Employee survey aims to help Duplin County’s retention, recruitment efforts

KENANSVILLE — Jasmine Savage, a member of the Duplin County administrative team, presented an employee survey report to the Board of County Commissioners during the May 6 meeting.

The survey’s purpose is to aid the county’s retention and recruitment efforts.

In the last three weeks, 244 employees have responded to the survey, which is divided in three areas listing short-term, medium-term, and long-term incentive categories.

Participating employees chose their preferences, rating them first, second, third and fourth. Employees also had the option to provide additional comments and list other benefits they thought would be helpful to the county in their recruitment and retention efforts.

Savage shared that in the short-term incentives category, employees chose from a personal holiday, an employee discount for lunch at various locations, one free meal a week at James Sprunt Community College and a family fun day. The personal holiday option received 186 votes, as the number one employees’ choice.

In the medium-term incentives, employees chose from an annual vacation buyback, flex work schedule, telework, and cell phone discount. Savage explained that for the vacation buyback the county would buy up to 40 hours and the balance of the employees’ time couldn’t fall below 80 hours.

A flex work schedule was the preferred incentive chosen by 123 employees.

County Manager Bryan Miller explained that a flex schedule could mean a half a day off on Fridays for county employees depending on what each department head deems as their most advantageous schedule.

“Some department heads won’t be able to allow their entire staff to leave for half a day on Friday. So, for those departments it might be a half a day Monday or a half a day Wednesday along with the half a day Friday. So, it’ll really be the department head’s decision on which day works best for them,” said Miller.

In the long-term incentives category, participants chose from having daycare for county employees, retiree insurance, 401K match contribution, and an after-school program.

“For these incentives, it was pretty much equal as far as how many people chose in each category as their first, second, third, and fourth choice, and we did leave an open comment section for employees to be able to provide us feedback. The salary increase was listed for a majority of the comments, but we have come to a conclusion that employees were not aware of the proposed increase after the last department head meeting on May 2. Department heads were given the okay to move forward with telling employees about the proposed increase. So they are now aware,” said Savage.

The proposed rate increase will be included in the county’s budget proposal for FY 2024-25 and is a 3% for Cost of Living Adjustment and a 2% Merit, according to County Assistant Manager Carrie Shields.

Among the comments written by employees in the survey were requests to have Easter Monday and the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as a paid holiday, a daycare for county employees to take their children, additional sick leave to help parents when they have sick children, and the ability to extend the gym membership to family members on county insurance who are over the age of 16.

“We’ll have many more discussions based on this data,” said Miller. “We wanted to put it in your hands so you could start thinking about it.”

Chairman Edwards asked Miller to look into what it would cost to fulfill some of the employees’ requests.

“I would like you to get back with us on the cost of making that happen and let’s see what we can pull off,” said Edwards.

In other business:

The board accepted a bid commissioning the MEP systems for the detention center project. This encompasses all building HVAC, domestic hot water, and lighting controls.

“The total bid was $54,000 with an add-on of $2,400 per additional visit. … It was distributed to probably 65 different companies and to the historically underutilized business community. We received two bids and this was the low bid for the project,” Miller said.

He also provided updates about the meeting with the residents of Calico Bay and Log Cabin Road for possible sewer solutions and the search grant.

“I think we’re positioning ourselves well to move forward with that project,” said Miller.