EO Quarterly Report September 14, 2023

We’re starting something new with the Employee Organization, a quarterly report for CD administrators to share with their boards!

See our website https://employees.macdnet.org for current officers and area directors for the EO. Area directors work with employees new to their areas, usually making at least one in-person office visit, sometimes with the DNRC’s CDB staffers. These visits are to help orient new employees and inform them of the network of employees and resources that are available to them.

At the 2023 Spring meeting, the group voted to pursue nonprofit status, which should open up new sources of funding to assist with training events, if we’re approved. Grants from DNRC are great but aren’t directly accessible to the EO, they have to go through a willing CD.

August 27-29, the EO hosted Statewide Employee Training in Fort Peck. It was a really great agenda, and we had a fantastic turnout, about 38 CD Employees, with an additional 8 attending online at any given time. We are already planning Annual Training for 2024, with a plan to have breakout sessions for new employees as well as for the seasoned employees amongst us.

In the 3rd quarter of 2023, the EO took a break on the monthly Roundtables that we started during Covid. We resumed in September, with the topic of CD succession and planning. Roundtables are held via Zoom conferencing on the 3rd Wednesday every month at 10 am.  We get a good turnout for these, typically 20 to 35 CD employees, and try to rotate facilitation depending on topics. The 4th quarter Roundtables are currently planned to be:

• October 18-Personnel-Hiring, incentives for keeping staff, personnel documents
• November-Not a Roundtable, since it’s during Convention
• December 20-CD Basics-History, Acronyms, NRCS/CD Relationship, other agencies, etc.

We are looking forward to the MACD Convention and the EO event on Wednesday night. Along with dinner and entertainment, we are putting together a slideshow of photos submitted by districts across the state. We will also have our annual membership meeting on Tuesday before the main convention starts.

Coming soon, there will be an EO corner in the MACD District Dispatch to discuss the activities of the Organization.

If anyone has questions or concerns about the EO activities, please feel free to reach out to me at 406-389-3884, or by email at chris@lewisandclarkcd.org.