I’m going to start out this post by saying that the City of Appleton is looking for seasonal workers, particularly lifeguards, pool slide attendants, umpires, and grounds maintenance workers. You can view job openings online or call the city at 920-832-6458 for more information.
The Parks and Recreation Committee met 03/21/2022. They had no action items, but they did have some information items. One of those items was plans to provide employment incentives to Parks & Recreation seasonal employees who were grounds maintenance workers, slide attendants, lifeguards, and umpires. Those hiring bonuses consisted of:
- Hiring Bonus – $100 (Must work through July 31st)
- Retention Bonus – $100 (Must work through August 26th)
- An increase of $1 per each hour worked on Friday, Saturday & Sunday
- Referral Bonus – $50 for each person referred and hired
- An increase of $1 per hour during the months of April, September, and October
Director of Parks, Recreation, and Facilities Dean Gazza noted that although this item was an information item on the Parks and Rec agenda, it had appeared as an action item before the Finance Committee.
Per Director Gazza, the Parks and Recreation Department hires approximately 275 part time employees, and certain positions were more challenging than others to hire for. There were 4 positions in particularly that they were struggling with: lifeguards, pool slide attendants, umpires, and people who mow grass and take care of grounds. Those positions account for about 120 employees.
The city began advertising job openings back in January and the beginning of February, and they have been monitoring the rate of hiring. Normally they would expect to see a lot more interest in the openings than they have experienced this year. For example, for the grounds positions they had only received two applications but had 20 positions they needed to fill. 10 years ago, it was normal to get over 150 applications. Last year, however, they ended up hiring everyone that applied.
He said the issue was that everybody is hiring and going after the specific age group that the City of Appleton is also going after. There are fewer people in that age group working now and it’s hard to gain their interest.
Director Gazza said they worked with the Human Resources Department and the Human Resource and Information Technology Committee last year to be able to hire new employees at a higher rate if that was the only way they felt they could attract employees. They were also now working on providing incentivizing employment, so they requested that the Finance Committee approve incentives for hiring, retention bonuses, and referral bonuses. “One of the big ones is paying an extra dollar an hour for hours worked on Friday Saturday and Sunday.” He said that one might expect those to be the days when young people were most available to work, but in recent years it had gotten difficult to find any age group that wanted to work those days.
They were also trying to incentivize the employment of grounds workers in April, September, and October because those were the months when the city couldn’t hire any college or high school aged people because they were all in school.
He said they had tried a number of things to attract applicants. They’ve reached out to local schools, but often those schools hire their own students for work, so the city has only had limited success there. They also participated in a Latino event and have talked to Hmong leaders. They’ve also worked with the Human Resources Department who had reached out to different groups such as people who have retired from the city of Appleton within the last 5 years and sent them notice that the city was looking to fill these positions.
At this point, they were running out of ideas, so rather than wait until May or even late April when things would become a crisis, they want to try to do something now.
He noted that although employees were hard to attract, the Parks and Recreation programs were attracting extremely strong interest from participants. They already had 500-600 children signed up for youth baseball. He believed that was due to people having been cooped up for the last couple years.
As a result, they felt that the revenues were going to come in higher than they had projected so that would offset some of the cost to provide employment incentives; however, because they couldn’t guarantee that, they felt it would be best to bring it to the Finance Committee to essentially get pre-authorization that if they end up going over budget, they would be able to utilize some of the wage reserves to cover the cost of the incentives.
He went over the numbers of applicants per job opening that they had received thus far. Out of 20 openings for grounds workers, they only had 2 applications, 26 out of 60 lifeguard positions, 4 out of 14 slide attendants, 3 out of 20 umpires. As far as pool managers went, they did get candidates after they raised the rate, but a lot of them were younger individuals, but managing pools required a level of responsibility and experience and the ability to take care of issues. They wanted pool manager who, if somebody walked in with a case of beer or a fight broke out, would have the experience to handle those issues, but some of the younger employees don’t know what to do.
He opened things up for questions.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) asked what the starting salary was and what was the maximum amount they were talking about.
Director Gazza said the grounds positions started at $10.98 and they could hire up to $12.90. The slide attendants were $8.37 – $8.76; he said they realized that amount was a problem. Umpires were $9.92 – $11.89.
He said that the lifeguard starting wage was for a level 1 lifeguard, but the lifeguards at level 2 and 3 could earn $14 – $15 an hour. Even with a $12.90 starting wage, with incentives—the $200 retention bonus for staying the year and the $1 an hour extra for working Friday – Sunday—it got the wages into a competitive position.
He said they were stressing work culture and the fact that employees would be working for the community, not a profit driven corporation. They would not have to work until 10 or 11PM like at some places. They had been stressing that a lot on the videos they had been putting out on Facebook.
One of the challenges however was, “Nobody, at this point, really knows where this age group finds their jobs.” The number one way was probably word-of-mouth, so they had been stressing to anyone who was a current or former worker to go find some friends and let them know about the job opportunities. That was the reason for the referral bonus.
They were posting things on places like Indeed.com, but kids don’t go to those places, although parents will sometimes go there to find jobs for their children.
He reiterated that they wanted to start early on this. They had 6 – 8 weeks to fill some of these positions. Generally, more people will apply as time goes on because they’re often not looking for a job right now, so they did anticipate that they would get more applicants, but they didn’t want to rely on that. They wanted to make sure they were taking other steps.
He noted that other municipalities were struggling too—not just Appleton. And a lot of fast-food establishments were closing down on certain days or restricting hours or even having to shut down because people weren’t coming into work. He had also heard of people quitting a day or two after they start, but they hadn’t typically had that problem in Appleton; the people they hired tended to stick with them.
Another challenge they were dealing with was students quitting at the end of July because they wanted to have a couple weeks off before they went back to school. That was the purpose of the retention bonus, to get them to stay until the end of August.
Alderperson Schultz commiserated and said he had a couple kids who had recently been in that 16–18-year-old age range. He knew his daughter would pass on a job that only paid $12 an hour because she knew she could find something at $14 or $15 an hour. He understood the challenge the Parks and Rec Department was dealing with, and he liked that they were trying to stress the community aspect of the job, the positive work environment, and the fact that it would look good on a resume. He supported the incentives and suggested he would support even more if they got to a point in April or May where they were still having challenges getting enough seasonal workers.
Alderperson Joe Prohaska (District 14) appreciated that they were jumping out in front of this because he thought it would be hard, even with these incentives, to get teenagers to go cut grass when they could earn $16 an hour working at Kwik Trip. Even at his own job where the starting wage was $26 an hour, people had left after only a couple weeks because there are jobs everywhere and they have their pick of where they could work.
He asked Director Gazza how the Finance Committee had voted, and Director Gazza said they had approved the incentives.
Alderperson Prohaska hoped they would continue given the Parks and Rec Department the help they needed to fill the positions because there were help wanted signs everywhere in the Fox Valley.
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) asked if there were any non-financial incentives they could give.
Director Gazza said that golf course employees could golf for free, although that benefit was a taxable benefit that got added to their checks. But filling golf positions had not been a significant issue for them.
Alderperson Prohaska suggested offering a highly flexible schedule as a non-monetary benefit and mentioned that his wife’s work had gone from a very rigid schedule to one where people picked their own shifts. Prior to the change they had lost a lot of people, but now they were retaining a lot more people and morale had increased.
Alderperson Wolff asked where they were advertising the jobs. Facebook? Instagram?
Director Gazza said they publicized them on Facebook and other social media platforms as well as sent them to all the local school districts and posted them on Indeed.com. They also physically posted them in different city buildings and on the city’s website.
Alderperson Wolff suggested posting on TikTok, and there was some laughter and acknowledgement that a lot of you people used TikTok.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=928133&GUID=EBC7C550-ADBC-49C3-A86F-E87A9598FA13
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