OCEAN CITY — Resort officials this week signed off on a key senior employee retention program aimed at providing incentives for longtime employees eligible for retirement to continue working with the town.
There has clearly been an experience drain at the top of Ocean City’s senior workforce in recent years with retirement ceremonies practically a weekly feature at City Hall. The town already has in place a Deferred Retirement Option Program, or DROP, in place providing an option for long-term employees to continue to work for the town while setting in motion their pension and benefits packages for a prescribed amount of time.
On Tuesday, City Manager Doug Miller introduced s key senior employee retention plan, the intent of which is similar to DROP, but the components of which are slightly different, and in some cases more advantageous for both the employee and the town. According to Miller, as an unintended consequence, the town’s attractive pay and benefits practices could induce a valuable tenured employee to retire before they otherwise would.
“We saw it today with two more retirements of long-time employees,” he said. “We should be proud we are such good employers, but we are seeing a lot of retirements.”
So said. No succession planning over the last few years? I only ask because yearly the 2 local paper publications always show salaries of OC gov’t employees (to include seasonal). Folks not in the know could easily rationalize those making $90K or higher where legacy employees.
Normal business practices (key word with normal) have succession planning business rules in place to avoid DROP initiatives. West of the Bay Bridge many counties in MD/VA utilized DROP initiatives but had to drop that practice because of lack of resourcing. Having an employee retire and say work an additional 3 years (which is the mandatory DROP time in the largest county in VA) the individual is getting their retirement AND pretty much their same salary when they retired. A very nice alternative, but a resourcing disaster. By the way, that largest county in VA and other surrounding counties NO LONGER utilize DROP. Instead, they have initiated succession planning.
Why? To download the legacy workforce experiences into the younger generation. Seasoning that younger generation prior to the legacy force exiting.
SOOOOOO…go ahead City Hall – initiate DROP but keep in mind the lack of cost savings to actually hire the newer generation….who are suppose to succeed the retirees.
Nice idea, 20th century mindset. Address the bigger issue – hiring in general for year round and seasonal. J1s aren’t going to be around this summer either. Are you planning what to do now – or going to wait until April and the excuses will be in the local papers?
Succession planning, Strategic planning, THEN the Capital Improvement Plan.
How many years since OC terminated that great City Manager hire?? Over 5 now?
Still laughing at you Rickie!
Ha! OC continues to employ more chiefs than Indians! Transportation alone has probably 4 managers for every remaining bus driver. Most former drivers have left to find employment elsewhere.
Maybe the ax will come down on Vernon Perdue. Not a nice and honest person to say the least. Just ask Perdue Farms.
sounds like O.C . is heading into chicago territory, to much unfunded liabilities for retired workers so they are trying to keep the old employees working for as long as they can to avoid having to pay retirement benefits as well as paying to hire new people to replace the people who want to retire. It seems to me that a “Family” vacation resort should be making plenty of money. The only vacation resorts that have been losing money are places like atlantic city that allow corruption and criminals. oh well i`m sure O.C. will work it out, I haven`t been to that shithole in almost 30 years and I don`t ever intend to go there again.