Employees

The City of Greater Sudbury is committed to creating a challenging and rewarding work environment in which Employees are motivated to respond to the needs of our citizens by providing the highest quality service in all municipal facilities, programs and service areas. We exist to serve our community and our goal is to provide citizens with great service that consistently exceeds citizens’ expectations.

“Can Do” Service

The City of Greater Sudbury promotes a ‘can do’ attitude amongst employees. Staff are positive and empowered to make effective and pro-active decisions when dealing with citizens. They use their common sense along with their technical and professional knowledge to make timely and effective decisions. This ensures that service is responsive to unique needs while addressing core services, policies and safety standards.

Our employees go the extra mile for citizens by:

  • actively greeting citizens and ensuring that staff are clearly identified;
  • listening to citizens and valuing their individual needs, experiences and differences;
  • treating all citizens fairly and equitably;
  • working co-operatively;
  • encouraging problem resolution;
  • being accountable for our individual actions and decisions;
  • taking ownership for achieving conclusion to an issue; and
  • finding alternatives for the citizens when we cannot help.

As a corporation, we support risk taking and problem solving and encourage innovation within the framework and guidelines provided to us by Council. Corporately we foster an ‘open for business’ attitude and work to simplify procedures and eliminate red tape.

Service Standards

The City of Greater Sudbury is committed to:

  • Providing clear, concise and accurate information and resources in a professional, courteous and helpful manner and in a variety of ways - in person, by telephone, mail, facsimile, e-mail and on the City of Greater Sudbury website.
  • Providing services in both official languages in response to community needs.
  • Creating a welcoming atmosphere, acknowledging citizens immediately, responding promptly to messages and inquiries and providing citizens with information as to our availability. This can include strategies such as using the vacation rule on e-mail to advise of a return date and updating voice mail messages to reflect absences from the office.
  • Continuously monitoring, evaluating and improving our service level and implementing a process to measure our successes and get feedback from citizens.
  • Providing close and convenient community based access to municipal services in Citizen Service Centres and through e-government solutions.
  • Ensuring that public offices and facilities are accessible to those with special needs.
  • Embedding citizen service standards and performance measures in all business plans and supporting service excellence across all levels of the corporation.

Call Handling Protocols

The City of Greater Sudbury is committed to:

  • Answering all incoming calls to the Call Centre with a live voice during regular business hours.
  • Using call resolution techniques to minimize the number of times a call is transferred.

Citizen Service Policy

  • Giving citizens the choice of having their calls transferred either to another individual or to voice mail when the specific person for whom they are calling is not available.
  • Ensuring that no calls are left unanswered.

Staff Support

  • We promote professionalism among all staff. Staff are expected to maintain an appropriate appearance and restrict food consumption and personal grooming in public view.
  • We provide staff training to ensure that our Employees have an acceptance and understanding of our corporate vision, mission, values, goals and priorities and excel in customer service. Specifically, customer service training includes strategies for serving citizens of all cultural and ethnic backgrounds and citizens who may have special needs. This training also includes instruction on strategies to de escalate conflict and manage difficult customer interactions.
  • Staff are individually empowered to terminate the provision of service to a citizen or citizens when they judge that their personal safety is at risk or they are subject to violent or abusive speech, behaviours, harassment or discrimination as defined by City's Employment Policies.

Accessibility

  • The City of Greater Sudbury respects the independence, dignity, integration, and equality of opportunity of all citizens;
  • Citizens with disabilities may use support persons, personal assistive devices and service animals when accessing municipal programs, services and facilities;
  • Communication with a citizen with a disability will be done in a manner that takes into account the citizen’s disability.

Accountability

The City of Greater Sudbury believes that employees can better focus on their work and their customers when they know what is expected of them, are given the tools to succeed, and when they know the compensation and services to which they are entitled. The Employee Handbook provides information on those topics and more; however, it also shapes the employment experience and relationship that the City wants to build with its employees. 
 
The Handbook provides guidelines regarding accountabilities and responsibilities for employees, while also building a framework for the City to attract and retain excellent employees.