PITTSBORO — By the end of this fiscal year in June, Chatham County Government is projected to have a yearly turnover of 65 employees — the highest number in recent years, up approximately 38% from 2019, or the difference of about 18 staffers.
“That’s one of those projections that I hope I’m wrong,” Carolyn Miller, assistant county manager for human resources, told the News + Record. “There’s a bit of uncertainty there, but I look at the first half of the fiscal year — we had data through the end of December —and I also included retirements that I know are happening, so those I can predict, but some of it really is an estimate.”
Such projections follow a year of local, state and national employers alike struggling to hire and retain staff, leading to staffing shortages across a wide array of industries — notably education, health care and service and hospitality, as workers seek higher pay, more benefits or jobs that better suit their lifestyle needs.
Within the county, which has more than 225 job classifications and more than 500 employees, turnover in the public safety sector is the highest by nearly 20 percentage points — a trend consistent of at least the last three years, according to the data Miller presented to county commissioners at their Jan. 14 budget retreat. In 2021, the turnover rate in the county’s public safety department was 44%, followed next by human resources, at 26%. Those departments had the highest turnover rates in 2020 as well, at 51% and 22%, respectively.
Public safety includes positions such as law enforcement officers, emergency telecommunicators and animal service staffers. Human services includes community outreach workers, children’s services supervisors and park managers, among other things.
The overwhelming majority of the projected turnovers for this year are resignations; followed by retirements and, minimally, dismissals.
That projection, calculated by looking at employment data from the first half of the year, is an 18% overall turnover rate. In 2021, that rate was 13%.
“We are certainly not alone, and that is true,” Miller said of increased resignations among employees. “This is common across government agencies, when I have conversations with other HR folks in other jurisdictions. It is a different type of turnover than I’ve seen in my tenure.”
In her 23 years as Chatham’s director, then assistant manager, for human resources, Miller said one factor this year is different from previous high and low trends: the pandemic.
The pandemic created a greater sense of urgency for employees, Miller said, or what she calls an “If not now, when?” mentality. There are also more opportunities for employees in many sectors, she said.
In Chatham, for example, there were 31 new county staff positions funded by the county’s $149.8 million 2021-22 recommended budget, expected to cost approximately $1.8 million. The 31 budgeted new positions include multiple positions in building inspections, social services, MIS, emergency communications and the Sheriff’s Department — which is currently facing a greater share of staffing shortages in the county, along with other law enforcement positions. The budget also funded positions in central permitting, register of deeds, watershed protection, facilities, social services, parks and recreation, telecommunications and pretrial release.
“We can no longer delay responding to the increased demand in service that accompanies growth,” County Manager Dan LaMontagne previously said of the new positions.
“This is the largest number of positions we’ve added to my recollection that are not tied to a specific capital project (such as the opening of the detention facility),” Miller told the News + Record last August, “but Chatham County has never experienced the level of growth we are seeing either. Our turnover rate has remained steady (between 11-13%), and we experience on average between four to eight retirements a calendar year.”
The county currently has 25 open positions posted on its website, some of them from the new positions approved in this year’s budget. Other openings are vacancies due to resignations or retirements.
At Chatham County Schools, the largest employer in the county, the district has offered multiple bonuses to employees in an effort to maintain student services in the face of drastic staffing shortages. At some schools, principals and teachers have worked as bus drivers and school nutrition workers just to keep up with standard bus routes and meal services.
CCS used part of its $17.4 million COVID-relief money to fund such bonuses; the county government announced on Monday that it will seek public input Feb. 1 through March 31 regarding how to spend its $14 million of the one-time COVID funds.
The county implemented its pay study from last year on Jan. 2, which is meant to bring any potentially lagging salaries to more comparable market ranges. The county is also working to expand its benefits — be it enhanced flexibility or adding paid family leave (which includes caregivers, not just parents).
“In government services, often you’ve got retirement, you’ve got 401k, you’ve got good health benefits,” Miller said. “And I think that for so long, and I’m talking for us and others, we relied on that as the big attraction and that’s not it anymore. It is about talking very openly about workplace culture, expectations about growth potential in positions — we’ve added more, I call them career development ladders, growth opportunities within a job class in the last five years than any other time.”
Effective last Oct. 5, all county employees were required to either show proof of vaccination or results from weekly testing, until further notice.
At the board’s budget retreat earlier this month, Commissioner Franklin Gomez Flores asked whether this policy contributed to the county’s overall increase in resignations. “Only a handful” of employees resigned due to the policy, Miller said.
That directive, she told the News + Record, was established to protect the health and safety of employees and the public, as well as to maintain services at a consistent level. In other words, the policy could hopefully help prevent any mass spreading events that could lead to temporary department shut-downs.
“It was important for us also, to make sure that we had a directive that would help us be informed about, and employees be informed about, their own status or making sure that service delivery was also going to be consistently provided,” she said. “Employees under this directive do have a choice about whether they want to be vaccinated or provide proof of that or test weekly — and I think the choice was very important for us.”
“The overwhelming number of employees” chose to comply with the directive, Miller said; approximately 78% of county employees are vaccinated, according to the January presentation.
In addition to hiring and retaining policies, Miller said stress and impact of the pandemic on employees — professionally and personally — “is hard to put a cost to.”
In addition to implementing its pay study, the county (led by the human resources department) also adopted an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) plan and appointed an EEO working group that is headed up by Courtney Jones, assistant HR director.
The plan, approved by the county’s board of commissioners in April, focuses on complying with federal anti-discrimination laws, and creating a more equitable, fair and diverse workplace. It will also include an analysis of county programs and policies, the race and gender composition of staff, the development of a method and working group, and more.
Jones said the plan began as an effort to more formally keep a record of its employment policies and practices.
“This does not mean that the county has not done this in the past, but it does create more formal avenues for auditing our existing programs and policies,” she told the News + Record at the time, “to make sure that we are not, either intentionally or unintentionally, discriminating against a particular group of people. It is simply a more formal system of checks and balances.”
Such accomplishments, Miller said, point to the continued growth on the horizon for both her department and the county at-large.
“I’m very proud of this department,” Miller said. “And we’ve done I feel like a good job through all of these stressors. We have grown significantly… and I think that, particularly in HR, we recognize that one of the hallmarks of a great organization is the ability to adapt to the changing needs of the public.
“So our goal is to be a strong resource for departments and offices to help them acquire the best talent, work through issues, recommend changes that benefit the employees as a whole — and that is going to serve us well as we deal with some of these other overarching issues like growth,” she continued. “How do we best construct a Human Resources system that serves the organization in the best way both now and as we go forward into a future that we don’t know what that’s going to look like? If we have a good foundation, we’ll be able to handle those changes as they come along.”
Reporter Hannah McClellan can be reached at hannah@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @HannerMcClellan.