An innovative leadership approach to branding the Finance Department of the City of Ontario for the purpose of developing a fun and creative work environment to inspire employee engagement to the extent in which employees feel passionate about being a public employee, emotionally committed to the community, and willing to put their heart into helping the City achieve its vision. 

To increase employee engagement and to create a self-sustaining corporate culture of service excellence, the City of Ontario established its core values under a program called Approach to Public Service - Choose public service to make a positive impact on the community.  The core values are as follows:

• Be Committed to the Community
• Achieve Excellence Through Teamwork
• Do the Right Thing the Right Way

The overall purpose of the City’s Approach to Public Service is to focus on how government employees provide services rather than what services they provide.  Historically, to improve government services to the public, cities have focused their efforts and resources in providing additional services or new programs.   This approach, however, generally requires additional financial resources. 

With the fundamental core values of the Approach to Public Service, the City believed that the quality level of government services could be remarkably enhanced without additional budget appropriations by simply focusing on improving employee morale and engagement to create a stronger and differentiated customer service experience.   The strategic plan was to develop an employee engagement approach that could be easily scalable across the organization and used as a model for other cities.  This is especially important for cities with scarce financial resources.