The Human Resources Department had another very busy year! We are excited to announce the addition of a new staff member, Diane Montanez. Diane joined the Town in June 2023 and will serve as the Benefits Coordinator. This is a new position that will work with both the Town and the Schools to coordinate employee benefits like health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, disability insurance and many more. Diane has only been with us for a short time, but has already brought some great ideas. Diane will take over the daily administration of benefits, which will open up staff time to focus on recruitment, retention and other important priorities.
During Fiscal Year 2023, we were able to work closely with GovHR, department heads and employees to finalize our new Compensation and Classification plan. This project started in FY22, but continued into the fall and was wrapped up in December 2022. We created a new Compensation and Classification plan in December 2022 which we believe puts us on the right path towards paying our non-union employees competitively. We will continue to review the plans each July (or more often, if needed) and ensure that our salaries are in line with other municipalities and that we can continue to recruit and retain our wonderful employees.
Fiscal Year 2023 was our first year with a new health insurance arrangement with the Massachusetts Strategic Health Group (MSHG). MSHG is a health insurance purchasing coalition made up of about 17 different towns, school districts and other public entities designed to increase access to care while maintaining an affordable and predictable cost to its members and communities. We pay for all claims through a self-funded trust, but have access to the Harvard Pilgrim and United Healthcare networks.
As with any health insurance transition, there were a few hiccups during the first month or two as our employees switched coverage. Since that time, everything has been running smoothly and we were able to offer several new cost saving members to our employees and retirees. The MSHG offers cost saving programs like a diabetes management program, brand name prescriptions at no cost through a mail order program, mental health counseling for children under 18, and a number of other programs. Now that Diane has joined the team as our Benefits Coordinator, she can start spreading the word about these wonderful programs and increase our engagement and participation.
Once we finished our transition to the MSHG in the fall of 2022, we moved on to a similar transition for our Medicare eligible retirees in January 2023. We switched from a Medicare Supplement plan with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care to a Medicare Advantage Plan with Aetna. One of the biggest perks of this change was our new partnership with a company called "Retirees First" which serves as a concierge service for our Medicare eligible retirees. Franklin retirees can call Retirees First and advocates will help navigate their health insurance benefits and help troubleshoot issues with the carrier, providers, or pharmacy. Retirees First also helped the Town with a "Medicare Migration." They worked closely with us to help 12 retirees who were not initially eligible for Medicare enroll in Medicare Parts A and B. These retirees were able to end coverage on their EPO and PPO health plans and join the Medicare Advantage plan. This move will save the employees and Town quite a bit on annual premiums and also lowers the out of pocket costs for our retirees! An individual went from having a $2,000 deductible and copays on all services to a Medicare Advantage plan with no deductibles and only copays on prescriptions. The Massachusetts Strategic Health Group even paid the late enrollment penalty for these retirees, which was a wonderful bonus.
We were very pleased to commit to staying with the Massachusetts Strategic Health Group for another year and will continue our coverage with them for Fiscal Year 2024. We went into the process expecting an 8% increase and were pleased to end up with a 6% increase on the EPO and PPO plans and only a 4.25% increase on the high deductible plan.
It continued to be a very busy year in terms of hiring! Many of our long term employees have retired in the last few years and, like in other industries, we are finding that people do not stay with jobs as long as they used to! This has resulted in fairly steady hiring over the last few years. Between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, the Town of Franklin hired 27 full-time employees and a number of part-time employees.
The new full-time employees include:
• Payroll Administrator Debra Broe (Finance)
• Benefits Coordinator Diane Montanez (HR)
• 10 new employees at the DPW including Staff Engineer Elijah Gerrior, Water Operations Person Richard Costello, Mechanic Sean Roddy, and the following Heavy Motor Equipment Operators: Glen Camire, Joseph Clinton, Andrew Hatch, Corey Lambert, Steve Nasuti, Thomas Ruth and Christian Vidal. The DPW management team also worked closely with the Town Administrator, Human Resources and the union to add several new union titles, which will help create a career ladder and growth for our union employees.
• 4 Police Officers - Christopher Gulla, Michael LaCure, Kevin Quinn and Marciano Silva
• 4 Firefighters - Nicholas Brosseau, Victor DaCosta, Kristin Krauss and Jack Lennon
• Administrative Assistant for the Health Department Maureen Canesi
• Several positions at the Senior Center including Deputy Director Sarah Amaral and Social Services Coordinator Raeleen Gallivan. In addition, Ariel Doggett moved from her position as Supportive Day Program Coordinator to the Program Coordinator position (internal transfer, rather than a new hire) and Kathleen Laughran moved from her part-time assistant role to the full-time Supportive Day Program Coordinator position.
• Mitzi Gousie at the Library moved from a part- time Youth Services Librarian to the full-time Programming and Outreach Librarian. Human Resources will continue to work with the Library to convert part-time employees into full-time opportunities as vacancies become available in the future. Our goal is to eventually have all full- time employees at the Library.
• Custodian Michael Giorgio (Facilities)
• Deputy Director for Facilities, Engineering Kevin Harn (Facilities)
• Steve O'Neill, who worked closely with Gus Brown as a Building Inspector for about 10.5 years, moved to a new position as the Deputy Director for Maintenance and Trades in the Facilities Department. We are excited to have both Steve and Kevin join as new members of the Facilities management team.
As we enter Fiscal Year 2024, we will continue to focus on the procurement of additional Human Resources software to help us organize and streamline our work. We are researching different vendors for an electronic personnel file system as well as an applicant tracking system for online applications and electronic onboarding. We are hoping that now that our health insurance changes are complete, we will have more time to focus on these important priorities.
We look forward to continuing to work with our employees and our retirees to have a great fiscal year 2024!
Respectfully submitted,
Karen M. Bratt
Director of Human Resources
The Human Resources Dept report can be found in one PDF ->
The full Town of Franklin FY 2023 Annual Report can be found online
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| Annual Report Of The Human Resources Department: FY 2023 Report |
