County looks at paying staff for volunteer time

Taylor County employees could get paid to do volunteer activities such as giving blood.

At the March 13 personnel committee meeting, county human resources director Nicole Hager brought up a proposal to allow county employees to get paid time to donate blood during the quarterly blood drives sponsored by the county’s employee wellness committee. These blood drives are open to the community and were initially held in the courthouse, however concerns with the presence if hornets in the county board meeting room caused them to be relocated to the community center building at the fairgrounds.

The hope would be that more staff would sign up if they were able to not have to take paid time off to do it during the work day. It was noted that giving blood takes about an hour.

Committee member Scott Mildbrand opposed the idea. “Volunteerism is not paid. Volunteerism is something you do out of the goodness of your heart,” he said. Mildbrand also raised the question if people would rather read to preschool students at a daycare center than donate blood.

Committee member Lynn Rosemeyer spoke in support of giving employees paid time to participate in the blood drives. She noted that when she worked at Nestlé they would have company-sponsored blood drives where employees could donate during their work day. “It is just the right thing to do,” Rosemeyer said of the need for blood donations.

“What about the people who can’t donate?” asked finance director Tracey Hartwig, noting they would not receive the benefit.

Committee member Rollie Thums noted that he never had the opportunity to ask his employer for paid time to donate blood. “I do it on my own time,” he said.

The suggestion was made that rather than just allowing it for a blood drive, the county would allow up to three hours of paid time off per year to do community service. Hager noted that other counties have adopted similar policies to allow this.

She said she would prefer to see a policy that was open ended.

“I like the three hours,” said committee chairman Chuck Zenner. He noted this would allow flexibility.

Committee member James Gebauer said he would support it as long as the employees did not accrue overtime or comp time because of it.

A motion to allow the paid time for blood drives was withdrawn, with Hager given the directive to talk about it with department heads and come back to the personnel committee with a policy.

In other business, committee members:

• Approved formal job descriptions for workers at the Winter Sports Area. The county did not previously have formal job descriptions for them.

• Reviewed the carryover funds that are assigned to the human resources department. The largest of these are the HRA (health reimbursement account) administration which has a balance of $236,000 and the automotive collisions self-insurance with a balance of $328,000. The county has maintained the auto self-insurance fund at about that amount for many years. Hager said she is working to get an audit done of the HRA account noting that some of that could be put into to the general fund reserves due to employees leaving the county.