Brandon Hults

Kenneth Willmott 

OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I

Arizona State University

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 A petition was created on social media by a group of former staff called “Better Camp
Chi” during the summer of 2020 that was targeting issues of inclusion that they believed
were not being addressed. The director and full-time staff members took immediate
action to open a dialog with the group to address their concerns. My role in this situation
was not direct, but as a current employee observing how it was handled by the full-time
year-round leadership team. Along with this point of observation into the situation is my
personal reaction also as member within the alumni community. The petition circulated
to members in the alumni community prompting hundreds of comments that attacked the
premise of the petition as taking advantage of the current environment of social unrest,
and while some of their ideas were in good faith, they went about it in a destructive
manner choosing to go public before any dialog with the camp was attempted. Camp Chi
formally responded to the petition in a post to the alumni Facebook group explaining how
they have either already taken action to address many of the issues brought up, or are
actively working towards many of the goals they set. In the response they provided
specific examples of how they have addressed many of the issues brought up and the
grants that they received to make it possible. They wanted to emphasize that they have
not been as publicly outspoken about changes that taking place in camp as they could
have been. They also included their email and phone number stating that they are always
open for anyone in the community to share ideas, concerns, and feedback.

One of the first people brought into the team to help navigate the situation was Johhanna
Fine the Chief Human Resources Officer for the JCC of Chicago. She was able to provide
some consult and leadership in how to best respond to the Better Camp Chi petition. She
recognized how many of the demands being made were related to the management and
policies effecting the human recources of the organization. The group that started the
petition shared many of their personal experiances in their role as camp counselors a few
years ago. One of the main practices of HR is to develop and share a clear philosophy for
managing people, building the systems and practices to implement that philosophy
(Bolman, 2017). The petition attempts to make that case that camp was failing to
implement policies and practice that uphold its cherished values of respect, kindness,
community, and inclusion.

Some of the specifics within the petition asked for changes to be made to staff training.
They wanted lgbtq topics to be included. They also asked for changes to be made in how
they hire staff and what they are paid. In response to the group we had to explain the
process of how staff are hired and the trainings that have been implemented in the last
few years. How camp handled hr issues was also a topic put into question in the petition.
Again it required camp to remind the group petitioning the process of reporting incidents
and the policies that are in place to protect employees. The response behind the scenes,

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 sent directly to the petitioning group, included a detailed view of the HR and operational
policies and practices that would help them understand their perspective.

Great organizations develop an approach to people that flows from the organization's
strategy and human capital needs (Barrick et al., 2015; Becker and Huselid, 1998). They
understand that their practices and policies are not perfect but continually evolving .
Camp Chi understands how important our staff are to the success of the summer. We
benefit from a young, talented, motivated, loyal, and free-spirited workforce. With such a
large group of staff we start training a couple of weeks before the start of the summer.
The training is where camp is able to give their new counselors and specialist some extra
tools to help them navigate their summer. We talk about interpersonal and team dynapic
challenges they will face and how to deal with them. We go into detail on the companies
anti discrimination and reporting policies, along with sensitivity and harassment training.
Every summer our staff training looks a little bit different. The sessions that we have are
mostly created by the full time team, and sometimes a grant will allow us to bring in
speakers to run specialized training. With the majority of our staff being seasonal, the
sessions are the one chance we have to really reinforce the values that we share with
quality staff development training. I believe when we responded to the petition publicly it
could have included a statement about developing their staff training to include some new
topics. They could also have a schedule of training sessions sent out to return staff to
review and provide their own imput. Bringing staff the table to provide imput helps to
create better trainings and better adoption of the practices included in the training. It
creates more leadership development opportunities for counselors to share their skills
with others. Taking action to change how the camp does staff training would help address
many concerns of the petiion.

One of the issues that was addressed in the petition was the lack of system in place to
provide feedback. They also wanted changes made to how issues are reported and
handled. Given what I know about the human resources frame, I would have included in
our response the recent changes to our staff surveys and reviews. They were recently
updated to indlude more areas specific information and areas to review that didn’t get
addressed in the preivosu version. Our new system is 360-degree feedback, in which
managers get survey feedback about how they are seen by subordinates, peers, and
superiors (Bolman, 2017). This has completely changed the kind of feedback that we
receive, and the how we analize and learn from it. This model helps us address more of
the issues brought up by staff across the hicharchy chain.
The human resources frame talks about what drives a person. The three drives are
autonomy (people want to have control over their work); mastery (people want to get
better at what they do); purpose (people want to be part of something bigger than

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 themselves) (Pink, 2009). The upates we have made to how we survey are staff include
many more questions about things they would like to see improved. This emphasis on
reflecting and sharing ideas helps fulfull what drives them in the first place. It allows us
to better understand where we need to improve and make adjustments to how and where
people are working. Including the improved use of multiple staff feedback surveys in our
response would have been an important addition to be included in our response to the
group of petitioners.

Reference:

BOLMAN, L. G. (2017). REFRAMING ORGANIZATIONS. Place of publication not identified,

NJ: JOHN WILEY & Sons.