Duane Tarbet on Human Resources at HSV Board Retreat

On Tuesday, April 23, 2024, at the Board of Directors Retreat, Hot Springs Village POA Human Resources Director Duane Tarbet enthused, “I get to talk about one of the best things down here, and that is not just about human resources [employees]. The ladies who work with me and whom we all know are awesome.” It’s about ALL the employees. “Because without our members being served by the POA employees, this city would not run.”

Tarbet said many folks “think this is a rich community, full of high-paid administrative officials that sit back in their chairs and watch things through a computer. That is far from the truth.”

Staffing

“We’re mostly blue-collar workers.” As the fifth largest employer in Saline County and the tenth largest employer in Garland County, we attract many qualified staff from the surrounding area.

We didn’t cut or add positions from last year to this year. “We repurposed a lot of positions. We have 284 full-time employees and 186 part-time employees, resulting in total staff of 470. This is the same number as last year.

Tarbet said although he would like to say we are fully staffed at all times, we are not. “We have done so much better; when Kelly came over two years ago, we were 80 employees short of being fully staffed.”

The focus has been on hiring enough staff to complete the necessary work.

Staffing costs

The public doesn’t see the “real numbers” on the cost of employees. In addition to salaries, there are also taxes and benefits. “Employees are the largest asset. They are also the largest cost,” explained Tarbet.

“We are benefit rich. We produce great benefits for our people. But those benefits come with a price.”

“There was a change in the ’23 to ’24 budget. $1.4 M dollars—that is a lot. Dividing $1.4 M by 470 employees, you get only $2,400 per employee. That includes the entire benefit package and everything we are paying. It also includes all the taxes. Quite a bit goes into that, so don’t be fooled.”

Our health insurance rose ten percent this year. “We fought to keep that at ten percent.” With help from Board Members, we looked at benefit packages to determine health insurance costs, evaluate the 401K, and evaluate life insurance expenses. We made sure we were getting the best benefit for our money. We changed the 401K investment company, life insurance provider, and short-term disability company and took a hard look at our D and C insurance.

We tried to limit the impact of the cost-of-living (COLA) increase. “This is the worst year we’ve had in 20 years regarding cost of living and inflation.” Employees received a 4.15% COLA raise. The COLA our employees received was around the national average. This was to help them keep up with inflation.

The starting pay for a full-time employee is $14 an hour. This is well above minimum wage and fifty cents higher than the starting salary for a full-time employee in Hot Springs. Tarbet feels we are a very competitive employer. “We have a lot to offer, especially in our benefits package.”

“When you look at it overall, we have a lot to offer compared to other places.”

Risk management

Before his promotion to HR Director, Tarbet was doing risk management. Someone else was hired to do this job because he didn’t have time to do both jobs. This person is also doing contracts and fixed asset coordination. Tarbet said in the past the fixed asset coordination was “let go.” A perfect example was, “We found a trash truck that wasn’t on our asset list. It just got missed. We knew it was there. We were paying for it. We paid the taxes on it. It was licensed and registered but not on our asset list. It is simple things that we are trying to catch up.”

Goals accomplished in 2023 were:

• Completion of a Succession Plan for every department—Tarbet explained, “You are only as good as the person behind you. I was always taught you should train your replacement. We challenged each department head to find their replacement, all the way down as far as we could go. It is a large plan, built out, and we will review it on a quarterly basis.”
• Finished the year $877,201 under budget for payroll (Some of this was through the reappropriation of jobs. Some jobs were moved to part-time. ” I can hire three part-time people for what I pay a full-time person.”
• Reduced overtime by 13% (This helped reduce the payroll.)
• The Board approved a 4.15% pay increase (COLA plus merit)

Positive safety culture

Tarbet said he was hired for safety reasons. “Bringing a safety culture here was vitally important – safety in staffing.

DART rate is a rate that insurance companies, the State of Arkansas, and OSHA use. DART stands for “Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred.” This has to do with lost work days and lost work time. The national average is 3%. In 2021, the POA DART rate was 11.4% before GM Kelly Hale came. This is almost four times the national average. A rate this high put us in a couple of different categories:

• Arkansas State Rule 32—The state steps in because it feels we are out of control. Rule 32 allows the state to impose mandates. One of the mandates is, ‘We can force you not to hire any safety-sensitive positions until you bring those rates down.” It was imperative that we took care of our excessive DART rate. Tarbet said from research that the POA excessive DART rate went back years. Within about six months, we were removed from Rule 32. This allowed us to be fully insured.
• We were previously self-insured. The POA DART rate dropped to .09 in 2022. In 2023, it is up slightly to 1.17%, which is still well below the national average.

Work Comp incident comparison

On the Worker’s Compensation Incident comparison, much of the increase is attributed to one specific employee. He worked in such a critical position that we didn’t want him back to work until he was healed up 100%.

• In 2021, we paid $240,203.17 in Worker’s Compensation.
• In 2022, we paid $217,046.51 in Worker’s Compensation.
• In 2023, we paid $148,172.84 in Worker’s Compensation.

The important thing was that in 2023, Travelers Insurance agreed to take us on board. “The reason that is so big is that it limits our liability. When we were self-insured, we were liable for every single claim or every single dollar. If we had a tragedy like we had in the past, where an individual was killed or permanently disabled, it could cost millions of dollars…Having that liability removed from us is huge.”

“We are also no longer paying a third-party administrator to manage our Worker’s Compensation program, so hidden costs go well beyond the $148,172.84.” This also doesn’t include recovered lost work time and production.

Tornado Damages / Deductible

Tarbet said, when we were looking at our whole insurance process, in 2023 we had a $100,000 deductible plus 1% per occurrence. In 2024 our insurance company increased our deductible to $250,000, plus 3% per occurrence.

The Finance and Planning Committee recommended that we purchase a “buy down policy” to reduce the deductible to $150,000 for the cost of $120,000, insured at $100,000 plus 2% one time.

The tornado damaged 53 buildings. If we had not purchased the buydown insurance we would have had to pay a substantially larger amount in out-of-pocket expenses. The potential savings has not been determined.

Tarbet said this is not just our insurance company. Insurance companies have had heavy losses and must recover their profit margins.

Recruiting

Tarbet is heavily focused on recruiting. The team reaches out to the local schools. An internship program was started last year with Mountain Pine School. This is a pilot program to evaluate how this works.

Four Mountain Pine seniors and one junior have adjusted school schedules and work for the POA. The students attend half-school days and are off of school on Mondays.

“The plan is not just to help them and teach them a skill, but hopefully to bring them on board. Three of the four have already applied for POA jobs for the summer. One individual wants to make a career here. He is not going to college and is labor-minded.”

Tarbet said on expansion of the program, he has already talked to the Jessieville School Superintendent and Career Coach. Jessieville seniors are lined up for next year.

Tarbet explained they are building careers and making Hot Springs Village the place the students want to have a career.

General Manager Kelly Hale said the tag-a-long effect is that family members of the students may also be interested in a career with the Village.

Salary Study

Tarbet will be working with Bella Vista and sharing information for a salary study. Tarbet said we will participate in a Bella Vista survey and they will share the results with us.

Tarbet also wants to do an outside salary study of Garland and Saline Counties and the state.

Tarbet said he wants to work on improving employee retention rate.

Human Resources Update

By Cheryl Dowden