Actually a couple of questions, with a present at the bottom of the email for those of you working on communications policies for your Council members and staff….

1) Who has an ABLE Account marketing plan they love they’d like to share?? We’re JUST now on board and about to hire a PR firm to work on this. Would love your favorite ideas to share the news about ABLE.

2) Who has a parent-run resource or call center plan they love – or hate – that they can tell me about.  Our Dept. of Education is rethinking their decision to close our old regional education resource centers, and we’d love to help them redesign them. Good ideas and ideas that didn’t work would all be helpful.

3) Who has good stuff on domestic violence and/or sexual assault to share – speakers, trainings, products???

Thanks for anything – my direct email is xxxxxx@okdhs.org

Now,  here’s is my policy for communications between staff and Council members. This was originally drafted by Joe Krieger, the former director in Florida and we adopted is probably 12+ years ago.  It’s been very helpful….

Happy Weekend!  Ann

Communications Guidelines for Council Members and Staff

PURPOSE:

In an effort to clarify the lines of communication between and among Council members and staff, the following are general instructions pertaining to normal situations that regularly occur during the working relationships between members and staff. The intent is not to stifle open and spontaneous interactions, but to ensure an effective, appropriate and timely communications flow. There may be natural, personal relationships that develop when a Council member and staff member are working together on specific committees. It should be noted that it is inappropriate for either person to allow lines to be blurred.  Major issues should be directed to the Executive Director and /or Council chairperson.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Council members should communicate directly with the Executive Director (not individual staff members) on all ideas, suggestions, thoughts, questions, concerns and requests that do not pertain to an ongoing function or standard business of a committee. This enables the Executive Director to guarantee a swift response to the Council member, control the flow of work assigned to staff, allows her/him full knowledge of the broad overview of Council members’ thoughts, and sets the responsibility of outcomes on the proper position. 

On matters concerning specific committee business, it is the responsibility of the committee Chairs to field ideas, suggestions, thoughts, questions and concerns that a member may have pertaining to that committee. It is the committee Chair’s responsibility to interact with the staff assigned to that particular committee. Committee members should not individually instruct staff but utilize the Chair to communicate with staff. This enables the Chairs to be knowledgeable of his/her members’ thoughts, controls the flow of work assignments to the staff member, and allows the Chair to be responsible to articulate the position of the committee to any and all other Council members.

Specific requests of staff to provide information, research, personal assistance, travel planning, etc. that are not task oriented to specific committee work should be directed to the Executive Director to enable him/her to operate with full knowledge of issues pertinent to the Council and to control the flow of staff assignments.

Administrative and program staff should direct their management issues or concerns to the Executive Director. Council members should direct their concerns or issues about Council business directly to the Executive Director.

Council members should direct ideas, concerns, and feedback concerning Council business to the Council Chairperson and /or Executive Director. Sidebar discussions may occur without benefit of complete information or inadvertently spread misinformation.  Individual or group conversations about issues and concerns are most productive when they are directed to the Council leadership. 

These instructions do not preclude Council staff from communicating as necessary with any agency or organization.