Floyd County sees a rise in employee retirements

♦ Personnel managers are dealing with changes at least partially due to COVID-19.

Twenty-two county employees are planning to retire this year, the human resources training coordinator told members of the Floyd County Administrative Finance Committee.

“That’s a significant number,” Tracy Hardy said. “Normally I just talk to people about how our retirement works ... but these are 22 people that are actually retiring — starting this week and going up to December.”

The soon to be retirees aren’t concentrated in any particular department, he said, but spread out across the county’s workforce.

Hardy partly attributed the rise in retirement plans to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying many people are seeking out the HR department to check on their current benefit options.

He went on to say that he believes many more people will choose to retire in the coming months.

“Floyd County has a great retirement plan. We’ve made a lot of great changes to it and our employees appreciate that, and I see this number going up significantly as we get to the end of the year,” Hardy said.

From May to June, the county had an increase in employees, from 1,025 to 1,075, but he said most of them were temporary workers.

“We’ve had a constant influx of poll workers,” Hardy said.

For new county employees, the HR Department has established some new training programs they must go through, including remote sessions.

“We’ve Zoomed some of our orientations online and that’s worked out very well,” Hardy said.

During the last few months, the HR Department has initiated a step program for supervisor training.

The program includes an array of classes for employees to go through if they’re interested in becoming a supervisor, such as diversity training and conflict resolution.