County puts employee practices into policies

May 9—Dickinson County Commissioner approved two new policies for county employees at their May 2 meeting.

Both policies, one covering information technology and the other employee compensation, put into writing practices employees were already following, said County Administrator Janelle Dockendorf.

IT policy

The new IT policy outlines the roles and responsibilities concerning data custodianship and system management. Because several departments work with outside agencies, they want to have procedures in place to help prevent cybersecurity issues.

"This policy addresses anybody that tries to access things from our network," she said.

However, this policy also tells where responsibility lies. For example, if a state agency has to glean information from the county's web portal, responsibility for security lies with the state.

"The software and the security of the servers on the network — that is the responsibility of our IT department," Dockendorf said.

The policy also addresses who has email access and ensures access is through secure means. If an employee has county email on a personal device, they must make sure they remain compliant with the Kanas Open Records Act, and the device is secure.

County employees also receive training on identifying potential spam and viruses that come in through email.

"We are trying to make sure that our employees are more aware of all of the pitfalls that we're facing with cybersecurity," she said. "We know that we're not going to be able to protect this completely; we know it's not a matter of if, it's when.

Compensation

The county has an interest in attracting and retaining qualified employees. The new compensation policy formalizes how they meet that goal, Dockendorf said.

The policy outlines the method of classifying jobs and administering wages and salaries to ensure pay levels are competitive and internally equitable. It includes guidelines for job analysis, employee evaluations and the salary structure.

"It also talks about how we will handle our pay-scale maintenance and our cost-of-living adjustments," she said. "Obviously, this is still back to the county commission to make a final determination. In the past, what we've done is just looked at ... a certain percentage, and that covers the merit increase based on evaluation and a COLA. This policy gives us the framework to be able to do that."

It also addresses promotion, and how employees can advance from one position to another.

"Part of the compensation policy came about after we contracted with the Arnold Group to do a compensation survey," she said. "Some of the things that they looked at in the market analysis that they did was to make sure that we are still competitive, which is something that's getting harder and harder to do — to be competitive with surrounding markets and the private sector. We wanted to make sure that we still have the means to be able to do that and play that strategy out."