Personnel directors aren’t usually in the spotlight. "But as soon as they mess up, that’s when you know who they are," said Steffanie Dorn, finance director for the City of Greenwood, who also oversees and assists with personnel management.
She’s right, given that good human resources work usually goes unsung. Yet cities and towns depend on the HR staff, both to maintain a well-staffed city and to keep officials on the right side of laws, regulations and policies.
The job can be very different, too, depending on the size of the town or city.
Kenny Cook, town administrator of Williston, has experienced a range of those differences after retiring as the HR director for the City of Aiken in 2010.
For instance, he said, in Williston, which has a staff of about two dozen, there usually isn’t an information technology department or engineering staff. Those services must be contracted to outside firms, he said.
"What would be challenges for us are eliminated simply out of necessity, because we can’t afford the fancy IT department that large cities can," said the Williston town administrator. In contrast, in Aiken, Cook recalled, "It was a real challenge to be able to recruit those folks and retain them."
Training
In the Town of Williamston, Assistant Clerk Beth Elgin said a persistent problem simply is "not enough money to pay enough people, so that you have the ability to have four people go to Columbia for training."
With a smaller town like Williamston, it’s hard for four employees to be absent in order to receive training, given that a department may only have six employees.
In some cases, the lessons that employees are intended to glean from training are slow to take hold. For instance, Dorn said that while it’s great for employees to be promoted, it is important that they grasp the details of their new management status so as to avoid accidental violations of the U.S. Department of Labor laws and regulations.
For instance, if city employees take extended medical leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, their supervisor should not be contacting them with work-related requests.
"They have the expected right to be at home and not be bothered with work," said Dorn. "As long as everybody is happy, it’s all good. But as soon as we make them mad, they’re going to remember the things we weren’t supposed to do."
Some management inconsistencies could be addressed with a city staff policy, while other oversights are simply the product of a familiar new normal—that city employees are performing more tasks with less time and resources.
Hiring on a budget
Compensation limitations, in general, create hurdles to hiring. Cook said there’s frequently no one in the community who has the experience for the position the city is trying to fill. It’s also difficult to offer a salary that would satisfy someone who must relocate from outside the town or someone who is willing to commute to Williston.
Cities and towns also compete for applicants with the SC Highway Patrol, county sheriff’s departments, and neighboring cities and towns for quality applicants.
For others, the increasing cost of the hiring process itself, such as physicals, drug tests and criminal background checks, is a growing consideration.
Depending on where a city or town is located, hiring challenges can be even tougher. Donna Kazia, interim personnel director for the City of Anderson, said finding enough money to attract IT staff is also difficult. Being situated in the Upstate, which has grown in prosperity compared to some other parts of the state, also factors into the challenge, she said.
"It puts the pressure on Anderson," said Kazia who serves as president of the SC Municipal Human Resources Association. "If you’ve got competition for good people among a hospital system, other local businesses and national business, you’ve got to be somewhat competitive in order to attract and keep people. … But if you’re in an area that is depressed, you (the city) may be the only game in town."
There just isn’t enough money in city budgets to address HR challenges, according to several officials from various cities and towns.
Keeping employees
There’s turnover, too.
For law enforcement hires, Cook said once an officer receives training, goes through the Criminal Justice Academy and works for a short time, "It’s easy for them to be swallowed up by a larger jurisdiction."
These are trying times in law enforcement, said City of Travelers Rest Administrator Dianna Turner, adding that there are fewer qualified candidates willing to accept relatively low pay to work in what can be an intense environment.
In order to stay competitive with surrounding municipalities, the city recently instituted a take-home car policy, which allows all law enforcement to drive their patrol cars to and from their homes.
"It was being offered in most surrounding municipalities and was putting us at a disadvantage with recruitment and retention," Turner said.
Anderson city officials have also discussed a take-home car policy. It’s a complicated question when an officer lives 30 miles away.
"Where do you draw the line?" Kazia said. "As mayor or council, do I want to see the City of Greenville car down in Laurens? The residents aren’t benefitting by having that car in the driveway. The Laurens residents are, but my residents are not."
Cook of Williston said it’s especially challenging to recruit minority police officers.
"They’re so highly sought after," he said.
The human side of ‘human resources’
While the hiring process can be complicated and expensive, the other end of a professional lifespan—an employee’s retirement—also calls for special care. Sorting through which employees fall under which tier in the retirement system and the implications of new rules are also among the challenges human resources staff overcome.
Technology, too, increasingly brings complexity to managing people. Smartphones are giving rise to a new concern, specifically, the legality of after-hours work communication with employees who are eligible for overtime.
"Everybody wants to keep up with what’s going on, but if you’re not exempt from overtime, then we shouldn’t be allowing employees to have any type of communication after hours," said Dorn. "It’s such a commonplace thing now that it’s hard to control."
Some HR problems are not entirely unique to local governments. Over her years of experience, Kazia said she’s observed a key management flaw—workplace tensions go unaddressed because a supervisor never formally documented an employee’s infractions.