Potholes & Politics: Local Maine Issues from A to Z
Potholes & Politics: Local Maine Issues from A to Z
MMA’s One-Stop Shop for HR Information
This week, Rebecca Lambert and Amanda Campbell are joined by Janet Kelle, MMA’s Human Resources Director. With more than 30 years of HR experience, most recently with Husson University, Janet quickly made her presence known at MMA. In this edition, Rebecca, Amanda and Janet dive into the wide range of human resource services available to MMA member municipalities. These include succession planning, employee handbook reviews, and compliance guidance, as well as a variety of fee-based services, such as recruitment assistance, background checks and budget consultation. Janet also highlights the many resources available on the MMA website, which she describes as a “one stop shop for all things HR.” Municipal officials will have an opportunity to meet Janet at the MMA Annual Convention on October 8 & 9 in Bangor. Be sure to stop in to say hello and participate in an opportunity to win a prize.
Welcome everyone to Potholes & Politics, Local Maine Issues from A to Z. I am your co-host, Rebecca Lambert. And with me as always is my amazing colleague, Amanda Campbell.
Good morning, Rebecca. Thanks everybody for listening.
Good morning. On our last episode, we welcomed Carollynn Lear, who is the city manager of Bangor, and she shared her insights on the first meeting of the Property Tax Relief Task Force. It was a brief episode, but it was packed with great information. So go on back and give it a listen if you haven't already, or even if you have, you can give it a listen for a second time.
Also, don't forget, MMA will be hosting its annual convention in Bangor on October 8th and (th at the Cross Insurance Center. Registration is now open, and we will link to it in the show transcript for your convenience. One last thing. Don't forget to like and subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you listen to us on. By doing that, you'll be notified when a new episode drops, ensuring you never miss one of these compelling episodes.
So, this week we are talking about all things human resources. MMA offers a whole host of services to our members, such as legal expertise and educational resources. But one area that isn't talked about as much is how the association assists with HR functions for members.
Today we are welcoming Janet Kelle. MMA's Director of Human Resources, who's going to describe for us the Human Resources Services MMA offers to its members. Welcome Janet, and thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you. I am very happy to be here.
So, you are one of the newer faces in the halls at MMA. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your HR background and how you came to MMA?
I'd be happy to. I've worked in human resources for over 30 years. During that time, I've worked in several different sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, and higher education before coming to MMA. I have my SHRM-SCP certification, and I'm also an ICF certified graduate coach and received my MBA at Husson University.
After several years working in higher education, I decided I'd like to have a change, and when I saw the Director of Human Resources position at MMA, it really spoke to me. I am a very mission-driven person and the opportunity to work for an organization that I would have an opportunity to not only work internally with the employees, but also be able to provide human resource services to all of the municipalities across the state, really was an exciting opportunity for me. So that's kind of my history and how I got to MMA.
That's a great segue into my next question for you. So, your role here at MMA is to manage the human resources functions for our organization, but in addition to that, you also lead the management of HR services for our members. What type of services does MMA include with membership for our members?
Well, we offer a lot of great services that are free to our members for the cost of their membership. So, let's start with the big one, strategic HR planning. So, we can help with workforce planning, succession strategies, organizational restructuring.
If you need your policies reviewed or updating of your employee handbook, we can assist with those things as well. One of the more difficult and complex areas that we offer is compliance guidance. So, helping our members to comply with things like the ADA, FMLA, Fair Labor Standards Act. We can provide support to help you stay compliant and reduce the risk, in your HR practices. We can also offer assistance with recruitment and retention support. That includes help with job descriptions, salary benchmarking, some onboarding strategies, and ways to keep your team engaged and thriving in your business.
For those that are navigating some workplace challenges, we can offer some assistance with employee relations and performance management services, such as conflict resolution, some coaching, some guidance on disciplinary processes. And, finally, don't forget about our free online resources.
We've recently worked to update the HR site to be a one stop shop for all things HR. So, we wanted to have a place on our website where, if you had a specific FMLA claim and you didn't know how to handle it. The government offers some really clear guidance on like military leave, pregnancy leave.
So, we just pulled all of the resources, those types of resources, into the website. So, you have just a one stop shop. You can go in and find the FMLA forms, you can find all of the labor posters that you need to have, sample job descriptions, sample reference questions, sample interview questions. We really were thoughtful about trying to figure out absolutely anything that you might need. We wanted to have it on our website for you and easily accessible.
Those references and having them available at your fingertips is a really great benefit for our members. I remember as a former town administrator, having to jump from website to website to find all of those resources. And so having them in one space is really a great benefit. And we will be sure to drop a link to the HR section of our website in the show notes as well as a really great one pager reference tool that we have that lists all of the programs and benefits that our members can take advantage of, including what some listeners may not realize are services that are fee-based. So not included with your membership, but additional services that you all can offer to our members.
What are some of those fee-based services?
Absolutely. Some fee-based services that we offer include support for municipalities that might be going through a leadership transition. We can provide interim manager services, temporary leadership solutions to help keep things running smoothly while you're recruiting for a new leader.
We also help with the recruitment process. So, we can come in and meet with the town council or board and offer advertising and recruitment services there. We do background checks. We also provide some consultation services, and we're open to - we really want to support our members and meet them with the needs that they have.
So, for instance, we've had a lot of members request assistance with budgeting or financial services. So, we just recently started working on offering budget consultations and if there are other services like that, that members are interested in, please, I encourage them to reach out. And let us know what their needs are, and we will do our utmost, to help in however we can, whether it's fee-based or it may be a free service that we can include in our membership.
That's really interesting. Do you have any advice or resources that you'd wanna share to our listeners?
Yes, I neglected to mention a couple other, fee-based things that we can do. We do offer compensation studies and HR audits, those types of special projects as well. I really want to just encourage, the members - I am really open to feedback on what they would like to see from the Human Resources Department. I've only been here three months and I'm really working hard to try to meet our members. I've gone to our MMA for a day in Greenville, I attended the Maine City and Town Manager conference, and will be at the MMA conference coming up.
And so, I would love to have people stop by and say hello and introduce themselves and I'll be there to answer any on the spot questions that they might have. And I'm planning on hosting a little game with some prizes. So, I encourage you to stop by and see me and, and, maybe you’lll win a little something.
Ooh, exciting. Everybody loves games.
That's exactly what I was gonna say.
HR is not all, legal and compliance. We like to have a little fun too.
And the HR booth will be right near the Advocacy & Communications booth at convention, so stop by and see us. You may get a little snippet on the podcast at the same time.
That's true. All of the departments from MMA will be in what we call our “muni mart” at convention all in the same location together, so you can stop by and see all of us. And play Janet's game and maybe enter to win some other prizes elsewhere.
So Janet, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast today. We really appreciate your expertise and sharing what the HR department can do for our members. We are very lucky to have you and the improvements that you've made so far to our HR department. So, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you for having me. I really enjoy being at MMA and the things that we do, for everyone across the state. It's very rewarding and I love being here.
That's great to hear. Well, that will do it for us in this episode of Potholes & Politics. Thanks everyone for listening. Have a great day.
Thanks so much. Have a great day everybody.
Thank you.
