‘Behind the times.’ Columbus Council considers a new policy aimed at retaining employees
Over the eight years Hayley Tillery has been the executive director of the Columbus Georgia Convention and Trade Center, she has struggled to retain young talent.
Tillery points to a lack of paid maternity and paternity leave.
“I’ve seen our employees struggle,” Tillery told the Ledger-Enquirer.
Although the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) protects their jobs, she said, mothers often do not have enough leave time to bond with their newborn children.
Tillery worked with Columbus Consolidated Government Human Resources Director Reather Hollowell to propose a city ordinance to create a Paid Maternity and Paternity Leave Policy to support employees after a birth or adoption, a move some city officials say is long overdue.
Tillery and Hollowell presented the ordinance, sponsored by Councilor Travis Chambers, to Columbus Council at the Oct. 22 meeting
If approved, the policy would offer full-time city employees up to six weeks of paid maternity leave or two weeks of paid paternity leave after a child’s birth or the adoption of a child age 17 or younger. Employees must have at least one year of full-time employment with the CCG to be eligible.
The city already has a good leave package in place, Hollowell said, but it might be different than what’s commonly used in the private sector, like paid time off.
“We don’t have that,” she said. “We have hours. We have different needs buckets. We have a needs bucket for sick leave, another needs bucket for your vacation time. And then we even have a bucket for bonus time off.”
This time off is based on employees’ years of service, Hollowell said.
Employees may use all of their sick and vacation time they’ve built up, Tillery said.
“And once they come back, they’re coming back with zero leave,” she said, “which does not set them up for success because, not only could the baby get sick or have appointments, you’ve got to think about the well-being of the employee, as well.”
Medical complications can put additional strain on employees, Tillery said.
One of Tillery’s employees recently had a baby. Medical conditions for the baby before the delivery meant the employee lost a lot of her sick and vacation time, she said, which took away from her maternity leave.
“I think it’s critical for our employees, the dedication that they give to the city and the passion they give to the city for us to be able to be comparable to other cities across the state of Georgia,” Tillery said.
Councilors voice concerns
During the meeting, councilors Judy Thomas and Joanne Cogle expressed concerns about the policy’s potential impact on the city’s budget.
“(The budget concern) is low hanging fruit for us because (the policy) is limited to full-time employees only,” Hollowell said. “And within our budget, the full-time employees are already budgeted on an annual basis.”
Employees would continue to receive the pay they already were budgeted for. If a department has to hire a temporary person to fill the position for six weeks, she said, the cost would be nominal.
The policy would account for about 0.03% of the mayor’s budget, Tillery told the council, and it would account for about 0.06% of the government and public safety personnel budget.
“When you compare that to what we’re going to get by providing this for our employees, that is nothing,” she said.
Paid maternity and paternity leave will help the overall economic impact because it will help retain employees and reduce the cost of hiring and training new employees, Tillery said. Retaining employees also will help to keep institutional knowledge, she said.
Councilor Gary Allen raised another concern about whether employees on leave could work from home if they wanted to and the city was prepared to do the job for the employee on leave.
“If this is where we’re headed, we need to make sure that we have the staff to support those when they do take leave,” Allen said.
All of the city’s directors agree with the proposed policy and are confident the work will get done, Hollowell said.
“Any department head will tell you it’s already happening,” Tillery told the Ledger-Enquirer. “It’s not like they can go deliver a baby or adopt a child and be back at work the next day, right?”
When someone gets pregnant, the employee and their department have months to prepare, she said.
“And I have seen, across the board with departments, employees are willing to jump in there and take on those responsibilities because of the care they have for their colleagues,” Tillery said.
Columbus has fallen behind
Paid maternity and paternity leave already has been implemented in many companies in the private sector as well as other local governments throughout the state.
“We are actually behind the times in Columbus, Georgia,” said city manager Isaiah Hugley during the meeting. “This should have been done long ago.”
When they began to research the issue, Hollowell said, they looked at what other local governments were doing and found the policy had been implemented there for years.
Cobb and Macon-Bibb counties, the cities of Atlanta Marietta and Augusta and the State of Georgia all provide some form of paid parental leave anywhere from three to 12 weeks, she said.
The six-week maternity leave offered in the proposed policy felt like a good medium, Hollowell said.
Paid maternity leave has been an issue discussed on the federal level for some time, she said, and there was thinking that it might get passed there. But time went by and private companies, including Aflac, began offering it to their employees.
In Columbus, employees managed working with the benefit policy already in place, she said. They either saved up time to be out or they took time off without pay.
“And so, quite frankly, from my perspective, it’s something that just went past our radar,” Hollowell said.
Offering this benefit will help the city recruit and retain young talent, Tillery said.
“If we don’t adapt to some of the expectations that (Gen Z and MIllennials) want to work for, they’re going to go somewhere else,” she said. “They’re going to go to a different city. They’re going to be able to find work that supports their values.”
Thomas told the Ledger-Enquirer that she plans to vote in support of the policy when it comes to a vote on the second reading before the city council.
This story was originally published October 29, 2024 at 12:15 PM.
