 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Tom Wagner, and as you know every month we strive to focus on a different department, roles and responsibilities, and today we are very pleased that Gene Gallimore has joined us. Welcome Gene. Thank you. Good to be here. Gene's been our HR Director now going on four years and has done a remarkable job, built I think the strongest team we've ever had in our HR department and today we're going to learn a little bit more about the roles and responsibilities, functions of that important department. So please begin by sharing just a little bit about yourself because you and your family have been community leaders and have made good things happen here and why don't you set the stage just sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself personally. Sure thank you. Born and raised in Sheboygan, so Sheboygan County is certainly near and dear to my heart as well as my family. We have currently raised three boys, two young adults and one still in high school, so it's all about sports and community and my husband and I a few years ago did co-chair the United Way campaign here in Sheboygan which was really an enlightening experience for us, certainly respected the United Way for many years about playing a key role, certainly opened our eyes as a family and understanding what a great community we live in here in Sheboygan County. And that's how we met. You and Jim did a tremendous job. Jim continues to serve on the United Way Board with myself but it is a remarkable organization. You guys did a tremendous job. Well we're pleased to have you here set the stage, share a little bit about the primary roles and responsibilities of the Human Resources Department. Okay certainly. I think one of really my personal goals as an HR leader is to make sure that the HR practices and policies align very well with the organizational goals in this case the county's goals. So we want to be that strategic partner at the table just like any other department. I think our slant certainly in our focus is on the people management, our people, our employees here at the county. So that's near and dear to our heart. I really look at the HR function as kind of the employee lifecycle and you know what does that mean? From the very beginning we help recruit and attract our employees so understanding the businesses. We have 18 different departments that we support as a department and understanding their roles and their responsibilities helps us to help them recruit and be that voice of the team out in the community as an employer. We want to be an employer of choice and I think in the last several years we've done a really nice job at really raising the bar if you will in terms of how we recruit and select our employees. So really we get them on board. Our onboarding process is very good. We include our management team in that process making sure that the employees are welcome and understand our policies, our procedures and what the county is all about. Once they're onboarded the management team really has a big responsibility to ensure that ongoing training and support of that individual is maintained and that we continue to engage our employees and make them feel engaged in part of the team. So with that we continue through that employee lifecycle to provide professional development training for our management team and to the ability that we can provide ongoing training for employees as well. From there we make sure that we build a performance management program so as the employees developing in their position we can provide feedback and really performance management is ongoing feedback throughout the year to let employees know the great things that they're doing in their position but also some areas perhaps discussions where we can coach them to success. So it's from that hiring it's the performance management and certainly then bringing them on board they may look at other opportunities within the county so we talk about succession planning and within the HR role with embedded all of that we've got some great programs. We take care of the employee benefits program, the administration, the plan design, we look at wellness programs, safety initiatives and so forth. Lots of things happening in HR and really we put make people a priority within our department. And I don't know how much we talked about this four years ago when you started but when I reflect back on your role as HR director and you've built this team and these new employees and you used to work at a bank, you worked at Blue Harbor at one point and you had this outstanding HR background when you came aboard but how often do you go to an organization that has 19 different departments ranging from law enforcement, health and human services, a nursing home, planning. I mean it's from A to Z and I have to imagine when you come on as an HR director and have that breadth of responsibility and need to help recruit employees. It's got to take a little while to get a feel for the organization. It did and I recall one of my peer managers saying to me after I was here a year he said I said you know I've got this and he said oh goodness I think it's going to take a little longer so having been here now four years Adam to your point it was definitely eye opening for me. I had to learn to take time, respect the knowledge you know and every activity that was going in and around me among my peers and the more that you sit and you listen and that's really a very important management practice you learn a lot by just being a good listener and I think that that was parallel in my banking career I traveled to 22 banking locations and was that HR role and then at Blue Harbor there were 12 departments so jumping to 18 really almost doubled doubled my size and so it really is learning and respecting your peers roles and learning how to work well together. So big picture we have about 825 employees here working in 19 departments administering about 200 programs and services how many staff do you have to support this organization and what's your HR department budget? Right our budget is just short of 600,000 and most of that is comprised of you know salary and benefits and then we have consulting and and some benefit pieces embedded within our staff is currently at six employees we've got four full-time and two-part time that actually do a nice job share so currently at six and I think when I look at our we've got an HR manager Penny Alsner who does a phenomenal job she's been here over 30 years and we value her her tenure and her experience and knowledge. Marcia Schreiber joined us just about six months ago and Marcia is our senior generalist and really provides an outstanding background in benefits employee wellness. We have Michelle Raines as an HR generalist and Michelle has been with us just over two years now and Michelle again brings 15 years of HR experience and actually has a county administration degree so understood government as she also joined us and then we have Courtney Ames and Alyssa Woltring as our front desk HR coordinators they job share and they do a phenomenal job for us they are our meet and greet at our front desk in HR and really make good things happen for us every day with our employees. When Jean started and and Tom certainly remembers this Act 10 was being introduced and we had at that time I think seven or eight bargaining units as I mentioned we have about 825 employees how many bargaining units do we have now and what's really changed since Act 10? Right I think since Act 10 we had the majority of our employees really governed under union contracts so their wages their work rules and so forth and their benefits were able to be bargained each each year however long that contract was for post Act 10 which I believe was in 2011 the majority of those contracts went away we went from eight to two and in the last year here in 2016 our health care center Rocky Knoll contract came to an end as December 31st so we had a transition there with some of our employees so currently we have one union contract remaining and that is in our sheriff's department for our deputies and detectives WPPA and there's about 55 employees currently covered under that contract. What do you what would you look upon as an example of two of the biggest change I know that you took the lead in rewriting our policy and procedures what do you see as being you know one of the biggest changes as a result of that and how we interact with our employees and the teamwork we have here? I think that's a great question and I think coming from private sector to public sector the union contracts were something new for me so I had to learn a lot at a rapid pace and I come from an open door policy every employee's opinion and matter counts we encourage and we embrace feedback and so that was not new to me so what was new to me is is understanding that this culture the majority did not necessarily feel that perhaps about our leadership and management team so when you talk about culture change a way of life change we had to understand that our employees perhaps didn't trust all of those practices practices so it was some training within our policies we had to develop and establish you know performance review training we had to make sure that employees knew we wanted to listen in that we valued mostly their opinions in general and I think you've done a tremendous job with that transition there was angst and whether you supported act 10 or not it created some real change in our organization and I think a credit to our management team all of our department heads and particularly the HR department that transition went about as smooth as it could and I like to think that we treat employees the same whether they're in a contract or not we all care for one another we respect one another we all have important roles and responsibilities and you helped I think establish a better understanding that that's the case that's how we operate here pay for performance you talked about you know that was a change of late what is pay for performance how what changed as a result of that sure again kind of dating back to the the contract culture and that time and a place most of our employers were not reviewed their performance on an annual basis we had those outside of the union contracts that were so that practice was in place and we appreciate you know certainly strong performance and recognize that at the time however we had the majority of our employees now moving to that culture so slowly and in the last few years we reintroduced the performance evaluation plan again in that respect we engaged employees and we had them take a look at the forum we went to our management team does this still work for us what makes sense today how should we measure performance across such a vast organization and be consistent and fair in its application so that was really quite neat the form was put together we rolled it out to our employees and really what pay for performance does the contracts in the past would say at six months perhaps at annually and thereafter every single person would have the same increase at those particular intervals and performance management was not part of that measurement it was an automatic increase today pay for performance with those union contracts going away and this is typically some of certainly private sector practices as well is that it does matter that your performance is either meet standard below standard or really even above standard and that we want to recognize your good works as a county so it provides an opportunity for employees to be motivated in their own work performance to want to do really well because their performance ties directly to their paycheck and their annual potential annual increase every year so if we feel that our employees are more motivated to do a better job the end result is that an organization will be much more successful some of our viewers might be wondering well just how broad is this pay for performance threshold and it's rather modest it's a one to three percent increase and you only get the one percent if you're meeting minimum expectations so it's possible some employees may not receive an increase at all though the vast majority of our employees do an excellent job and receive at least a one percent I can go up to three we don't see that very often because that's really at the high end of the of the scale but we may see around a two percent on average this year and the feedback we would give some employees I know who were who were threatened by that is do you really want to make the same amount as the person sitting right next to you that may not be doing the level of work you're doing or as dedicated as you are putting in the time you are uh this so this allows managers to truly reward employees that are going above and beyond so final question before I turn it over to Tom what do we do to help make sure our management team was skilled to appropriately apply this tool because of course that created some angst as well does my direct supervisor really objectively apply this tool to make sure that we are in fact rewarding the best and the brightest and giving you know perhaps just a minimal increase to those who are just doing enough to continue that did take some work I think as as any new initiative we had some managers who embraced this and who were very people savvy and leadership and management savvy so they were able to understand the review in the process very quickly for those that did not and even those that did we invited them in several years in a row now to performance management training so we walked through what is this evaluation what is your role what is the employees role one of the things that we do Adam is we do a self-evaluation process where we ask the employee about a month ahead of the annual due date to to really rate themselves and put together all of the good works all of their accomplishments for the year all of their achievements and provide that to their manager ahead of time this provides our leadership team to get a good sense of where that employee feels they're at they have the opportunity to review that perhaps tweak it and then have a very meaningful discussion at that annual review process and not going in not knowing what that employee is thinking so a lot of coaching on on that whole process employees and managers on the onset were very nervous about that and there was some pushback but now that we're into this a couple of years it's coming natural and I can see some very good progression and growth so we ongoing our coaching and developing our leaders and managers on how to deliver a successful performance review in conjunction with that it's not just that annual review that's important that's a one time formal sit down with your employees my hope is that we continue to encourage our leadership team to sit down whether that's quarterly semi-annual check those goals how are we doing have ongoing good conversations some of those conversations may not be positive we may have to give performance feedback and coaching but the point is ongoing consistent and meaningful conversations with our employees nice overview thank you jean tom thank you adam hi jean nice you could be here um when you were speaking it made me think of your department is one of those departments that really reaches out into all the different departments it's not necessarily a question more of an observation right i mean you you obviously work with every department there is within the county and not every department can say that i would assume yeah right just getting back to your benefit safety and wellness which i think you're you're you're responsible for and you've got some overall safety programs that you're doing with employees now what what is the safety committee been working on this past year and kind of what is your focus going forward yes the past few years we've really picked up the safety initiative here at the county and we continue to listen to our employees and ask them what their needs are so in 2016 specifically first of all our safety committee meets quarterly and it is comprised of employees and perhaps some management throughout the county so again a voice of the team we want to know what's going on out there so in 2016 our focus was really driven by kind of society if you will what's going on in the world today and it's really active threats and that can mean many things that can mean at home at work at the grocery store are we prepared and what can we do with our employees to help them be more proactive with their safety not only theirs but if we have guests in our building are we providing a safe environment for them to come and do business so this year we provided through the help of our sheriff's department crazed training which is civilian response to active shooter training and our sheriff's department i can't speak highly enough of their team that has come in and they did a two and a half hour training session for our entire management team and it's all on proactive being ready and thinking before a situation happens if we're ready do we have the tools and resources we need to react when something may happen and so we also videotape that recording and put it on our share drive so all employees could view that the expectation was all employees received crazed training in 2016 following that we felt it was necessary to not only train them on a video but we did all department walkthroughs and it was led by myself michelle reinitz and the hr team uh steve steinett who's our emergency management coordinator as well as our building services manager so we went to each county location and we did a walkthrough where your exits where your entrances what doors are alarmed do you have a notification system in your building in the event we have any type of emergency weather related and or other crisis so uh that was an eye opener so we walked through with department heads we asked them what their needs were i think everybody learned a lot in those walkthroughs following that then in fall just a few months ago we actually were afforded the opportunity once again through our sheriff's department to do active threat drills um what did that mean it meant that we had uniformed sheriff department deputies come into our locations and we informed our employees they knew of the situation they knew that if they didn't feel they could personally handle it they could be excused from this drill but we actually had the sheriff's department fire blanks and go through the buildings rattle doors what was the the purpose of the training was to apply what we learned in the craze training there's you either run if you can or you hide right there's also a fight mechanism we didn't really want to necessarily train too much on that uh but it was it was eye opening so we've uh had those drills at our health and human services building our administration building our courthouse on our annex um so far and so moving forward in the next few weeks we'll be at rocky knoll uh we will be at the adrc the job center and the highway department doing those same drills we then did what i applied to going county for us we reached out to the employees via a survey monkey following those drills to say what did we do well what went well what do we need what didn't we think about and i can tell you that 99 percent of the feedback a nearly 100 percent of the feedback was all positive it was appreciative and they wish we could do those drills more often so a lot of active threat drill plane planning this last year and we'll finish that up you know this year going back though to 2016 one other major initiative i don't want to fail to mention was we were asked through all of the things that are happening in the world today to take a look at our courthouse security and not knowing when nobody knows when or where something may or may not happen uh but the the opportunity certainly would present ourselves based on the the business the good things we do over there so uh we did just that we had a committee based on adam's direction put together to really focus on that we looked at several other counties and what they were currently doing um and looked at some practices and had a report to adam on both findings and recommendations as of june 1st this past year the good news is adam reviewed that report worked with yourself and the county board members and we now are approved to move forward with a number of initiatives to further secure our courthouse with the primary really responsibility now on our table to make a one secured entrance um so that will be a change for our employees and our public and and bottom line again we surveyed the employees over there they asked for this 90 over 90 percent of the employees said they feel uncomfortable that there's a possibility of something happening and they would appreciate these efforts so good news and good works happening moving forward and i want to thank and acknowledge tom's leadership on this because he knows that many of their courthouses do have a secured entrance we've been fortunate that we haven't had an incident but i think it was an appropriate thing to plan for and of course your committee did a wonderful job and tom and the county board ultimately had to approve it and and i i want to acknowledge tom because he he knew it was important and we built it into the five-year plan and it's not an inexpensive remodel but it's one that's going to further protect that old or not only our employees but our our guests as you said right well thank you as always it was a team effort with a lot of people especially uh from gene staff and just across the county in particular in the courthouse i think it was a a job went well done by a great group of people um following up a little bit on the employee benefits it's a component of your annual budget always which is always a big deal it's a biggest document that a county board certainly votes on that's your that's our blueprint for the year if you will um any of the could you share any trends that are involved relative to employee benefits etc with the county sure first of all that that employee benefit budget this for 2017 is just over 13 million dollars so it puts it in perspective and on what kind of numbers we're dealing with so annually tom we have a strategic benefit planning committee that we put together and we work the first quarter of each year to review where are we at we take take a look at the previous year so the next few weeks we'll be meeting on kind of the plan year 2016 what worked what didn't where our claims where our risks you know what does the future look like we work very closely hand in hand with uh j scott our benefit consultant um and in addition this year in 2016 we joined really a partnership with wisconsin counties association group health trust and they now administer both the claims and the funding as well as our in health clinic so we're very pleased with that partnership we have you know more more folks at the table making good decisions and really that annual planning process is that group our strategic benefit committee our benefit consultant and and wc aght together saying what's our claims experience what is trending uh what our employee needs and how do we balance that with the taxpayer so in the last couple of years what we have done is made some changes both in you know from the premium standpoint with our employees but also plan design change and the last couple of years we have realized between three and four hundred thousand dollars in savings to the county with the changes that we put forward in addition with the change moving to wc ght we preserved our health care reserves at the tune of over nine hundred thousand so very good move i'm very pleased with that relationship they're managing our claims our employees i think it was a change but very much appreciate uh working with them as well and of course prior to that we had been self-insured and right moving in so it was a change uh right now what do the employees pay towards their health insurance and the pension cost right health insurance is between 15 and 20 percent 15 percent if our employees are participate in our health risk assessment an annual kind of biometric review of their health manage through our in health clinic confidentially 17 and a half percent of our employees decide that's not something that they choose to do and 20 percent for our contract our w ppa employees if they choose not to do uh the health risk assessment as well so a little bit of a variance there in terms of wrs our pension uh our employees are paying 6.8 percent in 2017 and then certainly the county puts a 6.8 percent for the regular employees but for our contract employees it's that 10.9 percent right and that that came out of act 10 those right those two situations um you have time at them or do you want me to go on one another question no go ahead okay um how does the county engage employees i know you've talked a little a little bit about and uh the employee benefits safety and wellness you have talked a little bit about but yeah free to in short i think in both of in all of those cases tom we have committees so we have a strategic benefit committee i talked about engaging those employees to be voice of the team we have ours our safety committee that meets quarterly again asking employees what their needs are introducing new initiatives and then the same thing with wellness and wellness i think is really a neat initiative in the last few years employees owning their own health educating employees and really i look at mind body and soul when i talk about wellness um and really what that means is we're doing a number of challenges with our employees throughout the year whether it's a weight loss challenge or an exercise challenge and so forth this last year we did a mental health challenge and i'm really proud of it it was a new concept and it was called a time of thanks and a time for giving and it was right around our thanksgiving time and we worked with united way and we basically had three agencies that our employees were able to the agencies identified their needs and our employees were able to give back to those agencies uh so it was really quite moving for us to think about wellness in that light as well and certainly the other initiative with wellness is our in health clinic making sure that that we um take advantage of that and and quite frankly our in health clinic as we look at our oi and our health clinic for the last couple of years it's been again between three and four hundred thousand dollars a year that we can show some hard costs some soft costs and estimate that we are saving the county by having that in health clinic and it's a great um really partnership between the shaborgan area school just and the city of shaborgan i'm gonna end there but i just wanted to say thank you and thank you to your staff anytime i need some information from uh either you in particular your staff usually i'm dealing with it's always quickly gotten to me and very accurately and i appreciate that very much because that's you can't make good decisions if you don't have good information so that's very important so thank them for me we only have a minute left and with approximately 825 employees the breadth of role and responsibilities in the county we always want to recruit and retain the best people we can of course people retire people move on to other opportunities if someone is looking for a job and planning or at our highway department or at the sheriff's department and we have a website with all these departments listed what's their best way to to reach out and see what's available with job openings right so real quickly we'd love to have you come visit us the human resources office is a 508 new york avenue in shaborgan we accept applications in person rocky noel our health care center accepts applications and so does our sheriff's department so in person always works online i'm happy to say that this year we've put together a really nice facebook page so so join us and like us on facebook linkedin we're fully up and running which has been a very effective tool for us the job center of wisconsin constantly has our rolling updated and our website shaborgan county dot com so lots of ways to find out about our great opportunities here excellent wonderful overview thank you so much gene thank you good to be here and thank you for joining us if you want to learn more about our human resources department or had some questions about something that gene shared please don't hesitate to contact the the officer stop on in as you said and again thank you for your role and your support the community we've got such a good thing happening here with shaborgan county a lot of good people making good things happen and gene and her staff certainly are a big part of that so thank you for being here next month chris lewinsky our it director is going to be here and speaking of collaboration and partnerships the city shaborgan school district and county just put in a ring of fiber to enhance our it connections and reliability so chris is going to talk about that and other it advancements and until then thanks for joining us drive safely and we'll see you soon