The City of Moose Jaw is celebrating after winning its fifth award over the last number of years, after receiving the National Municipal Professional Development Award for its Succession Planning Project.

Moose Jaw won the country-wide competition after beating out 35 other nominees, for their program that helps train and mentor employees to eventually take over leadership roles within specific departments.

The program was started by HR Director Al Bromley in 2017 after the city looked at each department and felt that within five years, about a quarter of the leaders in those departments would be retiring.

"It's a national award which is a really big deal," says Bromley. "In my career, this is probably the single biggest honour I've ever been a part of receiving. Our whole team is pleased as can be at this kind of recognition."

Since developing the plan in 2017, the city has been training managers in succession planning and career coaching. They also then talked with around 60 employees about what characteristics leaders within the city should have, eventually agreeing on that fact that leaders should; be solution-focused, create opportunities for others to succeed, have the courage to do the right thing for the right reason at the right time, and are consistently modeling positive behaviour.

As it stands now, 56 employees or 'career owners' are working with 21 different department heads or 'career coaches' on personal development. Fifteen of those employees have been nominated for critical positions, which means they will be directly working toward taking over leadership positions.

The city has been helping these employees as well, offering personal development plans, courses and workshops, online training, and helping them further their post-secondary education by enrolling in programs such as the Master of Business Administration.

"It's exciting," says City Manager Jim Puffault about receiving the award. "It's our peers and all of the cities across Canada that are in these competitions. It shows that what we do is innovative and certainly rises to the top, and is something that other cities will be talking about how they can emulate. It's a feather in our cap to get people who work specifically in the city industry who are analyzing the work that we're doing and saying 'Yeah, this is something that's really good'."

Two past 'career owners' who have already made that step including Director of Public Works & Utilities Darrin Stephenson, and Director of Engineering Bevan Harlton, who went through the program and took over leadership roles.

The award was judged by five city managers from across Canada, and Puffault says the number of awards Moose Jaw has won in recent years shows just how much hard work the current and previous city councils have put in to improve our city, as well as the fact that a large amount of strategic planning going on behind the scenes is paying off.

"We really look for opportunities to do things differently to produce better results," says Bromley. "Our team is quite willing to make personal sacrifices for the greater good of our community and our organization. Our Career Coaches have heavy workloads but they're fitting in some pretty important work, and they're doing it with energy and commitment. A lot of why we're doing better is we're committed to improving, and improving our areas of responsibility."