Town HR report: 10 departures YTD, lengthy hiring timelines for open positions

Erin, a human-resources staff member, told the Personnel Board on April 8 that the town has recorded 10 regular-status departures so far in 2026 and presented a year-to-date turnover figure of 3.1 for the first three months of the year.

Her report also included hiring timelines for March: an average of 84 days from job posting to offer accepted and 113 days from posting to the employee’s actual start date. Erin reported 18 regular-status jobs currently open and said staff are working on reporting improvements, including clearer department-level breakdowns and fixes to a pivot-table display.

Board members debated how to present the turnover statistic. One board member said the 3.1 figure represents three months of activity and suggested multiplying by four to estimate an annualized rate if the current pace were to continue—an approach the member described as an extrapolation rather than a definitive annual rate.

The meeting included technical discussion of how the town’s HR system (Munis) captures certain fields: staff noted the "source of hire" field is currently free-text, which makes consistent tabulation difficult, and suggested creating fixed options to improve future summaries. The board also discussed tracking hires, terminations and time-to-fill by department and adding termination reason codes where feasible, while acknowledging completeness and consistency will be a challenge.

Erin said the hiring-report layout is a work in progress and that more months of data will make trend analysis easier. The board thanked staff for the reporting and requested follow-up refinements to improve clarity and comparability across months and departments.