Title
Discussion of Recruitment, Retention and Compensation Issues and Plans for Developing Alternative Responses
Body
Background
Over the past few months the County has been experiencing an increasingly volatile labor market. Recruitment and retention has become more difficult and previous problem areas have only worsened. The three primary causes are general labor shortages as a result of COVID, rapid inflation increase, and relatively large compensation changes with some of the County's labor competitors.
Vacancies have become severe in some divisions. Examples are:
Police - 7
Dispatch - 6
Fire - 23, either vacant or not available for shift, with 9 more eligible to retire
Transit - 9
Aquatics - 7
Gas Water Sewer (GWS) - 7
Information Management - 5
These vacancy levels have already begun negatively impacting the service level staff can provide and have increased costs where departments/divisions are contractually obligated to provide minimum staffing levels.
Some challenges are global - examples include :
CPI up 8.5% year over year in July
Smaller recruitment pools - labor shortage
More offers rejected due to lack of housing options
Many local government competitors pick up a portion of the employee required contributions to the Public Employers Retirement Association (PERA)
Some challenges are specific to divisions - examples include:
GWS and Electric - LANL has instituted aggressive ($10/hr) incentives to increase their trades labor pools from 200 to 300 employees
Police - City of Santa Fe - 16% increase; City of Albuquerque - 13% increase
Fire - City of Albuquerque - $15K paramedic hiring bonus; City of Deming - 9% increase
Transit - NCRTD, Santa Fe Trails, Park-n-Ride, LA Public Schools, LANL Taxi - 7-11% increases
Staff have already started allowing for higher levels recruiting and retention incentives and more flexibility to customize depending upon specific division needs. In addition, Council approved a one-time lump sum inflation pay this p...
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