• Front-loaded benefits. This additional type of benefit may help attract top talent that is currently happily employed elsewhere. Changing jobs is a huge decision once established in a successful career. To make a move to the town of Needham more attractive, a front-loaded bank of PTO should be offered.

Introductory or probationary periods that restrict the use of vacation time are quickly becoming a thing of the past as employers show their staff appreciation and trust by providing this benefit as soon as employment begins.

The site visit, as well as the focus groups and employee surveys, helped the team determine if Needham has the components to meet standards of being an employer ideally situated to recruit and retain top talent among its workforce compared with the research of current trends within the public and private sectors.

After analysis, these general recommendations were made to guide Needham to more comprehensively address the wants and needs of their employees, as well as position them to attract new ones:

1. Define the mission and role of Needham’s Human Resources Department to position the department to be more strategic. Shifting from an administrative department to a strategic department will require better employee on-boarding and ongoing communication, as well as organizational development, training, and recognition programs to ensure that employees understand and appreciate the programmatic offerings of the HR department and what individual departments are responsible for within those offerings.

2. Study new benefit offerings to include adopting a paid time off (PTO) bank and implementing a short-term disability insurance program, paid paternity leave, and dependent care subsidies.

3. Adjust the town’s compensation philosophy to be more incentive-based to encourage continuing education, longevity, high performance, and employees participating in recruitment.

4. Explore options to adjust recruitment strategies, such as encouraging and advertising workplace flexibility; targeted recruitments for veterans, historically underserved communities, community and technical colleges, and high schoolers; and developing a more robust internship or summer ambassador program. Hiring supervisors need to understand the process and what can be offered to potential employees. Training to help hiring managers think through equity issues when negotiating pay and paid time off will also help address concerns highlighted in the focus groups.

The HR department currently functions in a support capacity and the entire organization and community could benefit from them being a more strategic business partner. The current HR team is excellent; however, it is difficult to focus on the bigger picture and being more proactive without having the necessary staff and resources to accomplish this vision. The recommendation is to conduct a study to more accurately identify the needs that are essential to allowing the HR team to focus on more targeted recruitment, creating an environment that focuses on the entire lifecycle of an employee from onboarding to offboarding. Managers within the organization play an integral role as well as they must own and foster a positive and productive organizational culture. The current town manager and her team are very supportive of their employees.

Recruitment efforts should focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion and recruiting firms should be utilized for specific positions, such as executives and those that are hard to fill. Recruitment firms can assist by being a conduit for bringing talent into the selection process who may not otherwise apply.

There also needs to be a comprehensive onboarding process so employees who come into the organization feel invested in the organization. Organizational culture and having shared core values and organizational vision are extremely important. People leave an organization if the proper culture is not fostered. Culture involves training and developing the individual employee to meet their full potential, implementing employee recognition programs on a regular basis, providing for career progression and professional development, even doing proper exit interviews to understand why the employee is leaving and how Needham can improve in areas identified. Managers should have scheduled check-ins with their employees to ensure that there is regular communication and a clear understanding about how things are going from both the employee’s and manager’s perspectives to keep employees and management working toward common and shared goals.

Specific to benefits, employees cited the attractiveness of being able to have their children attend Needham schools as an incentive. There is also interest in creating a personal time off (PTO) structure rather than having separate sick and vacation leave banks. PTO will allow for more flexibility, as well as not have the employee have to identify why here she is taking time off. In addition, it maintains privacy and is free from labeling or judgment.

With younger people entering the workforce, paid family or parental leave is an important incentive to attract potential candidates. Childcare assistance is also important to allow employees to achieve a better work-life balance and know that their employer acknowledges the high cost of childcare. In addition, a lot of employees do not work and live in the same town, so having childcare available in the town in which they work is more ideal. In order to entice employees who may not otherwise be looking for a new position when they are established with another organization, it will be more attractive to frontload PTO banks upon hire rather than to have the employee wait six months during an introductory period to be able to request time off if needed.

Incentive pay is an attractive option to encourage employees to grow and to recognize them for career progression. This can take the form of additional pay for licensing, longevity pay to reward employees who stay with Needham, or pay to recognize high performance.

Other recruiting benefits that can attract potential workforce are having flexible hours, remote work positions, and flexible workspace that may not require an employee to be onsite for 100% of their work schedule. There is no one-size-fits-all model so it is important to remember that having a variety of programs that speak to a broad audience is imperative.

Again, it is necessary to emphasize that overall town employees are satisfied and feel supported by their current town leadership. Although the organization provides comprehensive benefits for their employees, there is still room for improvement. In order to make adjustments to move toward developing wellintegrated and comprehensive programs, the ideal components identified in the study will be extremely useful tools for helping develop Needham’s (and any local government organization’s) programs.

It was truly an honor to participate in the L-ICMA effort to assist Needham with their recruitment and retention concerns. We enjoyed meeting Kate Fitzpatrick and her team and cannot express enough gratitude for their insight, generosity, and hospitality. It is very meaningful to be able to explore and uncover insights within another organization’s operations. Each L-ICMA team member brings more knowledge and expertise back to their home organizations because of the unique opportunity offered through ICMA.

1 https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trendsand-forecasting/research-and-surveys/ pages/shrm-state-of-the-workplacereport-.aspx

2 https://worldatwork.org/resources/ research/total-rewards-inventoryprograms-and-practices