County Workforce Issues Are a National Problem

Late last year, Northampton County set aside $450,000 that was, in part, intended for a pay study. It has so far taken no action, and Executive Lamont McClure has done little to address employee salaries during his first four years in office. He is considering a childcare center at Gracedale, but has done little to actually retain people

As noted in Governing, public sector employees are facing issues that simply are nonexistent in the private realm. Elections workers have been dealing with abusive messages and emails along with completely unsubstantiated claims of corruption by sore losers like defeated Exec candidate Steve Lynch. Workers in the PFA office are exposed on a daily basis to the ugly side of domestic abuse. Staff in  Children and Youth encounter neglected and abused children daily. Corrections officers work long hours, some of it mandated, yet must maintain peak physical and mental acuity to prevent inmates who wish to harm themselves or others. Gracedale, which at one time prided itself on taking everyone, is now limiting admissions because its ability to provide resident care is below state standards. Even the law librarian must deal daily with people who expect her to draft their complaints and petitions. 

Here's what some counties are doing.

Mental Health - Larry Johnson, DeKalb County, Ga., commissioner and NACo president: We have a pilot program that we had started with election workers, because this has become a mental challenge, dealing with threats and things of that nature. We have worked with our sheriff’s department, our library system, our fire department — we tried to make it as collaborative as possible, because everybody has to deal with this type of stress in the workplace and at home or in the community. Sometimes you have to have someone in the community or in the workplace that can alert other people that something is just not quite right with my worker X — what can I do, I noticed symptoms, I noticed signs, how can I prevent an anxiety attack or something that may go further?

Pay and Benefits - Johnson: : I’m trying to be creative. One thing we’re doing is that, with public safety first, we’re raising the salary of all of those in the police and fire departments. We’ve given them a 6 percent raise and a $3,000 retention bonus. We also raised the pension with a 3 percent match to a 6 percent match. We were doing a 12.5 percent increase in frontline pay with the CARES money, so now we’re going to make that permanent, as we try to make sure we recruit and retain the best officers.

Matt Chase, Nat'l Ass'n of Counties Exec Director: We have created a network of county administrators, HR directors and others, including elected officials, who are really focused on workforce retention. We have a ton of counties that are down major numbers of full-time equivalent employees that are really working to be more creative with things like remote workforce, alternative schedules, pay and benefits, and redoing job classifications. Leon County, Fla., just did some old school county job fairs, where they actually hired people on the spot that day, when normally it would have taken three months to do interviews and background checks. They totally flipped their hiring system to move much quicker. They’re still doing the background checks and other things, but they kind of do it on the back end.

Gracedale has worked at same-day hiring and alternative schedules, but the county has shied away from other ideas. An attempt at remote working was an abject failure during the pandemic, but this is simply because employees needed training. A systematic look at salary compression and job classifications could come from a pay study. It is really needed. 

I have to caution that a pay study is going to be controversial and suspect that's one reason why none has been done. But that;s why Career Service Regs provide for appeals.