 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And as you know, every month we try to bring a different department to you, talk a little bit about roles and responsibilities, and this month we're very pleased to have Mike Collard with us, our HR Director. Welcome, Mike. Thank you, Anna. Now, how long have you been our Human Resources Director? I know time flies. Time does fly. It's been seven and a half years now, it'll be eight years in December. So I'm very glad to be here and glad to have had the time that I've had so far and hope it continues for a few more years. Same here. Same here. Well, please share with our viewers a little bit about the role responsibilities of the Human Resources Department. Well, the Human Resources Department is primarily concerned with all aspects of our county employees, everything ranging from compensation and benefits and helping out with orientation to their jobs and job descriptions, to also working with the unions, of course, and some majority of our employees are represented by unions. And we handle the negotiations with unions, adjust grievances that arise and generally take care of quite a few issues that really affect all of our county departments. And you know, folks might be surprised to hear you're not a real large department. How many employees do you have in HR and where are there areas of expertise? We have a total of four employees, including myself, so three other staff, awesome staff that we have, including Penny, who does a lot of assistance to the labor relations, working with the unions, workers' compensation matters, compensation, employee pay issues, and so forth, really my right hand person in the office, and then Ruth does an outstanding job with our employee benefit programs. We do a lot of those things in-house in our department, which many organizations contract out or have done outside the office, and Ruth takes care of a lot of those things, including our wellness program as well. And then Courtney, who's the office secretary and front desk person and handles a lot of the recruiting matters, the employee files, orientations of new employees and assistance with a wide variety of questions, so very proud of the staff and happy to be working with them. Good staff, and as you said, four of you, but countywide, how many total employees do we have and how many bargaining units are you working with? Well, the total number of county employees currently stands at 947, so we're just a little under a thousand. Those employees come in different varieties. Many different types of jobs are included, and that includes, for instance, county board members and other board members of the board, you know, some of the boards that deal with different county departments and specific issues that are pointed by the county board chair or the county board, and then there are certain seasonal employees or temporary employees that we have, student help out at Rocky and all and so forth. So it comes down to something on the order of 860 regular employees who are in permanent or, you know, long-term regular, either part-time or full-time positions. And then bargaining units. I know we have non-bargaining, bargaining. How's that break out? How many bargaining units are there? There are eight different bargaining units that we deal with. Each bargaining unit has its own union representatives and team who represent the interests of those employees when dealing with their employer, especially with respect to pay issues and schedule issues and other terms and conditions of employment. So there are a total of eight groups, and they vary quite a bit in size. The largest group is the supportive services group, kind of the miscellaneous general employees, about 260 or 270 employees in that union, all the way down to, currently I believe our smallest unit is the registered nurses unit at Rocky and all, which has only around 20 members. And I think they comprise of about 89% of our total workforce. That's right. A large majority, just a little over 10%, are non-union who are mainly the managers and few other specialized professionals in particular. And what's happened with the workforce? Is it increasing? Is it holding about the same? Is it decreasing? What's been happening lately? Well, it's not been increasing. I would say that over the past 10 years even there's been, I would say, a very gradual decline in the number of employees overall. With one big drop that happened when the county sold the Sonny Ridge nursing home and we had about 260 employees there. It was up to 300 at one time. So of course that was a significant drop in the number of employees. Otherwise it's been, you know, tightening of the belt here and there has reduced a few people. We did, unfortunately because of the budget concerns, have to do a few layoffs for 2010 at the beginning of the year and a few more, more recently at the highway department. But it's still been relatively stable but just gradually declining because of budget pressures. I know a lot of our viewers may not be aware of this, but as you well know Mike, our total payroll costs are less today than they were in 2002. So that certainly has contributed to us being able to hold the line or reduce property taxes. As you said, we certainly haven't been getting any larger and frankly based on budget constraints I think we're going to continue to be tightening our belts. How large is the overall budget when you factor in employee wage benefits? What proportion is that? Well for 2010, our current year, the total budget for wages alone is over $41 million. So obviously that's the largest portion of the county budget overall, which as you know is in the neighborhood of I think $140 million and almost as much alone as the tax levy. The amount that we charge in property taxes is about $45 million. Now on top of the $41 million for wages, that's not the whole story. We also have various employee benefits. That's another $17 or $18 million on top of that. So we're up for about $58 million in wages and benefits overall for the current year. What do you mean when you say benefits? What types of benefits do employees receive? Well the two biggest areas are, first of all the pension I would mention, we're part of the state retirement system and the county pays for every employee a certain percentage of their wages into the retirement system to fund that benefit, which is then administered by the state fund. It's an excellent benefit, an excellent fund that's well managed by the state but the reason it's well managed is they insist that we put that money in as we go in sufficient quantities to pay for that benefit so it's quite expensive. It's currently 11% of wages for most employees, a little bit more for certain categories in particular law enforcement, sworn officers. The next biggest benefit or actually the largest benefit in fact is the health insurance of course, which is, well for next year we're looking at about $11 million in county budget just for health insurance. Then there are a few other things. There's some dental insurance which is not a particularly expensive benefit, a little bit of life insurance and so forth and long term disability insurance for certain employees. And of course then the paid time off benefits such as vacation and sick leave which don't come directly out of the county budget but obviously are very useful or a good benefit for our employees as well. Now the cost of health insurance as certainly you know very very well has been a real challenge for us as we've seen double digit increases over the last five, eight years and I know that you've been creative working with some other staff to redesign our health insurance plan and in brief what's happened with health insurance cost number one, what kind of increases have we had to absorb and then secondly what have we done to mitigate that? Well I think one of my most important jobs is to try to keep some control of that health insurance number because it's obviously a huge part of the county budget and something we need to try to keep under control. So I've been very pleased that over the last four years the increases have been relatively low under five percent each year for the past four years. We've worked very hard to keep that number down unfortunately projecting ahead to 2011 it looks like it's going to have to be a little bit bigger than that in the neighborhood of ten percent or so we anticipate but the things we can do to address it are things we have done include changes to the benefit design, a big change was made in 2008 as a result of some strenuous negotiations of course. We think we have a much better plan design as a whole I would say we've been very aggressive in searching for the best bargains and I want to explain one thing that we're a self funded plan as you know so it's not a matter of shopping for a better premium or finding an insurance company that will give us a better deal and not gouge us as you know some people think insurance companies do no our costs are actually directly paid by us we're essentially operating our own little insurance company just for our employees and whatever the costs are they are so the only way we can control those costs is by kind of negotiating with the doctors with the health care providers. We don't have enough leverage to do that on our own so we do it primarily by joining various networks and paying to participate in some of these benefit arrangements we've been very aggressive in finding the deals that give us the best benefit the best discounts from the major health care provider systems and so that's really paid off in some savings we also operate our own clinic and tie that together with our wellness program because really the best way to save money on health insurance is to keep employees a little bit healthier and even just a few instances of people avoiding those expensive medical problems which are bad for people and bad for the budget really pay off in the long run. So about 4% increases the last four years or so or under 5% never chance we're looking at it as about 10% for 2011 but again correct me if I'm wrong but prior to four years ago we had some 15-18% increases we really got hit hard. Up to 30% we had one year it was at 30% so in fact we had six consecutive years where the increase was higher than 10% each year and so we came up with 111% over five years and numbers like that that really doubled in a fairly short amount of time the cost of health insurance so we haven't seen that lately but it's an area where you have to run twice as fast to say in the same place work twice as hard to keep those controls every year because we're fighting against a trend when we go to our consultant to ask for projections we're working against a trend of 11% increases a year that's out there kind of in the state generally for plans of our type. Tough to hold the line when you have to absorb those kind of increases and I know it's not just a public sector challenge it's a private sector challenge as well. Mike you mentioned the in-health clinic and could you give us a little bit of an idea of what kind of services that are provided by the in-health clinic why the costs are more effective for us and then the participation level of our employees with the in-health clinic over time. Sure I'm very proud of the clinic because it's really a little bit of a innovation for us that that most organizations of our type do not have and we do do the clinic a little differently than most employers even even the large employers that have such a clinic would handle it the clinic is staffed primarily by a nurse practitioner an advanced practice nurse practitioner who is not a doctor but it's a level of training and expertise that's really the next rung below an MD and that it's more advanced than a physician's assistant for instance or a registered nurse there's an LPN a licensed practical nurse who assists her in the clinic but the nurse practitioner can handle most of the basic health care needs for many people you know she can give physical exams she can give injections she can prescribe medication so she can deal with the sore throats you know the the bumps and bruises the scrapes the the regular ongoing treatment and I mind more efficiently than even a doctor's office can because it's very leanly staffed and very efficiently set up it's run for us not directly by the county we don't hire the nurse practitioner ourselves we contract with another company to run it for us the company we contract with is called in terra health and they're based in Milwaukee and they specialize in doing clinics for employers and things like that so we were happy to set them up as our operator of this clinic and they were been great to work with and very flexible and and setting it up the way we want and the way we see it it'll have the most impact to us we also think it's an advantage to have that independent operator for it because then she's free the clinic staff the nurse practitioner is free to work with Aurora to work with st. Nicholas hospital people or martial medical clinic people or any of the other health care providers in the area completely impartial and so we think that that really is going to have a beneficial effect on our employees and we think that'll eventually show up in the claims the cost of running the clinic is actually a little bit less than the cost we would pay to outside medical providers on average even when we take into account you know the rent that we pay in the overhead as well as the fact that we don't charge employees any deductibles to go use the clinic so it's a big benefit to employees if I need something done if I need a physical exam or if I need you know my allergy medication adjusted I can go see the nurse practitioner and I pay nothing no co-pays no deductibles I don't see a bill at all which is a great benefit for employees so I think more employees frankly ought to be taking advantage of that and I would certainly like to see that increase it's been at about 20 22 percent of employees and their dependents who really take advantage of that program the ones who do take advantage are very happy with it they really like to see it expand and what kind of money do you estimate that the taxpayer is seeing its savings with the operation of this in health clinic versus the the old way of handling and would just go to see your own practitioner there's a little bit of savings net every month maybe a couple thousand dollars a month that's in addition to the savings the employees have by not having to pay the deductibles or co-pays I think the real benefit though is something that's very hard if not impossible to measure which is that I think we're starting to see it already it affecting our overall claims dollars people are getting a little bit better more thorough advice up front about how to handle their own personal health because the nurses there don't just deal with you know patching you up and sending you out they really take a look at the whole person spend more time with the person do a lot of health coaching lifestyle coaching help employees who are interested in quitting smoking or losing weight so we really have that tied into an overall wellness program which we then can can run without without cost because it's included as part of our clinic package and we definitely would like to see that pay off in the long run by just having healthier employees I think we are starting to see that well that's good to hear and in last year we also won an award for that program from the the fourth good government award and I congratulate you on that that was a great effort and it really paid off and is paying off for Sheboygan County right now at the federal level we're seeing a lot of changes in the health plans and in the way the the government's drafting new legislation how are those changes affecting us here in Sheboygan County well that's something if I really studied up on it we could probably talk about for the half hour alone because the health care reform effort especially at the federal level but we also have some state law changes are so complex and affect us in so many ways that we don't even know the full impact by any means we're only starting really to understand some of the things especially those that will take effect right away there's certainly some things that we know are going to affect us fairly immediately in our in fact already affecting us one of those provisions for instance requires us to allow employees dependence to stay on the plan children to stay on the plan until they're age 26 you know even even if they're not college students or not in school anywhere so that's adding a whole group of people to our plan without any additional premiums revenue being paid in so that of course is going to cost us and we and we estimate between one and one and a half percent of total premiums as a result of that change so that's an extra cost one other source of cost is the provision that requires plans such as ours to remove their lifetime maximum limits on the number on the amount of benefits that can be paid now we have or had a two million dollar lifetime limit on the medical benefits we'd pay for any one person which is very high we haven't reached it thank goodness but just because that cap is removed we have to have some backup insurance for the very large claims so that's going to cost us we estimate about fifty thousand dollars extra next year those are just a couple of examples of things one good thing that may result is there's some provision in the plan for reimbursement for some retiree health insurance costs still very unclear how much of that is actually going to come back and help us we're certainly looking to get some reimbursement in that area and then the real big impact comes in the year 2014 so we're looking ahead to that when the requirement kicks in that essentially all individuals have to have the health coverage and these exchanges are set up and so forth there's a lot of work to do before I can really estimate the impact of that right now I think it may end up being a cost to us just because of provisions that say we have to essentially provide a voucher to an employee who might want to go and buy insurance from one of the exchanges it might actually increase the number of employees we're paying for for their health coverage but it's really too early to be able to estimate what what that impact will be one other thing that's going to be impacting our budget is the work that you're doing with our labor unions and negotiating new contracts could you give us a little bit of a feeling for where you are in that and what's going to be happening this year a lot of our seven out of our eight bargaining units I should say we have contracts typically a two-year contract with each bargaining unit seven out of those eight contracts expire in December the one that doesn't expire is with the the health care centers group we entered into a longer contract with them that runs through 2012 but obviously we're in the position now of needing to start negotiations and we have started negotiations with several units to try to work out a new agreement that will take effect in 2011 and cover 2011 through 2012 in fact we may be negotiating with eight because there's some indication that the one we have settled might want to have some further discussions with us which would be which would be great so we have a lot of work to do meeting with eight different groups of employees and everything's on the table including obviously wages and health insurance and you know other issues that that come up but no settlements yet we have a long way to go to achieve those agreements now you mentioned that these contracts expire at the end of the year you think we'll have those negotiations concluded by that time and if we don't how does that handle I can't honestly say that I think that we will we certainly are trying to be in a position to reach an agreement with any union that is that is willing to reach an agreement with us early on because it's obviously better for everyone if we know what the what the terms of employment are going to be before before the work happens historically speaking on the other hand it's been a pretty rare event to have contracts settled before the end of the year it's unfortunately all too common in our system and not just a Sheboyin County but to other counties cities villages throughout the state that negotiations often go well into the next year after that and sometimes even beyond and what what do we do if we can't come to an agreement with the union how is that handle well the first thing is we have to continue following the old contract we don't go into a period where we can do what we want because we have no agreement we have to keep following the old contract if we're unable to reach an agreement even you know after how many months of negotiations then eventually the state Employment Relations Commission will appoint an arbitrator first a mediator to come in and help us reach an agreement and then eventually an arbitrator to simply decide which side is being more reasonable on which side has the better offer in the arbitrator's decision and then it's it's kind of winner-take-all and the arbitrator says either the union wins or the county wins and we we have to abide by that decision I think we had two cases that went to arbitration last year and we won one and lost one that's correct we had two bargaining units that we out of eight that we didn't reach agreement with so we reach six agreements and the other two went to an arbitrator and we essentially made the same offer in each case that we had made to the ones that settled but the arbitrator in one case the deputies union ruled in the deputies favor and granted higher wage increase than we were thinking was was justified at the time and then in the social workers unit went the other way and the arbitrator said that the wage offer we had was acceptable well thanks for that update with that we'll turn it back over to Adam Mike obviously you do a lot of work with all of our employees and that's your key focus but as you know there are a number of people in the private sector that are looking for work folks are struggling and this is an area of expertise for you any advice to our viewers who might be watching right now that are currently unemployed looking to get into the workforce what are some some steps that they should consider taking if they haven't already sure I mean unemployment I think is a terrible problem because I mean just so destructive to individuals and families and destructive to the economy and the community as a whole so I really hope that turns around and we get back to seeing more full employment levels but if one of our viewers out there is in that position I mean the advice I'd give is really in two parts one is one is long-term advice if you want to have a good job you really have to do your homework and lay some groundwork and prepare to have that good career so the first step is really pick a field where people with skills will be in demand and then develop those skills and there are a lot of different areas a lot of different fields and I'm not going to give advice about what's the best field to go into because that depends on the person but you can't do it at the last minute you really have to prepare that often years ahead sometimes weeks or months ahead depending on what type of job is but it's essential if you want to have a good job to get a skill that other people don't have and you want to really think through that and what skill you could develop and what would really put you in a position so that employers would need you because they're not going to pay you unless they need what you have once you get to the point of actually applying for a job looking for a job meeting with an employer it comes down to the fundamentals that really haven't changed much over over many years but we see more and more people frankly forgetting or not realizing what these job seeking skills entail again it's a matter of doing your homework and coming prepared you know act like you really want the job do some homework investigate the job you're looking into before you go meet with the employer come to the interview you know looking your absolute best and sounding your best and sounding like you want to be a part of their team follow up with any personal contacts you have you know don't show up late you know you see people doing all sorts of things that come to an interview late and not prepared and asking about the job and things they should know it's all too easy for the employer to find a reason not to hire you you want to make that employer want to hire you so really put your best pay face on things and and doing the homework is essential and when we say doing the homework Mike and I both have the opportunity to be involved with a number of interviews and I'm always amazed when folks don't take the time to even look at our county website if it's a county position or you know as you said doing some background doing some homework it always impresses us when they can refer to things they've looked at or homework they've done on the website because we know they've taken the extra effort so that's excellent advice and speaking of county employment though we only have a few minutes left we're certainly not in a a growing stage here but but positions do open and they are not always filled internally a rocky knoll with with providing health care and nurses nurses aides LPN's they see some turnover there what does someone do if they're interested in pursuing a county position and you're right rocky knoll is one area where we're always hiring or interested in hiring the right people with the right skills and a cna certified nurses a job you know that kind of training it's a definite skill but can be acquired in a relatively short amount of time so if that's something people are interested in we'd certainly encourage people to apply out there the other area where we we still do hiring fairly regularly is in the law enforcement department where the correctional staff always has some turnover there are always some openings there sometimes it's hard to keep them filled it's a very difficult job but again one that many people can qualify for with relatively little experience but certainly some training if people and there are a wide variety of other jobs as you know we have you know 150 different job classifications I think in the county and then they open up from time to time if anyone out there is interested in county employment in any of these areas the two places that are best to look are first of all on the county website click on the employment button or click on departments and human resources then there's an employment button there we always list open current openings at our own website we also also list current openings at the Wisconsin job net which is the the website associated with the state department of vacations and they have an office obviously in Sheboygan where you can go and actually look on their computers but you can access that over the internet very easily Mike excellent excellent presentation overview thank you for joining us and if you want to learn more about our HR issues or our questions or suggestions for Mr. Collard please don't hesitate to contact us all that information is on the website so you can contact Mike directly or a member of his staff and and again a very nice overview thank you for joining us today Mike well thank you Adam glad to be here until next time on behalf of the Sheboygan County Board myself thanks for joining us next month our new finance director Mr. Terry Hanson will be with us and that name may sound familiar because he used to be the finance director for the city Sheboygan has now been with Sheboygan County coming up on three months so we look forward to having him here and until then thanks for joining us