The Elon Town Council will now give out annual bonuses to any municipal staff member with a college degree that exceeds the minimum requirements of their position, one of many recruiting techniques that the town is employing to stay competitive with other communities.
Town manager Rich Roedner said that Elon has been looking to recognize employees who go above and beyond, like police officers who train to also become an accident reconstruction officer or a field training officer. Those types of initiatives will now be rewarded through bonuses.
“We have been working for the last several years on rewarding employees for going beyond the minimum,” Roedner said. “We're working to try and identify those types of certificates or skill sets that are not just part of the everyday job, but mark somebody from being a step above deserving of a financial bonus.”
The bonuses will range from $2,000 to $5,000 depending on the level of degree that the employee has. An employee receives $2,000 annually for an associate’s degree that their position doesn’t require, $3,000 for a bachelor’s degree and $5,000 for a master’s.
Roedner said the bonuses won’t strain the town’s budget as it only amounts to a little under $40,000 a year to do it.
Roender said that instead of giving employees an increase in their salary, a flat annual bonus avoids dealing with cost of living increases and other annual cost increases.
Several other neighboring communities such as Burlington and Gibsonville offer similar bonuses for employees with degrees that are above the minimum qualifications.
Roedner said it is crucial to remain competitive in their payroll process, but it's not always easy. Twin Lakes Community and Elon University, two nonprofits, make up a large portion of the town. These nonprofits, which make up almost half the total value of the town, cannot be taxed. Roedner said the lack of a tax base growth and the fact that Elon is dominated by nonprofits more so than most towns contributes to the struggle to remain competitive with these neighboring towns.
“That becomes a real challenge to us when costs go up, when we see neighboring communities increasing salaries 5% or 6% across the board,” Roedner said. “That puts us at a competitive disadvantage, and it's very difficult for us to gain access to enough funding to do those kinds of things without sacrificing other things that we're trying to do.”
The bonuses will be a key tool to recruit incoming employees, but they will also help maintain current employees as Roedner said about 10-15 employees have the necessary degrees to receive these bonuses.
Despite Elon’s shortcomings in terms of its tax base, Roedner said they are still able to recruit well because of an attractive culture, but he admits that can only go so far.
“We have a culture that is attractive to a lot of folks,” Roedner said. “We've been successful so far. I think we'll continue to be successful. We try to create a culture here that people want to be part of. That helps. That only goes so far when there's actual cash on the table.”
They have managed to stay competitive by not having the lowest paid employees in the county but also not having the highest paid employees, according to Roedner. He said it's hard to compete with towns like Burlington that have larger populations and larger tax bases. About 45,000 more people live in Burlington than Elon, according to census data.
Roedner said he understands that they will never have the resources of some communities, and that it is important they stay in their niche and keep doing what they do.
“We know there are going to be communities we just can't compete with,” Roedner said. “Greensboro is a much larger city, much larger financial resources than we have or will ever have. We're in our niche, and we're trying to stay in that niche: not the highest paid, not the lowest paid, but in the middle. Combining that with the culture that we try to create here, I think we've been successful so far.”