Nice work folks!

I am curious, did you consider a stronger justification for claiming the need for a diverse workforce?

Please consider these questions in an attempt to strengthen your argument:
1) Is there research showing that Americans are becoming less biased and more readily listen and believe someone who doesn’t look like them? (credibility with the public)
2) What do we say to the selecting official that is told to hire and needs the “best and the brightest” yet does not have the autonomy to make that selection if the “best” candidate is not a diverse applicant? (credibility with ourselves)
3) Certificate of eligibles do not currently indicate the race or sex of applicants yet, occasionally, there is pressure to select a known diverse and/or female applicant. Did the group consider acknowledging in the document that discriminatory hiring practices based on race, color, religion, etc. is currently against the law? Should there be better guidance to selecting officials? (credibility with the public and ourselves)

Hiring the best candidate for the job while improving credibility with the public and ourselves (remember our people are our number one asset) are two interesting and complex challenges – thank you for tackling them!

Also, I appreciate the groups focus on connecting ALL people with nature as that seems to me to be the best way to ultimately have a workforce that reflects society while improving our credibility with the public.

Thank you for your efforts and time. I hope my comments are helpful.

Thank you for your wonderful insights Dwight, you’ve brought very important issues to the table. The Relevancy team will take a closer look at these issues and as we go forward, we will be working hard to address every single comment given to us in good faith. It’s wonderful that we are able to hear so many voices through this website, and we encourage everyone to take time as you have, to bring up important areas that need to be looked at. Please keep engaged with us!

Kristin – if credibility and an understanding of local culture is important to working with local landowners and residents (I believe it is) – could we not look to Region 7′s Refuge Information Technician job analysis and assessment as a way to fairly and legally recruit candidates with the KSAs needed. The RIT hiring process reflects the need for an incumbent to have knowledge, skills and abilities related to the LOCAL culture. It seems this model could be applied from Puerto Rico to any area that is predominantly one race or culture. Maybe this is already in application across the country, is a dumb idea or has been considered and dismissed for one reason or another but I bring it forward nonetheless.

Kristin – it looks like you have been a major part of all the Relevancy discussions! I wish we had more time to chat while we were both at the conference.

On the diversity topic, I get the sense that the Fish and Wildlife Service, like many organizations, focuses on the visible side of diversity e.g. race, color, age, sex, disability, etc. Although we also include some of the invisible or less visible aspects of diversity (national origin, religion, reprisal, sexual orientation, genetic information), we tend to do less with other facets of diversity like economic class. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that our agency does a good job reaching out to and recruiting people from low-income families and communities.

In my vision for the National Wildlife Refuge System we do a much better job working with low-income families and communities without regard to race. We do this through partnerships, through new ideas like the urban refuge concept that was brought up at the conference, etc. I have a friend who works with low-income schools (also known as Title 1 schools). He has observed that the most successful education programs that are implemented at these schools are run by groups who actually have a staff person based at the school. It gives a face to the program and the staff person helps implement the program on a daily basis. Can we do this? That staff person could also play a critical role in networking with other youth-based organizations to leverage our efforts in a given region.

I would also like to mention that in a state like Maine we have many low-income people who reside in the rural parts of the state – most refuge staff in any state already know this – so we also need to look beyond our urban centers for low-income people.

As far as retention is concerned, I’m not sure there is much more that we can do to make our jobs seem any more interesting to folks. As was mentioned at the conference, having more lower-level positions available would help. However, I do think that if we focus on providing more opportunities for more people to check us out that we might light a spark in somebody who maybe never considered a career in wildlife before their first interaction with one of our employees. The trick is that we have to go to them to give them those opportunities.
Sorry for the long-windedness of my comment! In summary, I would like to see some language in the Relevancy document that addresses economic class / low-income people. I really like that we are striving towards an inclusive workforce. Great work and great comments!

I finally got a chance to sit down and review the draft vision document. While not being involved directly in the discussions requires I keep my comments general in nature, i would challenge the group to take a fine stone to the recommendations and hone them some are very general and make assumptions that aren’t supported in the text. One example we have a recommendation to “continue to expand YCC, Americorps, and Jobcorps networks…..” While I concur that we need to create more opportunities for young people, Are we expanding these programs? The text doesn’t state that, i would like to know. What is the goal of more opportunities? A 50% increase 25%? What about more entry level posittions?

Anyway good work. Honing the recommendations will create focus.

Thanks for the opportunity to give input.

I would strongly suggest developing materials (printed or electronic) that speak to the high school set. Currently, we have NO products that speak to this audience (unless you count the 1/2 fact sheet on YCC). We have visitor services staff on field stations across the country that have established relationships with their local high school students. What resources are available to them to give “their” students and help these students transition from refuge visitor to Service employee? Very few. Let’s commit to developing these resources- and not just fact sheets. Look at the amazing work the JASON Project (http://www.jason.org/public/WhatIs/CurrORPGames.aspx) and the Peace Corps (http://www.peacecorps.gov/kids/index.cfm) have done. They are engaging students in new and innovative ways. We have much to learn!

I realize this is a draft vision document, and we aren’t supposed to ask “how?” at this stage, but I can’t stop myself… How are we going to continue to propose to do more with less?

Maybe we need to identify new core areas (these vision topics for example) where our friends groups and other partnerships could help us. Right now, friends groups help at varying degrees on the local level, but we need to get them collectively incorporated into the national vision. Let’s get them wrapped around our needs as a system and work on this together instead of all our friends groups doing a million different things individually.

Another recent observation of mine is that I think we need to get more staff trained to work with and support friends groups. We expect refuge managers and other staff to know how to lead a friends group and friends to know what what it’s all about, when in fact, many friends are craving for our leadership and guidance and we don’t know how to give it or we are lacking in time. Is our staff adequately trained to provide the day-to-day support that is needed by friends groups?

Give friends quality support, which begins at home, and then let them work on some national goals collectively for the system.