From Big Law to Public Sector Innovation
Justine Hinderliter’s journey from labor and employment litigator to HR strategy consultant represents a unique path toward enhancing the tremendous potential of public sector organizations. As Co-founder and Principal at Partners in Public Innovation (PPI), she brings over 17 years of public sector experience to help government agencies transform through strategic planning, process improvement, and crisis communications.
“I went to law school with the intention of wanting to work in local government because I really felt like that’s where you could effectuate change,” Hinderliter explains. After discovering that litigation often came too late to fix underlying problems, she pivoted to HR, eventually becoming Chief People Officer at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, where she led transformational initiatives for a 2,300-employee agency.
The Data-Driven Approach
Hinderliter’s methodology centers on connecting operational improvements to cultural change. During her SFPUC tenure, she spearheaded an 18-month hiring process improvement project that reduced time-to-hire by two months while dramatically improving employee engagement—a 25% increase that transformed HR from a department people avoided to one they wanted to join.
“We had something like 650 approved positions the year prior but could only actually hire 250 because our process was so slow,” she recalls. The root cause wasn’t lack of effort—her 30-person hiring team worked hard but was “hamstrung by this process that no one even understood.” When they process-mapped the entire hiring workflow using sticky notes on butcher paper, the result was a staggering 40-foot diagram that wrapped around the executive conference room.
“I actually used that a couple of times as a prop to get buy-in,” Hinderliter notes. “If you have a propulsion system that is slower, or one doesn’t quite spin right, isn’t as efficient, or isn’t necessarily in sync with the rest, you’re going to see that so much more in the public sector than you do in the private sector.”
Culture Audits as Diagnostic Tools
Culture audits and employee engagement surveys represent critical diagnostic tools in Hinderliter’s framework, though she observes they have significant growth potential in the public sector. These assessments provide foundational data necessary to identify cultural risks and opportunities before they become crises.
“If you can use that information and connect all of your data, you would be able to understand these culture oddity things that you’re trying to uncover so much more readily if you have a better tech infrastructure,” she explains. By connecting engagement survey data with performance evaluations, turnover rates, and other metrics, organizations can proactively identify problematic patterns—such as managers with consistently high turnover and poor engagement scores.
Moving Beyond Tactical Thinking
One of Hinderliter’s key insights is that public sector organizations have opportunities to enhance their strategic thinking capabilities. She notes that many focus on operational excellence—like improving infrastructure delivery—and suggests there’s an opportunity to balance that operational strength with more strategic goal setting.
Building on this operational strength, public sector organizations can develop strategic workforce plans for long-term success. Hinderliter advocates for strategic planning processes that result in three to five concrete goals with measurable objectives, not just “a bunch of words and a bunch of pretty pictures.”
Best Practices for Public Employers
Based on her extensive experience, Hinderliter offers three immediate action items for public sector HR leaders:
- Invest in Your Staff: “Everybody is asked to do more with less. How you invest in your staff is unlocking their capacity.” This means growing, developing, and being the leader staff need you to be.
- Develop Leadership Skills: “You need to actually take being a manager of people as your job, as opposed to being the manager of this widget or this thing or this process.” Focus on “power skills”—communication, critical thinking, risk assessment, and innovation.
- Set Strategic Goals and Measure Progress: Move beyond operational headcount thinking to strategic workforce planning. Ask: “Where are you trying to go in 5 or 10 years? Do you have the skills to get you there?”
The Path Forward
Hinderliter’s vision for public sector workplace culture centers on agencies that “invest in strategy.” While budget constraints create real challenges in balancing immediate needs with strategic planning, she warns that “if you don’t make time for strategy, at one point or another, it’s going to bite you.”
The future belongs to public sector organizations that can balance operational excellence with strategic foresight, using data-driven insights to build cultures that propel rather than hinder their mission. As Hinderliter puts it: “The future will just happen, but you’re not going to be ready for it if you’re not investing in how you want to show up in that future.”
Justine Hinderliter is Co-founder and Principal at Partners in Public Innovation (PPI), where she leads strategic planning, improvement projects, and executive coaching for public sector agencies. With over 17 years of experience in government transformation, she previously served as Chief People Officer for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, leading HR and organizational culture initiatives for 2,300 employees and co-leading the agency’s groundbreaking Racial Equity Action Plan. She holds a Juris Doctor from the University of San Francisco School of Law and is a certified PROSCI Change Management Practitioner and Strategic Workforce Planner. Before founding PPI, Justine worked as a labor and employment litigator exclusively serving public sector clients and spent over 12 years in HR leadership roles at the City and County of San Francisco.