County departments at 'critical point' in hiring process

The Hays County Commissioners Court held a workshop during its weekly meeting to review the county's employee compensation practices and approaches going forward.

The workshop on March 29 kicked off a larger initiative by Hays County for a thorough compensation study on benefits, organizational structure and salary exceptions. While the county continues to put together the specs for a request for proposal, this study will likely be conducted independently by a third-party company and include employee surveys. Previously, the county's job analysis, job descriptions, compensation studies and market studies have all been done internally, according to Director of Human Resources Shari Miller.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Mark Jones brought up how the county is losing employees to other counties and businesses that can pay more.

“Part of the independent studies, you know, where are [our employees] going?” Commissioner Jones said. “The ones that leave us, what is the market rate out there? Not just in government jobs, but in jobs in general that these same people would qualify for. I think what I'm looking for is somebody from outside coming in, looking at our structure.”

Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra added that employees not only move between counties, but also between departments within the county. In some cases, this has led to significant discrepancies in employee retention from department to department.

“I would encourage [the outside entity] to interact with all of our department heads and elected officials,” Miller said. “Everyone has their own different story, and there’s 45 of us with different stories.”

Miller also suggested that the entity look at what has been done in the past versus where they should be looking, where the county is losing employees to and where they are getting employees from.

“As far as the transportation department is concerned, we're at a critical point right now, and we were hoping for some specific action for transportation to happen quickly,” said Transportation Director Jerry Borcherding. “This sounds like a long range project to study salaries, and we're hurting right now.”

Precinct 4 Commissioner Walt Smith talked about the importance of having and maintaining employees in those positions and establishing an employee satisfaction and progression plan for individuals in those departments.

“One of the things that I didn't hear mentioned today, that is of concern to me, and every department we have, is not a mandated progression schedule, but some type of progression schedule, when we look at these positions, especially those that are customer service-oriented,” Commissioner Smith said.

Hays County Assistant County Auditor Vickie Dorsett reported that as of September 2021, there were 450 positions under the 45th percentile and 200 positions that have at least 4 years of service that are less than the 50th percentile.

Auditor Marisol Villarreal-Alonzo closed the discussion with a comment, “With the court's action today from item number 34, it did create an internal equity, within my office, the one we had spoke about before we have purchasing specialist and accounts payable auditors who are making $36,000 and we're bringing in someone in at 54,000 and it does create disheartened employees, who are honest with me and tell me that they will be looking for other jobs,” Villarreal said. “And so my request is that the commissioners look at those types of instances, the internal equity is what is most important right now to some of these employees making decisions whether to stay or leave.”

For the complete workshop and agenda, visit hayscountytx.com/commissioners-court/courtvideo.