 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne. I'm the Sheboygan County administrative coordinator and with me today is co-host Bill Gehring, chairman of the county board. And our guest, Mike Collard, who's one of the newer members of our management team in Sheboygan County. Mike Collard was our personnel director when we hired him and now he's our human resources director. As you know, last month when we mentioned who our guest would be, again I said that with us would be Mike Collard, our personnel director, but there's been a change and he's going to describe that in a moment. Sheboygan County, as many of you know, is one of the largest employers in the county Sheboygan County government. We have about 1,300 employees, 23 departments, and today Mike is going to tell us a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of the human resources department. Before we get into that, Mike, why don't you first tell our viewers a little bit about yourself as well as what's happened with this change in title? Well, sure. First to tell you a little bit about where I came from, as you know, I've been working in county government for about five years prior to coming to Sheboygan County. I started out as a corporation council, which is the county attorney and personnel director in Adams County, which is a relatively small county, about 20,000 population in central Wisconsin. I came there from Milwaukee having practiced as an attorney for about 12 or 13 years in Milwaukee. I had a general trial practice and worked with several law firms there, but felt it was time for a change and wanted to get into the field of county government, which I'm very interested in. So I worked for a time as the county attorney for Adams County and personnel director. I liked the personnel management field and the administrative side of local government, and I went from there to a term as administrative coordinator from Arquette County, which again is a small, relatively rural county in central Wisconsin, only about 15,000 population. But there I served as the function of personnel director as well as finance director and the other things that an administrator has to manage in a complex organization like county government, as you all know. Just this December, it's been about three months now, I came to Sheboygan County as the human resources director or as the personnel director. In fact, I was personnel director until just a very short time ago, this past Tuesday, March 18th, the county board passed a resolution to change the name of the personnel department to human resources department, also changing the name of the county board committee from the personnel committee to the human resources committee and my title from personnel director to human resources director. Now, was that quite a promotion for you and your staff getting that change in title? I feel very honored to have a promotion after only a three month term in office. But realistically, it's just a more accurate name given the current usage among human resources professionals nationwide. There has been a trend over a number of years for the title personnel, personnel manager, personnel director to be used in a much more limited way, referring mainly to employee benefits hiring and personnel policies, whereas human resources has come to mean a much broader scope dealing with all the aspects of working with employees, including labor relations, working with the unions, working with employee groups on various issues, benefits, and a much broader scope of issues that can relate to employees of an organization. And that's certainly what our department does and what my job involves. So it's a more accurate term given the current usage. How many staff do you have in your department? We have a total of four full-time staff in our department, so in addition to myself, we have a personnel analyst who's the number two person in the department, handles a wide variety of issues, helps working with the unions and working with a lot of issues. We have a benefit specialist who's primary job is to work on our benefit programs for employees, the health insurance, dental insurance, and the other programs we have, but also has a significant role in safety and employee security matters as part of our loss control effort. And a personal secretary who handles a lot of the day-to-day work of the department, especially working with new employees and setting up their enrollments in our benefit programs, orienting the new employees and working on recruiting. Now, as I mentioned, Sheboygan County government, one of the largest employers in Sheboygan County with approximately 1,300 employees, certainly you're going to have people moving on to other positions or retiring. What's the process of hiring here? If someone's interested in becoming a county employee, what steps would they take? Well, first of all, we are fortunate to have a fairly low turnover ratio. In other words, most private businesses who have 1,300 employees, it's obviously a very large workforce. Most organizations would be doing a lot more recruiting than we do in most areas since in most areas of county government we have a very stable workforce. People tend to stay with the county for a relatively long period of time compared to most organizations. Obviously, there are always going to be a certain amount of turnover from retirements from people just finding other opportunities and so forth. In particular, the largest degree of recruiting that we do and hiring that we do in the county is at the health care centers. As you know, Sheboygan County operates two large nursing homes with different client populations in those homes, over 400 beds filled and over 600 employees at those nursing homes in different categories. That's by far our biggest area where we look for new employees. The procedure that someone would follow that we use for all of our recruiting, whether the health care centers or other county jobs, is to use the Sheboygan County Job Center as our resource and as the collection point for applications. So if anyone is interested in applying for a county job, first of all, you can find out what jobs are open either by calling my department or better checking at the job center because we always list all openings at the job center. They're listed on the internet, they're listed on the state computer and so forth. The job center for people who don't know or aren't familiar with it is really a partnership between Sheboygan County government, state government and a number of private contract partners who work in the employment area as part of or contractors with various state programs. And they have their own building, it's out on Wilgus Avenue near Taylor and that's where our recruitment process begins. People who are interested can check there for openings, as I said. That's also where you get the application form. If a person wants to apply, we require an application form to be filled out and then turned in again at the job center. So we have one collection point, one place where we receive all the applications. So that's how the process would begin. Now we have bargaining unit employees, we have non-bargaining unit employees. What generally is the process for making decisions on how someone is selected? Well it depends on the particular job and on the particular department. Generally speaking, the hiring decisions are made by the department heads for the particular job or by whoever that's been delegated to by the department head. So after the application is received, the application form is submitted and filled out, it's checked over but then immediately submitted to the particular department for review to determine whether that's a person who would be selected to proceed further in the employment selection process. For many types of jobs, we do require employees who meet at least the minimum qualifications to take some sort of test. What that depends on, what sort of test that is depends on what kind of job it is. But even for clerical staff, we do generally have a test that measures skills in the area they'll be working in. The same is true for instance a highway worker, a road worker. We have a much different test that would measure how skilled that person is and how well that person matches the type of skills that we would need to do the job. We think it's very important to select the right people. We don't have a high turnover in part because we take some effort to make sure that we hire people with the right skills for the right job and that's a very important aspect of any human resource program. So we normally have some sort of testing program and an interview. Depending on the job, the interview may involve one or more people and may even be a second interview for a few jobs. And then we would extend an offer to the successful candidate. As part of that process, we also routinely do background checks, both to check references and employment history before we decide whether to make an offer. Then after a conditional offer is made, we do an actual background check through the state to see if there's any criminal history. For people in the health care professions, particularly or in social work fields, we have to make sure that those people have a clean record that not that they don't have any convictions. We don't necessarily hold even a conviction or certainly an arrest against a person. That just gives us reason to determine whether there's something specific in that person's background that affects the particular job we'd be considering that person for. So we need to, because we hire a lot of people who are put in positions of authority by virtue of their government job, if we hire a social worker or a health care provider, we have to do a thorough job to make sure that we're not endangering the people they're meant to serve. So I feel we do a very good job of that and that we have a very good workforce as a result. And again, if there's someone interested not only following the newspaper but stopping it at the job center, and that's the best place to submit an application. Can they submit the application at the personnel department or would they be referred to the job center? They have to be submitted at the job center. So the personnel department or the human resources department. Thank you. It's going to be a learning curve to remember to use that name for all of us. And one point I should make, too, is that as you know, a large department in the county is the human services department, and that's the department that covers the social services, the community programs, the Department of Aging is part of that, and in fact the job center staff is part of that. There's inevitably confusion between human services and human resources, which have nothing necessarily to do with each other. At least it's health and human services, so hopefully that'll help a little bit of the confusion. Anyway, if we get calls for the human services department, we know how to transfer them over. Very good. Vice versa. But in any event, just to put it in a little plug for job applicants, the main area that we are constantly recruiting for is in the health care center's field. We have the Sunny Ridge Nursing Home here in Sheboygan. We have Rocky Knoll out near Plymouth, and they are constantly in need of good health care professionals at various levels and also support staff. One of our biggest job categories is a nurse's aide or nurse's assistant, often called CNAs because they're certified nursing assistants. To be eligible for that job, you have to have a certificate from the state. That's why they're called certified, but that requires just about a six-week program to be eligible for. People who are interested in that as a career and it's a good career path to follow can enroll in that course either at LTC or sometimes we actually offer a course for that directly at Sunny Ridge, directly through the county. If you're interested in that, please contact either of those institutions because that's a field in which there's a very good demand for people who are looking for a job and it does require some skills. But a six-week course is not too bad for the right person who wants to make that skill available. All right. Very good. Thank you, Mike. Mike, probably most of our viewers don't realize that a majority of our county employees, in fact, about 90%, are represented by a union. We do have eight separate unions representing these employees, so the county doesn't just set the wages. Wages and benefits have to be negotiated. Does negotiating benefits and working with unions take up a large part of your time? That's right now clearly the biggest part of my job, partly because we're in the middle of negotiations with six out of the eight bargaining units. And for people who don't know, a bargaining unit is just a group of employees who believe they have common interests in bargaining and setting terms of employment and so forth. And they form a group, and this is a process governed by statutes and then state regulations. And then they form a union, either form their own union or reach an agreement with one of the national or statewide unions to represent that unit. And working with those units in various ways will always be a big part of the human resources job since, as you say, most of our employees are in one of those bargaining units other than management employees, we have almost all unionized workforce. So the union agreements cover a wide variety of issues that we deal with on a daily basis. So there are two main parts of that job, one is to negotiate the agreements with the union and the other part is to work with the agreement, put the agreement into effect. The agreement covers things such as wages, it covers benefits, but it also covers a wide variety of things such as hours of work, overtime, compensation, compensatory time, how employees can bring grievances or complaints to the attention of management and how we have to deal with that. So there's a lot of activity in just working with those agreements and working with the union representatives to adjust problems or to deal with issues that have to be addressed. Coming this year with negotiations, can you give us a brief update of the status report? Sure. We, as I said, are in the process of negotiations with six out of eight bargaining units. That's because for two bargaining units we have contracts in place that extend at least through the end of 2003. So by the end of the year we'll be back in negotiations with those two, but right now those contracts are settled and we're operating under them. For the other six units, their contracts expired at the end of 2002. So the law provides that when a contract such as those expire without reaching into agreement yet that we operate under the old contract until we reach agreement on a new contract or until a new contract is determined by an arbitrator. And that's where we are right now, we're operating under the old contract. But usually, once we reach a new contract, there's usually a retroactive wage adjustment if there is a wage increase. We have not yet reached agreements with any of those six and two of those six were working with a mediator, a state-provided mediator who works with us to try to reach an agreement. On the other four, we're negotiating directly with the union. Either way it's a negotiation and we're trying to work out an agreement. Because of our understanding with the unions, we don't negotiate in public, as you know. And so we don't release any details at all about what proposals have been made, either proposals by the county or proposals by the unions. Those negotiations work a lot better in private, although once a tentative agreement is reached, the decision by the county board on whether or not to ratify that and accept it is a public debate if there's a debate, but that's a public process. At this point, I can't tell you where we are on particular negotiations because that's still being conducted in private. The term QEO has been in the news quite a bit lately. Does that apply to our county bargaining units? No, it doesn't. The QEO stands for the Qualified Economic Offer Law. And to explain that, I have to explain a little about the mediation arbitration law that applies to all local governments in Wisconsin. This is a state law. We're not covered by the federal labor relations law as a unit of local government, but we are governed by the state law. And the state law, first of all, requires local governments to bargain with the unions in good faith if there is a union representing employees. And requires us to bargain to try to reach agreements with each of those unions. It also, though, provides for a process of mediation, working with state-appointed mediators and arbitration if we can't reach an agreement. The QEO law was designed specifically for school districts in their negotiations with employees, and it essentially says you don't have to go to mediation and arbitration with a school unit, with a bargaining unit representing teachers. For instance, the school board can avoid that whole process by offering the union a qualified economic offer, which means that the school board would have to offer at least a 3.8% total increase in the compensation package, including both wages and benefits. Benefits have been increasing very quickly of recent years for most people, for most organizations, so that QEO law has resulted in some cases in school boards having the option of offering actually a wage cut and to make up for the large increase in benefit costs, or perhaps a very small wage increase to still reach that 3.8% level, and then the unions really can't do anything directly about that in terms of the law. That law does not apply to county government or to other forms of local government. It's just restricted to school boards. So we have to work with the general framework of the mediation and arbitration law. What happens if we can't reach an agreement in mediation? It could be a fairly long process, and we've been negotiating for several months. In fact, since January, when I took up my duties here and got the ball rolling again on negotiations, and it may continue for several more months, depending on whether we can reach agreement. But if we can't voluntarily reach an agreement, either side, either the union or the county, can file a request with the state to appoint a mediator. And a mediator then will schedule meetings with us and come in and see if the mediator can help us reach an agreement. The mediator's job at that point is not to impose a contractor to tell us what the agreement is going to be. It's simply to try to help us reach that process. Sometimes things break down. Sometimes an outside influence will help move the process along. Of course, in my view, it's better if we can continue to negotiate directly, and there's usually no reason why you can't. See if you can work on agreement without getting to that point. But if necessary, that's the next step in the process. If the mediator comes in and finds that the parties are just not able to reach an agreement, the mediator decides when things are more or less hopeless in terms of reaching a voluntary agreement. And that can be after one short meeting, or it can be after a number of meetings with the county and the union officials. But once we reach that point where the mediator makes that decision, then the mediator will decide to send the process to the next step, which is arbitration. If we have not reached an agreement at that point, we eventually have to decide what our best offer is to the union, the best package deal is on wages, benefits, any other issue that may have come up in bargaining. We have to put it all together as a package and make our best proposal to the union. And then the union has to do the same thing to the employer, to the county in our case. The union has to give us their best offer, their best proposal. And they may be close together or they may be far apart, depending on how negotiations have gone. But once both sides are fixed in their best offers, then both offers are submitted to an arbitrator. And the arbitrator, again, is a person appointed by the state commission. And they're the same people who do the mediation work, but not in our case. In other words, the mediator that works with us on a particular contract will be different from the arbitrator who will be involved at the next step of the process. And once the best offers are submitted to the arbitrator, then there are written arguments presented. There's paperwork documentation provided to the arbitrator and perhaps some testimony, a hearing by the arbitrator to hear what the issues are, hear why the county feels their offer is more fair, hear the union argue why the union believes its offer is more fair. And then if the party still don't agree, the arbitrator will simply make a decision. And the arbitrator has to either pick the county's offer as a whole or the union's offer as a whole. It's like the old baseball arbitration used to be. It's all or nothing. The arbitrator doesn't decide what the most fair contract is. The arbitrator decides, is the county's offer more fair than the union's offer or vice versa, but he can only pick among those two. So that provides some incentive to both sides to come up with what's really a fair proposal as their final proposal. But once the arbitrator makes that decision and picks one or the other, then that is imposed as the new contract. And the county board is powerless to overturn that. And there really is no appeal from it. There is no procedure whereby we can say the arbitrator made a mistake or he didn't consider the right things. That's a final decision. And then we proceed under that contract, under that arbitrator's decision, until the next contract expires, which is usually two years at a time. It doesn't come up. It comes up fairly quickly. Health insurance seems to be a major benefit these days. The cost seems to be going up every year. What are we doing to control that cost? And how big a cost is that really to the county overall? Sheboygan County has done a lot of good things to help control those costs. And we've had a sizable increase recently in the budget for health insurance. A 29% increase in the last year. And that has caught the attention of a lot of people. But one thing to keep in mind is that most other organizations, both private businesses and governments, have had sizable increases in premiums over the past five years already. And we've been fairly fortunate in delaying the sizable increase until this point. In fact, when you look at what our premiums are compared to what health insurance premiums are, other places ours are really pretty reasonable for the type of broad coverage we offer. So I feel pretty good about what we've done. One thing we do is we work with a group of other Sheboygan-ary employers. Many of the larger employers throughout Sheboygan County, including the city and the school district, as well as private businesses are parts of this group, are members of this group that negotiate as a group with the major health care providers. There are two major systems in Sheboygan County. The Aurora system and the PHN, the St. Nicholas Hospital system. And the group negotiates with both of those provider systems to obtain the best possible discounts in what the doctors charge, what is charged for tests, and the different medical procedures. So we've done a lot of work in that area to keep down our costs to a fairly reasonable level. And we're continuing to work on that. Obviously those contracts have to be renegotiated from time to time and they come due next year. So that will be a major event for us. But we also do things with our own benefit structure and we're always reevaluating our health insurance plan. So we need to keep a focus on that and try to get the best deal for our employees that we can on health insurance. Thank you. Mike, there's been a lot of emphasis, as you know, on Homeland Security and just security in general. Though you've been with us for a short period of time, I know you've already been actively involved with this discussion. What is Sheboygan County done to help protect the security, not only for our employees, but the public that often utilizes the buildings? Well, the Human Resources Department is one of several offices that have some role in security countywide. We are charged with the responsibility of running the loss control program, which is primarily designed to improve employees' safety. You know, the safety in dealing with chemicals, safe procedures in handling toxic chemicals or in blood-borne pathogens, disease control, things like that. And we have a number of programs we work on in that area. A major initiative we've taken recently is to develop these county ID badges for county employees, which you see us all wearing. These are a very recent development in our department. And the policy now is that all employees will wear a photo ID. And that helps with security in that if people are... We have 1,300 employees, not everyone knows them all. And if people are walking through the courthouse or through administrative building departments or other county facilities, it's very easy to identify who's a county employee and should be there. And maybe members of the public might have wondered in areas where they shouldn't be, but it just provides us better control over that because people are observant of who's wearing an ID badge and who isn't. It also, in addition to the security help, provides us with better visibility to the public. The public doesn't have to wonder, you know, are you really from the planning department? Are you really from the social services department? If they see you wearing that badge, there's a greater confidence that the public has that they're dealing with someone in an official capacity. So I think that'll be beneficial on both counts. Well, very good. The time passed quickly today and a lot of information, but certainly appreciate in your short tenure the work you've done for Sheboygan County and it was a pleasure to have you with us today, Mike. Not only do we have the badges, obviously, which are to improve security, but I know Mike in the Lost Prevention Committee has been involved with other security measures, whether it's in the courthouse, what have you. So a lot of good work being done. And again, glad to have you as our guest today. Next month, we're going to be learning more about the Register of Deeds Department and meeting with Darlene Navas, who has been our Register of Deeds for a number of years and is very busy right now with all the refinancing. In fact, personally, I think our family's refinancing for the third time in the last year. And I imagine that's the case with a number of our viewers out there. So next month, Darlene will be our guest and we look forward to you joining us then. Thank you.