WILMINGTON — While the City of Wilmington will experience significant growth over the next 25 years, with an estimated 60,000 new residents expected, the recruitment and retention of city employees is an issue city leaders must address.
Like a company, leaders say the city must remain competitive when it comes to benefits in order to attract and keep employees, or risk losing them to other municipalities offering more.
The City of Wilmington recently conducted a compensation and benefits comprehensive study which was presented to City Council Monday morning. The study analyzed the overall competitiveness of the city, compared to other benchmarking cities and counties which included, Asheville, Cary, Charlotte, Concord, New Hanover County, and others.
“For Fiscal Year 2016-17, which ended July 30, the city’s turnover rate is just over 11 percent,” Communications Manager Malissa Talbert said. “Police and fire personnel make up the majority of our workforce that totals about 1,000 employees. While the turnover rates for those departments isn’t as high as the rate for a couple of other departments (approximately 11 percent for police, 10 percent for firefighters), we know that we are often losing public safety employees for better paying jobs with other local governments.”
In Wilmington, the highest turnover rates have been seen in information technology and Planning Department jobs.
“Our highest turnover rate this past year was in our Information Technology and Planning departments. We are more likely to lose these employees to private sector jobs with higher pay and again can be attributed to a tightening job market as well as a general shortage in jobs related to IT and specialty areas such as planning and engineering. As the economy continues to be at essentially full employment, we will be challenged to retain our employees, especially those with less than five years of service,” Talbert said.
There are several elements the study analyzed including, salary, education incentive and assistance, longevity pay/retention, shift differential and many more.
“Over the last couple of years we have experienced a few spikes in employee turnover, we think it is because we are not as competitive from a compensation and benefits standpoint as competitor cities and counties,” City Manager Sterling Cheatham said. “With the comp and benefit study, we will endeavor to validate this to the actual market and recommend pay adjustments as the study results dictates. We know that market compensation is important for both our employees and our City Council. We want to be in a position to recruit and retain the very best employees.”
Educational incentives and educational assistance are two issues that ranked as high importance items according to Director of Human Resources Alvin Ragland.
Another issue when it comes to municipal jobs is career pathing.
“Sometimes we have positions that it is just one position but there is no progression beyond that role,” Ragland said. “So as people get more experience they can take on more responsibility and need less supervision – so how they can continue to grow within the current role they are in.”
The study is still being conducted and a timeline has the recommendation of the approval happening in November of this year. The city will be conducting an employee input study which will ask city staff what they think is most important and what they value, Ragland said.
Michael Praats can be reached via email at Michael.p@localvoicemedia.com
