The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee met 04/27/2022. One of the items they took up was a request to approve the addition of a .20 Full Time Equivalent HR/IT Administrative Support Assistant in the Information Technology Department.
Information Technology Director Corey Popp explained to the committee that the IT Department handles a significant number of invoices including things such as software renewals, monthly billings on software, and hardware ordering. The department does not, however, have an administrative position to handle all those invoices so they have been spreading that work amongst the technical staff, including Director Popp himself.
They tried offloading that work to the Help Desk, but the Help Desk currently has around 70 open tickets a week that they have to handle and was not in a good position to keep pace with the IT Department’s invoices and ended up falling behind on some of them to the point where a couple became past due.
That was the main reason this request was being made, but beyond invoicing issues, there were other tasks in the IT Department that could easily be rolled into an administrative position instead of being handled by technical staff such as placing orders with vendors and taking on non-technical projects. As an example, he mentioned that the city has 700-800 telephone numbers that need to be mapped and organized so that they know who what number, where those numbers go, and they can make sure voicemails are all set up appropriately.
The Human Resources Department had a position that was .8 Full Time Equivalent, and the employee wanted to go to a full-time 40-hour week. Director Popp and Human Resources Director Jay Ratchman discussed it and determined that there was easily a day’s worth of IT related administrative tasks that this person could perform. So, the city would be helping this employee out by letting them go full time, and the employee would be helping the IT Department by taking on administrative tasks.
There was money available in the IT budget for this. The department had an unfilled IT systems analyst position that had been budgeted over $62,000 in 2022. Director Popp said that was not a very realistic number to attract a systems analyst.
For the rest of 2022, they were proposing taking $8,938 to cover the cost of a .2 FTE position. The money was available in the IT Department’s budget, and the HR Department would not be affected.
Director Ratchman said that, in talking with Director Popp, what stood out to him was the volume of clerical and administrative work that not only the Help Desk was doing but also Director Popp was doing. Regardless of the employee wanting to be full time, the expanding of the position sprang from a legitimate need. He also noted that it would be a lot easier to having someone full time versus trying to recruit for an 8 hour a week part-time position.
He said that the HR and IT departments used to share an administrative position, but, after a restructuring, the IT Department position went away. So, adding it back in made a lot of sense. It was going to lighten the load and allow Director Popp to focus on the higher-level work.
Alderperson Kristin Alfheim (District 11) agreed that Director Popp’s skills would be better utilized doing something other than processing invoices.
Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14) also agreed with making this change. He did, however, want to know more about the unfilled system analyst position. It sounded like they needed to increase the wage in order to attract someone.
Director Popp said that they were going to iron that out as they went through the budget process starting in May. The department was actually down two system analyst positions right now, one of which had been unfilled since 2019. Having just come on the job in the last year, he wasn’t even sure what the original intent of the position was but had been told anecdotally that the position had been dedicated to the Tyler Munis ERP system.
Their software engineer had stepped up in the absence of a system analyst and had been doing a fine job to the point that Director Popp was satisfied that they had a competent backup already on staff and he didn’t see a justification for a systems analyst in that particular role, although he did see justification for one elsewhere in the department. He felt that the entire position needed to be reworked which would happen during the budget process.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) although thought this change was a better use of employee time rather than having employees with technical skills handle the administrative tasks.
The committee members had no further comments or questions and voted 5-0 to approve the requested change.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=958514&GUID=D076C15E-810B-4AF9-B4E8-EA475AD376CC
Be the first to reply