Cities plan for change at the top

Overall, 37 percent of the city's workforce will be eligible for retirement in the next five years — of 326 employees, 96 have more than 10 years of service.

Black said some training and development already has started, including series on values-based organizational development and values-based ethics and two leadership development programs.

The city also will review other cities' plans already in place, such as the one in Grapevine.

The neighboring city has been working on ways to deal with succession planning and leadership development for several years — its workforce has an average tenure of more than a decade, Human Resources Director Carolyn Van Duzee said. Among department heads, that average jumps to more than 20.5 years. In fact, every one of Grapevine's department heads is eligible for retirement.

"We have had some significant retirements that have occurred over the last several year," Grapevine City Manager Bruno Rumbelow said. "We started the concept of Grapevine University to touch several different areas of the city — succession planning, performance valuations, leadership — and employee development is the basic premise in all of it."

Grapevine University, or "Grapevine U" for short, began with city leaders coming together to brainstorm what made Grapevine, Grapevine.

The process took a year, Van Duzee said, and the result was a sort of written and codified City of Grapevine DNA that could be passed on to new hires and current employees alike.

Although every employee now goes through a class that enforces those values, a select group is also chosen for the city's Next Generation Leadership Program.

That program, which graduated its first class of 15 employees in October, delves into everything from leadership skills to an understanding of Grapevine's history and municipal culture.

The class members are individually mentored by department heads and senior-level management throughout the year.

"This is about knowing that individual employees matter, that leadership matters," Rumbelow said. "It's always been the job of leadership to get the right people on the bus, and succession planning is doing just that."