District Employee Recruiting

[Jake Wilson]

Our state has been experiencing unprecedented turnover of SWCD employees for over a year now. I am wondering to what extent your state agency is involved in helping districts to fill vacancies? Do you provide example job descriptions, announcements, assistance with advertising, sit on interview panels etc? I would greatly appreciate any examples that you can provide.

[Dave Copeland]

Hello Jake – In Minnesota we do not. There is an active SWCD Association (MN Association of SWCDs, or MASWCD) that assists by providing a place to post jobs. We also help by sharing job postings with our SWCDs within our work areas, so mostly spreading the word about vacancies that are out there.

[Ashley Henderson]

Jake,
Alabama does not assist the SWCDs with employee recruitment per se. We do provide job description and other information in our policy and procedure handbook. We traditionally see pretty high turnover. Unfortunately, NRCS COVID regulations are impacting District morale in our area. We are hoping that doesn’t increase the turnover rate.
Ashley

[Mark Bostrom]

Jake,

Montana DNRC does not assist CD’s with their hiring/recruitment outside of providing Districts with Model Personnel Policies that they may modify or adopt as-is. We also have some appropriation from the state that goes toward staff wage. We have seen an uptick in attrition. Some of this can be attributed to a generational (Baby Boomer) bubble reaching the end of the careers. However, recruitment and retention of mid-career staff for CD’s continues to be problematic and has also increased. Many CD staff are finding opportunities with better wage and benefits as a result of local labor shortages. I am scrounging my budget to load up the administrative support grant for Districts to raise the floor of CD administrative grants to $40/k per year for personal services and operations. With CD operations subtracted ($6k – $8k, bare bones), that would allow each Districts to have ~$32k – $34k available for their (single Staff) compensation packages. Clearly, not a competitive, living wage in today’s labor market.

M –

[Bill Smith]

Jake,

SD does not. We do help out with the training of new employees if requested by the districts.

Thanks,

Bill

[Nikki Brinson]

Colorado does not directly hire/interview for CD personnel. We do provide documents, guidelines/training, will share their announcement through email, etc. We have a webpage dedicated to employer resources, we are currently updating our 2017 Employer’s handbook as Colorado had many labor laws change in the last year. CDs use that book, the descriptions and the IRS (1099 vs W2) to make their hiring decisions.

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https://sites.google.com/state.co.us/cscb/training-resources/employer-resources

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