Employee Forum Minutes
Date: March 10, 2005
Location: Housing Conference Room
Present: Amy Harvey, Ann Brown, Beth Dean, Ceberettia Hinton, Charles Bynum, Chelsea Laws, Christopher Blue, Donnie Rhoads, Dorice Johnson, Jacqueline Thompson, Jerry Neville, Kristi McClellan, Terry Gearhart, Traval Watkins, Wendy Walsh, Wes Tilghman, Will Quick.
Absent: Deborah Squires, Jonathan Bell, Lee Harris, Maggie Burnett, Norman Clark.
Guests: Anissa Graham-Davis
Opened: 9:00am
· Made minor corrections to Feb. minutes. Approved with corrections
New items
· Corrections were made to last months minutes regarding how many positions were budgeted 10 years ago, and how many checks were issued per cycle compared to the number of employees and checks distributed per cycle now.
It has been recommended that the weekly hours for the part-time payroll technician be increased from 30 to 34 due to increasing demands on the payroll office. Ten years ago the Town of Chapel Hill had 568 approved full-time and part-time employees. With temporary employees added, there were, on an average, 670 paychecks or direct deposit stubs issued on biweekly weeks at that time. Presently, the Town has 687 approved full-time and part-time employees, but with temporary employees added, approximately 935 paychecks and direct deposit stubs are issued each bi-weekly pay period.
· Town Talk- we did not get our section inserted into this month’s edition. The reason given was that there was not enough meat (substance) to what we submitted. Chelsea will talk to Catherine and see what she can do to improve or what type of thing is needed to get it put into the edition. The question was raised as to whether the EF had a designated spot in the edition and who’s decision it was to have it in or out. If Chelsea can’t obtain the answers then she will seek help from the Chair and vice-chair, or other members of the Communications work group.
· Transit has an issue that they have just been told that the Town will be providing bus service on Easter Sunday. This means that employees will have to work. Is this something that has come up in other departments? The answer was that the schedule has been long set for Fire and Police so they know what to expect. We suggested that the Transit employees talk to their department head about this.
· A financial planner contacted an individual employee about soliciting their services. The question is can employees solicit other employee interest and have a group meeting. It was decided to avoid the gray area that employee(s) should not meet with this type of consultant on Town time or on Town property. The HR dept is solicited daily and the solicitors are told that to have that company represented that they would have to invite all Town employees to participate and have other companies in the same business represented to present more than one perspective. This takes time for HR to setup and when they do they will consider inviting the solicitor. An individual may meet with the solicitor off site and on his/her own time.
· ID Badges are in the process of being done. HR is talking to department heads and finalizing the process. Their goal is to start at the end of the month. This will make it easier for us if we get the Employee Discount Program approved.
· Anissa asked if she thought that we and/or our fellow employees were interested in having another health fair this year. She also said that HR would probably solicit volunteers to help with the setup/cleanup and other duties to pull this off this year. The group did think that both ideas were good and wanted it to occur again.
Agenda Items
· Attendance Standards-we were reminded that the standard was that if you were going to be absent that you made sure that someone would attend for you or that you contacted and EF member that could relay your information and that you followed up with an EF member to make sure that you were current with what went on in the meeting so that you could relay the information to the employees in your department. There is some concern with the Fire department representatives. Although it was decided that the Chair would talk to the rep in question to see if he would live up to his responsibilities. Or if needed that Pam could talk to the department head to assign someone to attend.
· Will Quick will get with Felix and see if he can make the presentation on the benefits information (flex spending) at a future meeting.
Work groups
· Communication
Talking about diversity as far as Public Works is concerned. Public Works is interested in making sure that in the future, minorities are considered and hired (even interdepartmentally) for positions of supervisors, superintendents and directors. We will also be communication with Catherine Lazorko about the absence of the Employee Forum article in the Town Talk. Also, the YMCA is an active Town benefit with 10% discount and automatic pay roll deduction
· Benefits
Looked at OC discount program info and discussed Town discout proposal further. ID cards must be issued before discount program can be initiated. The committee will be drafting a proposal to the Manager for the discount program
· Policy
· Sick to sick policy, researching what other municipalities are doing.
· Dept policies vs. town policies.
· Education
The Education Work Group continued its discussion on the Spanish Classes Proposal. We are trying to think of creative ways to request that the Town provide Spanish classes while recognizing that there are no current funds available in the budget. We also reviewed the list of goals for the Education work group and recognized that we have made progress with some of the goals and need to start to tackle some of the others. As a result we will also be working to develop a proposal for Diversity Training.
Town Talk:
Researching supplemental insurance interests and Spanish class interest.
Agenda Items next month:
· Continue discussions and follow up on this month’s issues
Adjourned: 11:05am