Attracting and Retaining Talent to Drive Government Innovation | FUSE

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FUSE is a national nonprofit dedicated to increasing the capacity of local governments to engage communities, advance racial equity, and work more effectively for everyone.
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The FUSE Model centers around a one-year full-time public service role in city or county government and includes three primary phases from start to finish.
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FUSE is a national nonprofit dedicated to increasing the capacity of local governments to engage communities, advance racial equity, and work more effectively for everyone.
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The power of government. The experience of community. The impact of new ideas. Together we can build better systems
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The FUSE Model centers around a one-year full-time public service role in city or county government and includes three primary phases from start to finish.
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FUSE Executive Fellows and Alumni are experienced leaders committed to advancing equity through action-oriented partnerships with government agencies.
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Through strategic collaboration, these initiatives harness innovative solutions and practices to bridge gaps in healthcare access.
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Expanding access to affordable health care and mental health resources to improve key indicators of community health.
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The City of Long Beach is the second largest employer in Southern California, and is working to recruit quality talent for the public workforce of the future. To strengthen the municipal workforce and sustain the city’s quality of services, the Office of the City Manager partnered with FUSE executive fellow Sophia Style, who helped reform the city’s approach to recruitment, hiring, and retention processes.

Working with the civil service, human resources, and various city departments, Sofia conducted a comprehensive needs assessment to understand its human capital management practices, personnel requirements, and to identify gaps and best practices. Based on those insights, she made recommendations for improving the delivery of HR practices and programs, streamlining civil service recruitment and selection processes and experience, implementing innovative strategies to workforce policy, hiring, training, performance improvement and rewards, updating management practices, and increasing the quality of candidate pools. Sofia also introduced proposals to advance equity and diversity within city ranks. Ultimately, these changes will make the public workforce in Long Beach more innovative, results-oriented, and responsive to the needs of residents.

Sofia Style (2017-18) has spent 20 years in strategic human capital management, organization development, leadership, and marketing, working for companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500s. She draws on her executive experience to find innovative ways to impact the growth of organizations and their human capital. She has focused organizations on building strong employer brands, shaping employee recruitment, engagement and culture change. Sofia earned an MS in instructional technology with a minor in business administration and a BA in psychology from the University of Southern California, as well as Certification in Mediating the Litigated Case from Pepperdine University’s School of Law, Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.

2017-2018 | City of Long Beach - Office of the City Manager

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