Tribal Council approves contract with HR consulting firm

By Danielle Harrison

Smoke Signals editor

Tribal Council approved a consulting contract with the human resources consulting firm People Optimize Partners during its Wednesday, Jan. 14, meeting.

The contract is for up to $250,000 and will be utilized to develop a plan to help manage growth of the Tribal workforce.

According to its website, People Optimize Partners “brings curiosity and expertise to your people, process and technology practices to help your people and organization thrive.”

Specifically, it offers services such as “HR tech implementation, benefits strategy, compensation guidance and interim HR leadership to help companies optimize their workforce and achieve sustained performance, working with clients to build scalable, effective people operations.”

“This will be for the organizational assessment work we’ll be taking on with our department managers later this year,” Tribal Council Chief of Staff Stacia Hernadez said during a Tuesday, Jan. 13, Legislative Action Committee meeting. “It is scalable, so there is an opportunity to come in under $250,000.”  

She continued, “We’ll be able to share out all of the information with managers and council…We’ll schedule kickoff meetings at the end of the month…and the really exciting thing about this work is it really will be driven by our staff and is an inclusive process, so no one is left out of the fold. The main reason for this work is that we’ve grown so rapidly over the years and want to make sure we’re filling in gaps, identifying any issue areas and working with managers to streamline communications and improve the culture and wellbeing of the organization.”

Tribal Council member Tonya Gleason-Shepek noted that when some people hear the words “organizational assessment,” it can create fear.

“I want to ensure everybody it is not our intention to remove employees or anyone getting fired,” she said. “That’s not what this is about. I wanted to put that out there to hopefully address any fear that might come from hearing that.”

In other action, Tribal Council:

• Approved a limited waiver of sovereign immunity for software company Esri, which has all of the Tribal ceded lands data. The company won’t make a change to its binding arbitration until the end of the year when the next contract renewal begins;
• Approved a $411,000 contract with Advance Native Construction of Aumsville for the Tribal Housing Department roofing project at Raven Loop and Tilixam Circle;
• And approved enrollments for two infants and emergency enrollments for two non-infants into the Tribe because they meet the requirements under the Tribal Constitution and Enrollment Ordinance.

To watch the entire meeting, visit www.grandronde.org and click on the Videos tab.