t know what that’s going to look like in the future.
Miller: Let’s turn to this new audit. What exactly did you set out to learn?
McGuirk: Employees at the county have been asking me to evaluate equity at the county for years. I took office in 2019, and it’s been something that’s been coming up again and again. The county says it really values having equitable workplaces, fair work practices. Employees haven’t always experienced that to be true. And the county asks a lot of employees. They’re trying to help people get into housing, they’re working with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. They might be having to cite somebody. All of those different jobs are inherently stressful. So it’s really important that the county provides fair equitable workplaces, so people are equipped to be able to do that difficult work.
We had four objectives for this audit … which I’m trying to locate in my pile of papers. [We were] really looking at each department’s progress within an equity maturity model framework, looking at disparities, turnover, wages, representation in management positions and other things, seeing if there was more that needed to be done to improve equitable accountability for that Workforce Equity Strategic Plan. And then what kinds of resources are being provided for equity initiatives and accountability.
Miller: You mentioned that there have been some long-standing frustrations with the pace of this work or the success of this work, going back a number of years at this point. Did that affect the way you conducted this new audit in terms of how much more you want to go back to employees to ask them questions maybe that they’d already been answering for years?
McGuirk: Yes, that was a real concern on our part. The first part of the audit work really was checking in with some individuals around the county – some in employee resource groups, some who had really been involved in the Workforce Equity Strategic Plan – to identify, could we do some good by going in and auditing this? Or would it just be another experience employees had where there were no outcomes that they could point to that meant it was of any use of their time to participate?
Miller: After more emotional or physical or mental labor?
McGuirk: Yes, so one of the things we strived to do was really just listen to employees as this got underway. We did listening sessions, one-on-one interviews. The things we heard were, “I’ve been saying this for years. I’m tired of saying it.” So we thought we could do some data analysis that might corroborate what folks had experienced and also elevate things that they were concerned about, in terms of the lengthy, difficult process to get ADA accommodations at the county, for example.
One of the things that my office is able to do, when we’re comparing criteria, what’s supposed to be happening is really uplift those experiences and hopefully validate them, if that’s what the data bears out. And I think in this case we really did.
Miller: I want to go back to some of those top line demographic findings that Asian employees are less likely to be supervisors in the county, that Black or African American employees are less likely to pass a trial service period or to be fired at the end of that, and LGBTQ employees are more likely to quit, to voluntarily leave employment at the county. These are all large, diverse groups even within all these groups. And I’m sure we’re talking about over a number of years, a complicated picture. But what did you find that can help explain, broadly, these numbers?
McGuirk: We didn’t look at the causation. We really looked to see, is there a relationship here? And that’s something you can do through the kind of data analysis we did. So it’s not going to say why, but it is going to say this isn’t due to chance. The only things we included in our report are things that couldn’t just be explained away as a one-off. These are things that there is statistical significance behind. Our hope is that people in management will look at those figures and think about what they could do to improve people passing trial service or supporting people in their career journey so that they can get promoted.
Miller: You also, though, did have recommendations. I think that the assumption is that some of these, through better accountability and better feedback, could go at least some way towards fixing some of these disparities. So what specifically are you saying should be implemented countywide in terms of better accountability and better employee, or in some cases, former employee feedback?
McGuirk: Yes, we did recommend that across the county, there be ways for employees – I’m thinking of the ones who are leaving – to provide anonymous feedback to the county. Right now, those opportunities are … they know who the person is, they are talking, probably face to face, soliciting that feedback. That’s not always safe for people who want to get a good job recommendation as they’re applying for new work and are worried that they won’t get one if they’re honest about their experience. So we really hope that kind of feedback, if it’s given anonymously, could be more honest and more useful.
We’re also recommending that the county do “360 evaluations” of managers.
Miller: Can you explain what that means?
McGuirk: In a 360 evaluation, it’s not just your boss evaluating you. It is people who might be at the same level as you, people who report to you. Perhaps, depending on your role, it could be people in the community. It needs to be done in a way so that the person who’s being evaluated doesn’t get to pick who’s evaluating them. And it needs to be confidential. But that information, along with any anonymous feedback from exiting employees, can really point out where a manager’s struggling, where they need more coaching or where they’re doing well. And if they’re doing well, that information could be used to help other managers improve.
Miller: How would what you’re describing there be different from the current norm countywide?
McGuirk: The current norm countywide, to my knowledge, is there are no 360s. If there are any, I’m not familiar with them.
Miller: Did you find that anything is going well in terms of the county’s overall progress towards its equity goals?
McGuirk: I think we do see that in some departments. For example, the Department of County Assets, on our equity maturity model, scored very well. The Homeless Services Department did as well. So I think that they provide a couple of models that other departments could look at in terms of improving practice. A lot of it, though, is really going to have to be borne out by how employees feel. If their feelings about belonging, being able to provide feedback and thinking that workload is being distributed evenly, if those kinds of things improve with the next employee survey or the one after that, I think that would be an important indicator.
Miller: You said that, right now, the 360 evaluations or when someone leaves, having some kind of confidential way for them to really honestly describe their experience, that’s not in place anywhere in the county. Does that mean that it’s not in place in your own office either, in the auditor’s office?
McGuirk: Actually, I have my staff evaluate me every year. And it’s an anonymous way that they can do that. It’s a Google form and I have different measures, and then they can also leave comments if they feel like they can leave them in a way where I don’t know who’s leaving them, myself included. I only have 15 people in my office. I haven’t done any kind of exit process because I haven’t had many people leave. But that’s something I could certainly explore and would not be opposed to.
Miller: As folks who’ve heard our conversations with auditors and about audits in the past may remember, it’s standard, once an audit is released, we can also read the responses from the agency or the elected officials in charge of the people who are being audited. We can read their response. There’s sometimes even responses to those responses. In this case, Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said that the county is already doing many of the things that you recommend they start doing.
You disagreed. You wrote this: “We would not need to recommend a course of action if it were already occurring.” Then you added this, which is, from my reading of auditor language, about as strong as auditors get: “I hope you will reread the audit report and its recommendations to understand the ways in which existing practices do not match what my office has recommended.”
Overall, what went through your mind when you read the chair’s response?
McGuirk: I was disappointed. We talked a little bit ago about the example of being able to give that anonymous exit survey. They said that matches what they already do. And then they described a process that is in no way anonymous. So it just felt either that they hadn’t read the report closely or that there wasn’t a level of rigor, when it came to writing the response around the accuracy of words they were using.
Either way, I also included in my response that county employees have said their experiences have been invalidated. And it felt like a bit of an attempt to diminish my office’s work or to kind of explain it away as, “Oh, well, we’re already doing everything you suggested.”
Miller: What stood out to you in the other county elected officials’ responses, the DA and the sheriff?
McGuirk: They agreed with most of our findings or said that they would be working toward improvements. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in theirs either. But it didn’t rise to that same level. For example, I know the sheriff was displeased with the part of the maturity model we used because we looked at trainings that were coded in Workday, Multnomah County’s HR system. They submit a lot of their training information to the state. It’s not in Workday. But those are all things that I think are reasonable. And we can have reasonable disagreements. But if you’re going to try to contradict all of the findings when the process is over, that’s not appropriate in my opinion.
Miller: Jennifer McGuirk, thanks very much.
McGuirk: Thank you.
Miller: Jennifer McGuirk is the auditor of Multnomah County.
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