Employee Forum Minutes
Date: February 10, 2005
Location: HR Training Room
Members Present: Ann Brown, Beth Dean, Charles Bynum, Chelsea Laws, Christopher Blue, Deborah Squires, Dorice Johnson, Jerry Neville, Kristy McClellan, Lee Harris, Maggie Burnett, Terry Gearhart, Traval Watkins, Wendy Walsh, Will Quick.
Members Absent : Amy Harvey, Ceberettia Hinton, Donnie Roads, Jacqueline Thompson, Jonathan Bell, Norman Clark, Wes Tilghman.
Guest Present: Anissa Graham-Davis, Diana Freeman (Employee Benefits Group), Nancy Cox (AFLAC)
Discussions:
Meeting opened at 9:05 a.m.
The minutes from the January 2005 meeting were approved.
New items not on the agenda
Clarified who is in each work group to update list and web page
Felix Block submitted information to share with Forum about Benefits- Subject was tabled until next meeting
Part time employee in payroll was given 4 more hours per week to assist with increasing demand on this department. 10 years ago TOCH had 350 employees and now it has 800. The forum members feel that the staffing has not kept up with the demand of 150% growth. The Forum will continue to pursue the recommendation of making the part time employee full time.
In reference to the request to donate sick time to family members, 5 people responded from last month’s meeting regarding how many town employees have relatives that also work for the town. The Forum will recommend a volunteer test group before recommending a policy Town wide.
Agenda Items
Clarification of service awards- A copy of the ordinance on longevity pay, and a copy of an example invitation for the service awards was given to the members of the Forum. Each quarter we have a service awards breakfast to employees with 5,10,15,20,25 and 30+ years of service with the Town. An invitation is sent out to each employee eligible to attend. Those with 10 or more years of service will choose a gift from a catalogue.
The longevity breakfast is for those employees with 20 or more years of service and it is held once a year. The cut off date for those eligible for the longevity breakfast and longevity pay is November 30 each year. If you leave employment and come back, HR will calculate an “adjusted service date” and those employees will be eligible as well. Part time employees are eligible as well.
AFLAC- Diana Freeman of Employers Benefit Group did research to find the best and most cost effective supplemental insurance programs. The recommended company that was invited to present to the Forum was AFLAC.
Highlights- programs are portable, pre tax plan, payments go directly to employee, programs won’t increase with age, Plans offered-Cancer plan, Personal Recovery, Life Assurance, Long Term Care.
Another company will be researched for programs and costs. Anissa will get the name of the company and ask that Diana Freeman do the research.
Lunch and Learn on Banking for automatic withdraw. Go to HR to schedule and coordinate, find representatives from banks to present.
Spanish Classes- The Forum discussed that classes may be too expensive right now to recommend to the Manager. It was suggested that each Department head be asked to support an employee that is bi-lingual teach classes to employees in the department. Smaller departments may wish to go to larger departments for the classes as they may not have bi-lingual people that wish to teach. The department heads will be asked to provide 2 hours of paid time to the employee teaching the class, and some sort of recognition as incentive to teach. If we found 3 or 4 facilitators throughout the Town, this would ease the load for the facilitators and allow for flexible schedules. We also need to find out what the interest is before pursuing further with the recommendations.
Work Groups:
Benefits: Discussed the employee discount program. Members collected information from other municipalities. Orange County has a brochure that outlines appropriate behavior for employees when utilizing discount program. A letter is sent out to businesses in Orange County asking for participation. The letter provides less pressure than an in-person visit. The ID badge for all employees is key in this program so we cannot move forward until everyone has a badge
Communication: Discussed the need for all town employees to participate in on-going diversity training/classes. Our concerns were directed more for the lack of diversified representation among upper level management within respective town departments. We seemed to agree the level of diversity among the remaining town employees is appropriately equitable.
Also asked the question of which departments have benefited from the Forum being in tact? Who has better communication and employee appreciation implemented? There was no feedback from the Forum.
Finally- brought up the discussion of reallocating work groups as some have more members represented than others.
Education/Training: The educational work group discussed how we could fine tune the existing proposal for Spanish language classes.
We discussed contacting some one who has previously taught Spanish about the amount of time it would take to instruct and the length of time the classes should last. We discussed presenting this to department head, if there was some one in the department willing to do this, would the department head consent to allow the willing instructor to teach. We also discussed who should take part in these classes. The subject of other employees who do not have any one that can teach Spanish, allowing them to participate with another department. The item is back on the table for modification and results of what departments had some one willing to teach Spanish as well as who would be joining other departments.
Policies: The work group will re-submit proposal for donating sick time to family members within the Town according to the policy of the definition of “family”
Town Talk Topic:
Researching supplemental insurance- Ask who is interested in participating.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:13 a.m.